July 21, 2005
There’s the rub: Librarians solve mystery of missing Chinese art
The mystery begins last year when Paula Walker, interim head of the East Asia Library, receives a letter of introduction for a doctoral student at the UW. This scholar is conducting research on artworks produced in southwest China and Tibet.
He has heard that the UW has some rubbings, perhaps from temples in that region, and he’d like to look at them.
“Initially, we couldn’t find any evidence that we had these rubbings,” Walker says. But the library staff keeps looking.
In May, the librarians find a cardboard box in an office, recycled from its original purpose of holding canned salmon. The box is labeled “other rubbings.”
Inside the box they find about 20 envelopes containing paper of varying sizes, obviously Chinese rubbings. And some of the pieces begin to fall into place.
Library staff members Brent Bianchi, South Asia Studies librarian, and Carolyn Aamot, manager, Gifts Program, assist Walker by searching the Special Collections records. They find records indicating that, in 1954, the UW purchased a portion of the collection of J.F. Rock, a botanist who traveled extensively in China before World War II and amassed a collection of books and rubbings, in addition to his botanical work.
What has happened to the collection since its acquisition is shrouded in the mists of time. The books were indexed and became part of the collection at the East Asian Library. Indeed, the books, called gazetteers, provide a view of Chinese regional history that may be unique. But the rubbings ….
Walker’s curiosity is aroused by the word “other” on the salmon box. So where is the rest of the collection?
“I asked the ‘old timers’ in the libraries, including some who were retired,” she says. “They didn’t know where the other rubbings might be.”
But one day she is talking with Sandra Kroupa, curator of the UW’s world-renowned book arts collection. Kroupa, who has worked at the UW more than 30 years, recalls that back in the 1980s her supervisor presented her with a box of rubbings and suggested she “do something with it.” The box was presented with no index, no translation of the rubbings’ content – no information, really, on what they were or how to catalog them. Kroupa decides to incorporate the rubbings into the repository of Special Collections, placing each individual rubbing by size in the division’s holdings.
Now, Kroupa is scouring the Special Collections holdings for those “other” rubbings, so that the entire collection can be reassembled. Walker is determined to prepare as good an index as possible, and to make the rubbings available in digital form to the community of scholars, who can perhaps shed additional light on the rubbings’ origins.
“Given the age of the rubbings, one thing we don’t have to worry about is copyright,” she says.
Although Walker does not read Chinese, she has been told that many of the rubbings contain information about the dynasty in which the temples were built. And it could well be that these rubbings provide the only record for temples that no longer exist.
“This is not a major collection of rubbings by Chinese standards,” Walker says, “but it is likely to be of interest to researchers investigating southwest China and non-Chinese people from that region. It is very appropriate, given this university’s scholarly reputation in Chinese studies, to have this collection.”
Two experts — Ju-yen Teng, a Chinese cataloger, and Dianna Xu, Chinese studies librarian — have already prepared a preliminary index of the “other” rubbings. Walker is hopeful that a complete index of the rubbings can be completed this summer.
“We’d like the index to have as much information as possible,” she says. “We’re hopeful that Karl Debreczeny, the scholar who first suggested to us that we had these rubbings, has information that may be useful in further identifying them.” Debreczeny will be visiting the UW this autumn.
The rubbings themselves are striking, with white lettering against a black background. While most of the characters appear to be Chinese, there is another alphabet on some rubbings, which may or may not be Tibetan. The indexed rubbings vary in size, with the largest being 45 ½ by 117 inches. The material used for the rubbings is thin and fragile; some pieces have a consistency like stiff, handmade Japanese paper, while others feels much like cloth. Some examples of Chinese rubbings from the University of California, Berkeley are at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Rubbings/.
“It’s really serendipity that we found them,” Walker says. “Overall, they are in excellent shape.”
