Mending Woks
Published August 3, 2009 by Rachel Laudan
Mending woks with molten iron and a bit of paper or felt. Pretty amazing stuff. Don Wagner, who is the person on Chinese metallurgy, sent me a link to a page he has put together on historical and contemporary accounts and photos of the Chinese tinkers who mended woks. Here’s the link.
On the culinary front, I found it interesting that nineteenth century observers commented that woks were valued for boiling rice because, being thin, they heated quickly. Rice not the stir fries that we tend to concentrate on. Worth mulling over. Also that the British tried to get into the market but could not make a pot that was thin enough.
Afterword. An apology to Donald Wagner for originally posting his page. In the nicest possible way he asked me to just put a link so that no permissions were abrogated and his design remained clean. And thanks again to him for keeping me posted on this work in the first place.
Filed under Food History
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Given that the Gouache painting and the Van Braam’s illustration are identical in composition, I guess this is a very stylised image (or the 19th century Gouache painting is copied from Van Braam’s illustration). Curious really, I wonder if there was an even older Master image or if these images had an educational role.
Yes, that would be an interesting question. I don’t know if Don Wagner has an answer to this.
I want to know more about the early history of cast iron cookware in Europe. Most of what I have found is myth and legend.
In the Canton (Guangzhou) studios in the 18th and 19th century paintings like these were mass-produced for sale to foreigners. Masters painted the originals, and apprentices reproduced them exactly. Presumably tens or hundreds of copies of this painting were made and sold. This is the only copy of this painting that I know of, but I have seen other Canton paintings which are so alike that one would think they were photocopies. And in 19th-century books about China one often sees illustrations which obviously are copies – greatly distorted – of Canton paintings. That is certainly the case with Van Braam’s illustration.
Craig Clunas mentions (and doesn’t quite dismiss) the possibility that some of the Chinese paintings were copies of, or inspired by, drawings by Western artists like William Alexander. But in this case I am quite sure that the original painting was Chinese.
Just about every large museum in the Western world has a few Canton export paintings in the cellar, and it is always worthwhile to ask at one’s local museum.
Here are a couple of good books on Chinese export art:
Carl Crossman, The China trade: Export paintings, furniture, silver and other objects. Princeton 1972. A slight revision with altered title was published in 1991.
Craig Clunas, Chinese export watercolours. London 1984.
Incidentally, I think Rachel may find paintings here which are relevant for food history.
Thanks for the suggestion, Don. It’s on my list for our time in Austin, Texas in the Spring Semester.