19th C. Chinese Pith Painting Portrait of Woman with Opium Pipe leather bootie and all in good working

and all in good working order: hitting either of the chipmunks will knock them back

Their bodies are cloth over wire

so perhaps its inclusion is a play on the mixing of oil and water

industry and justice

And I really love the odd green one

19th C. Chinese Pith Painting Portrait of Woman with Opium Pipe leather bootie and all in good workingThis is a Cantonese gouache painting on pith, mounted to good weight backing paper (blue ribbon runs around the perimeter of the pith paper and is what holds the painting to the larger backing paper), which I believe would originally have been housed in a portfolio containing a set of six or twelve, together portraying a selection of court figures in fine dress, perhaps the emperor and empress, too. I love this woman for the opium pipe in her hands,