Mallotus philippinensis (1883-1914)
Ten ways of seeing
- upright 1.38 : 1
First Look
搜尽奇峰打草稿。
—— 清·石涛《苦瓜和尚画语录》
Exhaust the strange peaks, and then make the sketch.
The sheet is vertical: the eye climbs and settles in the upper half. Let the plant stand before you look for detail. Then step in close: watch where colour meets line, and whether the line ever breaks. Third, find the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Mallotus philippinensis: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
The sacred lotus lifts shield-shaped leaves above the water with a seed pod standing at the centre; waterlilies float their notched leaves and rest their flowers on the surface.No colour group is recorded. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
Composition
Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.
Line and Colour
In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions. If you mean to copy it: block in the broad shapes and colours first, detail last; lithographic softness comes from thin washes — two or three pale layers will get you close.
Poetic Resonance
骤雨过，珍珠乱撒，打遍新荷。
—— 唐·元好问《骤雨打新荷》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
in Buddhism it is the seat of the pure land; in Egypt the waterlily is sunrise and rebirth. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
Season and Place
High summer, June to August. waterlilies are worldwide, and Victorian hybridists made hundreds of garden forms. The year 1883 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. See this kind of plate in the flowering season if you can: once you have met the living flower, you stop reading only colour.
The Book and the Hand
“Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen in naturgetreuen Abbildungen mit kurz erläuterndem” carries only Gustav Pabst's name. From drawing to plate the sheet passed through several hands — the engraver aimed at accuracy, the colourist at speed, and between them lies each plate's unevenness.
What to Take Away
Next time you stand before a flowering plant, give it three minutes: leaf arrangement, direction of the flower, the darkest patch. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1883 gave a whole day to a single flower.
