Album of 19th-century Chinese jianzhi paper cut-outs.

Intricate chinese paper art. An exceptional album containing hundreds of delicate and elaborate Chinese paper cut-outs on 105 leaves, likely made for the export market in the last half of the nineteenth century.

Jianzhi, the art of paper cutting, is one of the most popular and widespread forms of Chinese folk art, dating back at least 1500 years to the origin of paper itself. It is thought that the practice began as a way of making patterns for embroidery and other crafts, and eventually developed into its own discipline, with paper cuttings serving a variety of decorative, apotropaic, and ritual functions. This album contains a huge variety of cuts, from simple to complex. There are flowers, fruit, and animals, including numerous birds, deer, dogs, insects such as butterflies, and fancy goldfish; good luck symbols including rabbits, crickets, and some incorporating bats and bat wing motifs; mythical creatures like qilin, dragons, and phoenixes; and more elaborate scenes such as a woman holding a lamp, men at a Go board, children playing, a warrior on horseback, and a display of the twelve zodiac animals. Some of the patterns are repeated, and it isn't clear if this was intentionally done for a specific purpose, or if the album was simply filled with a variety of the available designs. An unusually rich album displaying the breadth of paper cutting as an art form.

105-leaf album of paper cut-outs in white on black ground with thin, lacquer or celluloid-like coating, one cut-out on the first leaf with a dab of gilt, occasional spots to the cut-outs, a few places where they are slightly lifting off the backing paper; marbled boards, spine and corners in black paper with zig-zag grain, red flower-patterned endpapers, binding rubbed at the edges with loss from the ends of the spine, very good condition.