Mending Woks. Uses of Woks in the Nineteenth Century
Donald Wagner, the expert on Chinese metallurgy, sent me a page he has put together on the historical and contemporary accounts and photos of the Chinese tinkers who mended woks. Just a bit of molten metal and a scrap of paper or cloth. Amazing. If you will scroll to the bottom of this link you will also find that Irish tinkers used the same method.
Let me just list some thoughts about the wok provoked by these documents.
- Woks were sufficiently valuable that they were mended. They were not cheap and would presumably have been a considerable investment for an ordinary family.
- The British tried to sell wok copies to China but they could not make the vessels thin enough. This was a highly specialized technology.
- Eighteenth and nineteenth century British observers commented that woks were valued for boiling rice or vegetables because, being thin, they heated quickly. They make no mention of oil or stir fries.
Here is a copy of the one European discussion cited but not copied in Wagner’s post. It’s by the physicist, scoundrel, philanthropist and much more, Count Rumford, born in America but leaving at the time of the Revolution. He was keenly interested in better cooking methods, particularly enclosed stoves. Although he had not been to China, I would not discount what he says as he had thought a great deal about heat and cooking.
Count Rumford, Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical, 1802, pp. 298–299)
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.
Hello again –
Take a look at the addition at the end of the “Chinese tinkers” page – it seems that itinerant tinkers in Ireland used a similar technique. Have you or any of your many correspondents heard of any more?
Regards
Don
Don, Fantastic. Just completed a complex move from Mexico to the United States but hope to post on this soon and we’ll see what the response is.