Rare books folks attending #RBMS2026: mark your calendar for our panel on new approaches to Chinese missionary collections + Zhang Jie (@zjarthistory.bsky.social) + Mårten Söderblom Saarela (@bcricciinstitute.bsky.social) + Alexander Akin (2024-26 President, @abaararebooks.bsky.social)

RBS invites you to the 2026 Kress Foundation Art of the Book in Europe Lecture: “Aquatint Travel Books and the Haptic Picturesque,” by Douglas Fordham, at 5:30 p.m. ET on 1 June in UVA’s Shannon Library, Room 330, or via Zoom. Details: rarebookschool.org/events/2026/06/douglas-fordham-kress-lecture

Illustrations from the Scheut missionaries' book Voyages de Bruxelles en Mongolie (1873). The illustrations show a Beijing street scene, Hong Kong, and a Mongol camp.

Recent acquisition: Martino Martini's De Bello Tartarico historia from 1654, a history of the Manchu conquest of China in 1644

Examples of illustrations from the French press during the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901). The rebellion involved conflicts with Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries and provided an excuse for imperialist intervention in the form the Eight Nation Army.

Due to the US extension of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1892, the Chinese Qing Empire withdrew from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. This created the opportunity for local Chinese Chicagoans to build a Chinese Theatre and Joss House as an amusement concession. 🧵 🗃️ 📜 #Chicago

Obscured by flower offerings, the Buddhist icon sits at just above eye level in the shrine. For more on this topic, see Chan's "Portable Faith: Toward a Non-Site-Specific History of Buddhist Art in Japan,” viewable here: tinyurl.com/3tde394d #Buddhasinthewest

In 1911, to promote efforts of American missionaries abroad, an arm of the missions board sponsored a massive traveling exhibit of the world's religions. The "Japan Scene" was dominated by a replica of a Buddhist temple, traveling from Boston to Cincinnati and elsewhere. 🧵 🗃️ 📜 #Cincinnati

Victorian trade cards often employed the same visual language found in contemporary political cartoons. In the late 1870s and 1880s, as anti-Chinese xenophobia intensified in the US, depictions of the “heathen Chinee” prostrating before Buddhist idols became more widespread. 🧵 🗃️ 📜

@ricciinstitutelib.bsky.social A few more photos from our scroll, Shizi chongxun 十字寵勳. We have since found out that a similar scroll was printed at the T'ou-sè-wè 土家灣 orphanage in Shanghai in 1929. This reproduction has not allowed us to determine with certainty that they are identical.

In the midst of a growing Pacific War, the young Republic of China withdrew from the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1933. Private individual ensured China's symbolic presence, however, with local Chinatown businessmen erecting two giant pagodas for the “Streets of Shanghai” concession. 🧵 🗃️ 📜 #Chicago

APRIL panel at #AARSBL2025: Encountering Buddha in Museums: Modern Expressions of an Ancient Tradition, Mon Nov 24, 2025, 1–3pm, Marriott Copley Place (5th floor, Maine Room), Boston. papers.aarweb.org/papers-sessi...

The circular insert depicts an uncommon two-story pagoda known as the Many Treasures Pagoda (tahōtō) described in the Lotus Sutra. This illustration shows the one built at Hachiman Shrine which was destroyed in 1870, several decades before this card was issued. #buddhasinthewest #多宝塔

The figure in the lower right corner is a crude rendering of a seated buddha. Pronounced ethnic facial features and flowing silk garments were sometimes used to signify "authentic" Asian religions iconography. 4/5

This use of fumi-e continued until 1858 when it was formally abandoned. To read a scientific analysis of historical paper-made fumi-e, see Montanari et al., "Kami Fumi-e: Japanese Paper Images to Be Trampled on—A Mystery Resolved" (2025), here: www.mdpi.com/2571-9408/8/... #buddhasinthewest

@ricciinstitutelib.bsky.social This scroll contains a Qing-period, hand-colored woodblock print titled "Shizi chongxun" 十字寵勳. It offers a fascinating glimpse into cultural exchanges in late 19th-century China and shows Christ on the cross revered by a unified audience of various ethnicities.

Following the success of colonial pavilions at World’s Fairs, France initiated its own independent Colonial Expositions in the 1890s. In Marseilles in 1906, famous architectural sites from French Indochina were reconstructed, including a towering Buddhist pagoda representing Annam.🧵 🗃️ 📜 #Vietnam

Writing in 1790, William Hurd noted the icons of Ceylon were "fantastic and monstrous," while one, "formed like a giant," was called "Buddu." The accompanying engraving of the Buddha shows a curious bearded figure with a tall crown and sword held aloft in his right hand.🧵 🗃️ 📜 #SriLanka

A few days ago, we shared images of our scroll titled Tiantang yaoli 天堂要理. We've since done more research and revised the date to 1937. Our scroll is related to a painting currently held in Belgium and reproduced by Jeroom Heyndrickx in his study of it. Full citation in the alt-text.

A polychrome paper scroll titled Tiantang yaoli 天堂要理 (Essential principles of Heaven). It presents a Catholic narrative of human history, with a "good path" (shandao 善道) leading to Heaven (via Purgatory) and an "evil path" (edao 惡道) leading to Hell. The scroll probably dates from 1929.

Details from two illustrations in Shengjiao xiangshuo 聖教像說 [Images and explanations of the holy teaching] (web.bc.edu/ricci/indexT...), a Catholic publication with Qing-period origins. Clothing in the book appears to reflect Republican fashion. We thus conjecture that it was published after 1911.

The Ling Long Chinese Museum in Chicago opened prior to the 1934 World's Fair hoping to draw visitors and help erase the popular view that US Chinatowns were "immoral and dangerous." The museum housed a large altar in the rear of the main arcade to enshrine an icon of Guanyin. 🧵 🗃️ 📜 #Chicago

If you are interested in reading and writing about any of these titles, please send an email to [email protected]. We would love to hear from you.

If you are interested in the history of book, check out this phenomenal exhibit curated by the wonderful Martin Heijdra at Princeton. It is a model exhibit in so many ways, covering different parts of the world, so many languages, and, images are in IIIF dpul.princeton.edu/global-book-...

One of the Institute's jijin 祭巾, headgear worn by Catholic priests in late imperial China. The jijin was first described by Giuilo Aleni 艾儒畧 (1582-1649) in his Misa jiyi 彌撒祭義 (Meaning of the rite of the mass, preface dated 1629). The pictured jijin is small and probably belonged to an altar boy.

We recently bought a late 19th-c. Catholic work published in Shanghai. Cataloguing it, we found a note in pencil with the date 1941. We also found two tram tickets, one with penciled notes in the same hand. We will post about the book itself on a different occasion. For now, please enjoy these.

A number of paintings depicting Jesuit missionaries to Ming and Qing China, as well as Xu Guangqi 徐光啟, were returned to the Institute from the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore, where they had been on loan. The paintings were made at the T'ou-sè-wè 土山灣 orphanage in Shanghai before 1915.

Two illustrations from an undated Japanese manuscript copy of Adam Schall von Bell's 湯若望 (1591-1666) Yuanjing shuo 遠鏡說 [Explanation of the telescope, 1626]. The wormed manuscript has been expertly mended.

Details from a map of Edo (present-day Tokyo) that we have yet to catalog. The library will be closed on Monday, May 26. We wish everyone in the US a nice Memorial Day weekend.

Using photogrammetry, the Boston College Digital Scholarship team (ds.bc.edu) is helping us create 3D models of some of our Japanese printing woodblocks. We have great plans for these scans. Stay tuned.

This was an unexpected find, by chance, but turns out to be a treat!

Jie Zhang (Arizona State University) is helping us identify the source of images in a recently acquired early 20th-century Chinese book on the passion of the Christ.

Jie Zhang (Arizona State University) is visiting the library to do research on interreligious exchanges in printed illustrations between the 17th and 19th century. For more information on Ms. Zhang and her work, see search.asu.edu/profile/4784....