Description
Black and white photograph showing a young boy, dressed in trousers and cotton shirt brushing wet sheets of coarse hand made paper onto an external wall of the workshop to dry. To his left, paper sheets in various stages of the drying process being to peel off the wall. A wheelbarrow, laden with stacks of paper, is behind and to the left of the boy.

Significance statement
This photograph is one of a series of photographs taken by Hedda Morrison documenting the traditional process of making a coarse paper known as 'tuzhi'. This image depics the process of drying paper on a wall. Hedda Morrison was fascinated by local crafts. In a 1949 article in the Canadian Geographic Journal titled 'Making books in China' (39: 234-45), she wrote: 'The sheets of damp paper are taken outside, stripped off the pile one by one and pasted up on a sunny wall to dry. Chinese paper made in this way, whether coarse or fine, can always be recognized by the impression of the bamboo ribs of the fine grid'.

Production notes
This is one of a large number of photographs documenting local crafts that were taken by Hedda Morrison (1908-1991) during her years of residence in Peking (Beijing), China 1933-1946.

History notes
Exhibited in 'Peking: 1933-1946 - A photographic impression', Menzies Library, Australian National University, 17-30 June 1967. Reproduced in Hedda Morrison, 'A photographer in Old Peking', Hong Kong, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 203, with the caption: 'Pasting up paper sheets to dry'.

Credit line
Gift of Mr Alastair Morrison, 1992

Registration number
92/1414-191