Chinoiserie

Vaisseaux Chinois

A wood engraving from the Illustrated London News, one of the best known journals during the Victorian era. ILN portrayed important historical events and engravings provide useful and interesting information for the antique collector. The earliest illustrative prints were wood engravings; the great advantage of this type of print making was that the illustration and the text could be printed on the same machine - the letterpress. The blocks were usually of boxwood or one of a variety of fruit woods. Wood engraving is a relief process, with incised lines printing white and raised areas printing black - the reverse of the intaglio process.

(Altfield Gallery, Hong Kong)

And thinking of things Chinese, this morning's tranquility broken by the drums and cymbals of a lion dance in the car park of a nearby property:

Kung Hei Fat Choi for the Year of the Rabbit.

Or, as one of my correspondent's mistyped - the year of the Rabbi.