Art Reboot

18 the picture, added a series of inscriptions and seals and had it mounted as the first vertical handscroll I have ever encountered, albeit one created with a little help from my friends. One feels a bit like a Roman orator when viewing it, but it still works like any other handscroll. I gave it to the couple as a postnuptial wedding present. Before leaving the handscroll, a cautionary tale. The British and French looted the Old Summer Palace outside Beijing in 1860, and many imperial works of art found their way to both countries, among them a series of large handscrolls depicting imperial journeys around China in the eighteenth century. One of these appeared at auction in Paris some years back with a large rectangular section cut out of it; the scroll had been used to wallpaper a grand dining room in France, and the missing section accommodated a serving hatch from the kitchen. An im- perial masterwork of Chinese art had been reduced to wallpaper by an uncomprehending audience.