Beyond the Pagodas: Other Tushanwan Models and their Purposes

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In 1915, a set of 84 hand-carved model pagodas from the Tushanwan workshop in Shanghai travelled thousands of miles to San Francisco for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. This set depicted pagodas across China and was intended to educate the public, as well as to facilitate artistic and cultural exchange. But the Tushanwan workshop also produced scale models of other buildings for different purposes. For example, some were used to give clients a sense of buildings they commissioned, such as a 1903 model of the Chinese Pavilion in Brussels, built for Leopold II.

This talk puts the set of pagodas into context by examining four other types of models made at the workshop under the direction of the Jesuit priest Alois Beck. Particular attention will be paid to two models related to the sacred hill of Sheshan 佘山 near Shanghai. The first depicts a large Marian pilgrimage church, which was designed by Beck in 1918 but never built. The second is a model of a Buddhist pagoda on the eastern side of the hill, Xiudaozhe Ta 秀道者塔 – the only Tushanwan model sent to San Francisco that shows a ruined building.