Flora of the Cashmere – Gossypium herbaceum + G. arboreum.

This image is taken from Illustrations of the Botany and other Branches of the Natural History of the Himalayan Mountains and of the Flora of Cashmere by J. Forbes Royle, 1839. The book was digitised by Missouri Botanical Gardens and is available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

I picked it up from Paul K’s photostream. Paul K (“peacay”) runs one of my favite blogs, Bibliodyssey, from which the image source information above is taken.

This fellow in a New York mood is Ai Weiwei, self-photographed in 1983. His show at Asia Society just completed, but there is still what looks like an excellent exhibition of Buddhist sculptures from Pakistan at the Asia Society Museum, including this handsome Gandharan bloke, on loan from the Lahore Museum:

This photo of a bride bedecked and bejeweled for her wedding is from riceFR’s photostream.

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This painterly image of a young Bhutanese Buddhist monk comes from Curr_En’s photostream.

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Joge-e, or “two-way pictures” were a form of woodblock print that was popular in the nineteenth century (when Japan’s world was being turned upside down). The prints reveal new images when rotated 180 degrees. Pink Tentacle has more examples.

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The Asian Studies department at Skidmore College has posted posted several photos from Tibet in the early 40s, such as this picture of unidentified stupas. The photos were taken by members of the Tolstoy expedition of 1942-43 — two U.S. Army officers, Lt. Col. Ilya Tolstoy and Capt. Brooke Dolan entered from India to explore possible routes for supplied Chiang Kai-shek with military supplies. That mission didn’t prove fruitful, but the photographic legacy is wonderful.

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Claude Monet was an avid collector of Japanese prints, constructing a collection that eventually totaled 231 prints. He acquired most of his prints through dealers in the Netherlands, favoring the artists Hokusai, Hiroshige, and Utamaro. He preferred landscapes , animals, and women engaged in daily activites. He showed little interest in flowers, scenes from the theater, and erotic art.

Monet was not a great traveler, and he never visited Japan. On one occasion he did travel to Norway, and wrote with enthusiasm of its resemblance to the Japan he knew from prints. Many of his prints were well chosen, such as this image of cranes by the artist Korin Ogata (1658-1716).

Monet’s collection can be viewed at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris. There is more information on his collection here.

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charming collection of popular Ganesha images.

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