Prints & Drawings Fine Art

London, 1843. Thomas Allom’s views of China are published, and England looks at the East through English eyes.

Antique prints and drawings span engravings, lithographs, scrolls and hand-painted posters from four continents. From England and Italy come hand-colored engravings after Sir William Hamilton’s ancient vases and scenes from Captain Cook’s second voyage; European engravings of India, Algeria and Egypt join Allom. From India come the Pat story scrolls of the Santhal people, painted to be unrolled while a storyteller sang; from Ethiopia, Coptic prayer scrolls and books in Ge’ez script; from Burma, folding fortune teller’s books; from Bali, a Klungkung cosmological diagram. Japanese woodblock prints, Belgian memorial rubbings and Mao-era lithographs add to the mix. Ghana’s hand-painted movie posters, done on flour sacks for travelling video shows in the 1980s and 1990s, bring horror and bravado.

Framed in walnut or ebonized wood, a run of engravings lines a library wall.

A Pat scroll fills a stairwell. The storyteller is optional.