Postcard of Hunting Party at Chanteloup Pagoda

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Sitting on the south bank of the river Loire, construction finished at the Château de Chanteloup in 1778 on an imposing new edifice, a seven-story Chinese-style pagoda. Built by a once-exiled French army officer, the pagoda at Chanteloup remains one of the few remnants of the palace.

Commissioned by the Duke of Choiseul, the pagoda stands 44 meters and was a focal point on the grounds, directly visible from the duke’s grand salon. One inspiration for the tower was the Porcelain Pagoda of Nanjing, which had been seen in illustrated European books of China since the 1660s.

A more direct predecessor was a pagoda design illustrated in William Chambers’ Designs of Chinese Buildings from 1757. Chambers’ sketch also inspired the famous pagoda at Kew Gardens outside London, which was completed in 1762.

Designed by Louis-Denis Le Camus, the pagoda at Chanteloup is a combination of Chinese and Greco-Roman architectural forms. The structures is supported by two round classical stories, including sixteen baseless Doric columns on the ground floor.

As noted by Kristel Smentek, the pagoda was not a mere garden ornament, but a sign of political protest against the court who exiled the duke. For more on Chanteloup’s pagoda see Smentek’s “A Prospect of China in Eighteenth-Century France: The Pagoda at Chanteloup” (2019).

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Bosselman’s Mt. Penn Pagoda Postcard

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Sitting atop the southern end of Mount Penn, a seven-story wooden pagoda has overlooked Reading, Pennsylvania, since 1908. Built as part of a luxury resort, the building and land were donated to the city in 1911, making this Buddhist-inspired building a symbol of the city.

William Abbott Witman decided to construct a “Japanese pagoda” in an attempt to cover the scars of his quarrying operation on Mount Penn. After failing to obtain a liquor license, the plan to build a full resort was abandoned and the pagoda became the property of the residents of Reading.

One story claims the pagoda was modeled on a photograph (others say a postcard) of the Nagoya Castle in Japan; another yet claims it was based on an amusement park attraction in Coney Island.

Once opened to the public, the building interior showcased murals of Asia and articles from Japan, including a large Japanese temple bell Witman purchased and had shipped through the Suez Canal. While many of the artifacts are now lost, the temple bell still remains an attraction.

For a brief history of this site, see Michelle Nicholl Lynch’s “The Pagoda,” The Historical Review of Berks County (1995), viewable here: https://berkshistory.org/article/the-pagoda/.

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T. H. McAllister’s Kamakura Daibutsu Lantern Slide

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By the 1890s it was possible to browse American newspapers and see advertisements for informal lectures on countries around the world. Occupying church halls or town theaters, returning travelers often used “magic lantern” slides to illustrate their gripping travel narratives.

A typical trans-Pacific cruise of the era would port in Yokohama, a short day trip away from the colossal Kamakura Daibutsu. An image projected onto a wall or screen would enliven the presentation and provide visual details impossible to elaborate through words alone.

As the Victorian era progressed, there was increasing demand for visual education and moral entertainments, and the illustrated travelogue reflected such interests. We might find the past splendor of Asia, as seen through it monuments, contrasted with its then-current political strife.

By 1887 T. H. McAllister was selling a set of 61 slides for a stock presentation entitled, “Around the World in 80 Minutes.” For a total of $30.25, the slides and lecture notes could be purchased by an aspiring lecturer so as to be “well prepared to describe the various scenes intelligently.”

Beginning in England and ending in Washington DC, the Kamakura Daibutsu is the only Buddhist location visited during the lecture. For more on the importance of travel lecturers in spreading information about Asia, see Jeanette Roan’s Envisioning Asia (2010).

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Jean Claude White’s Panorama Photograph of Lhasa

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By the early 20th century there was an unofficial race to capture a photograph of Lhasa, the religious center of Tibet. In 1905 National Geographic printed a few of the first photos of the region and a decade later, in 1916, published a large panoramic insert of Lhasa’s Potala Palace.

The shot was taken by Jean Claude White, a civil servant in British India who traveled with the 1903-04 British Youghusband expedition to Tibet as the official mission photographer. National Geographic reproduced many photos White took on the expedition, including this stunning panoramic view.

The Potala dominates everything in Lhasa,” notes White in his accompanying article entitled, “The World’s Strangest Capital.” Illustrated with 19 photogravure prints, all the photos seem to have been taken during the Youghusband expedition, giving readers very early and rare views of Tibet.

The first photo in the article shows the Western Gate to Lhasa, known as the Pargo Kaling. The structure was a large stūpa with a walkway cut through the middle.

White also visited sites outside of Lhasa, including the Lhalung Monastery.

According to White’s estimate, there were 500,000 monks living in 1026 monasteries.

White also visited a Buddhist convent in Sikkim. The striking sheep’s wool hats were dyed red.

This photo was taken at Khamba Dzong, in Sikkim, where Youghusband planned to negotiate his entrance into Lhasa. The failure of talks with Tibetan officials eventually led to the forceful and bloody advance of Youghusband into Tibet.

A rare photo by White of Thubten Choekyi Nyima, the 9th Panchen Lama of Tibet.

The thirteen-story Potala was based upon early Tibetan castles and fortified camps, but soon was seen by many as a symbol of Tibet itself. To read the “The World’s Strangest Capital” (without the panorama insert), see here: https://tinyurl.com/5fd596mx.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Sakaeya’s Shinkōji Vairocana Buddha Postcard

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The Japanese port city of Kobe was a major tourist hub by the turn of the 20th century. One if the city’s main attractions was a giant statue of Vairocana Buddha displayed outside the main temple gate of Shinkōji until the complex was destroyed during WWII.

Documents record the height of the statue at 4.8 meters (16 feet). It sat atop an elevated pedestal in the middle of a lotus pond which was used as a habitat for rescued turtles. Behind the plastered wall we see the tiled roofs of the bell tower and main hall.

Unlike many Japanese postcards of the era, this is not a photomechanical print, but a chemically processed “real photo” postcard likely released in the early 1920s. The publisher, Sakaeya & Co., was based in Kobe and focused on cards depicting the environs of the bustling port city.

Notably, the Japanese caption provides more commentary on the religious relevance of the site than the English. It notes that Shinkōji was a sacred location where the Buddhist priest Ippen (1239–1289), known for his devotion to the Pure Land, passed away.

The temple was noted as being “worth a visit” by the widely circulated third edition of Murray’s Handbook for Travelers in Japan, published in 1891. Fifty years later, the statue was destroyed by allied firebomb attacks on Kobe in March 1945.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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William Hurd’s Treading on the Crucifix Engraving

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In the 17th century, to uncover suspected Christians, Japanese authorities in Nagasaki forced commoners to step on an image of Jesus or Mary. As knowledge of this practice spread to Europe, depictions of “treading on the crucifix,” appeared in illustrated works by the 18th century.

To ferret out “hidden Christians,” local villagers were forced to commit blasphemy by stepping on icons sacred to Christianity; such objects were called fumi-e 踏絵, or “images for stomping.” If anyone refused, authorities turned to torture to procure apostasy, or they were killed.

Stories of this practice circulated in popular European literature, such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and Voltaire’s Candide (1759). For European Christians, such actions were perceived as a vile act of paganism, reflected in this engraving by a buddha with devil horns.

This image of a horned buddha is placed at the crown of the page as an ornamental embellishment. William Hurd’s New Universal History (1780) copied the main engraving from an older work, but added this detail to help further contextualize the depicted activity as demonic.

Unexpectedly, Hurd blames, in part, the proselytizing activities of the Jesuits who still placed importance in Christian icons. Had they taught the “simple truth, without the use of images,” Hurd implies the Japanese may have embraced Christianity, turning away from idolatry altogether.

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: https://www.mdpi.com/2571-9408/8/2/78.

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Poujade de Ladevèze’s Arhat Who Reveals His Heart Postcard

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The first photos of Saigon, present-day Ho Chi Min City, were taken by French naval officers during the 1858 French invasion. The first commercial photography studios in Vietnam opened in Saigon soon afterwards, with some producing intimate views of local Buddhist temple life.

Poujade de Ladevèze, the name we see under the front caption, was an early postcard publisher in Saigon who appears in directories by 1908. Hoping to write home, French colonial soldiers were the primary clientele for postcards; this card was sent to France by an infantry member in 1911.

The caption presents the icon as a “god of fertility,” perhaps due to the curious head set inside the abdomen of the figure. The placement of two young novice monks adds weight to the perception this icon was the object of prayer for hopeful parents.

Traditionally, this figure is recognized as one of eighteen Awakened disciples of the Buddha, known as arhats, whose lore developed in medieval China. Each arhat had his own distinctive features and this figure was known as “The Arhat Who Reveals His Heart.”

This figure is often treated as a visual representation of the Buddha Nature principle, namely, that all living beings have the innate potential to become buddhas.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Universal Studio’s Back Lot Buddha Photograph

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The Golden Age of Hollywood expanded the theatrical tradition of set design to create a more immersive world on screen. Through the 1920s studio art directors built bigger sets and fine Buddhist statuary that was once purchased or borrowed was increasingly made of wood and plaster.

When Carl Laemmle opened Universal City in 1915, it garnered such public acclaim he decided to make studio tours a permanent attraction. Here we see a photograph (and duplicate) of the Universal back lot where a visitor sizes up one of the plaster buddhas on display.

An inscription dates the photo to 1929. At this time Charles Hall was the art director for Universal, famous for his gothic aesthetic seen in the classic films Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, and Frankenstein. Was this buddha statue a creation of Hall for a new Universal film?

believe not. The cracks in the plaster suggest wear and age, not the process of crafting (see also the broken curls of hair below). Moreover, a very similar plaster buddha was created for Universal’s The Breath of the Gods in 1920, before Hall was hired, starring Tsuru Aoki.

Unfortunately, The Breath of the Gods is now lost and production stills remain the best evidence for set design. Popular Science ran a short article on the film, showing the construction of a new plaster buddha, is it the same one? Article viewable here: https://tinyurl.com/3jzhc3rj.

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Guérin-Boutron’s Mysteries of Japan Advertising Card

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By the turn of the 20th century advertising cards were sought-after collectables, often pasted alongside other printed ephemera inside scrap books. The main visual language was the stereotype, and places like Japan were depicted as a mélange of mystery, pagodas, and odd idols.

The mystery figure on the left edge is a Chinese puppeteer; distinctions between China and Japan often dissolved under the umbrella of “the Orient.” Such imagery had circulated in Europe since the late 18th century through southern Chinese export paintings depicting popular Chinese occupations.

Guérin-Boutron was a luxury Parisian chocolatier and early adopter of chromolithographed trade cards, creating this set of worldwide nations and cities in the early 1900s.The printer, Vieillemard Fils & Cie, was a premier lithographer for major French trade card producers of the era.

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.

The circular insert depicts an uncommon two-story pagoda known as the Many Treasures Pagoda (tahōtō 多宝塔) 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.

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P.A. Johnston and Theodor Hoffmann’s Tibetan “Devil Dancers” Postcard

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Tibetan ritual cham dances were often called “Devil Dances” by Western scholars and travelers through the turn of the 20th century. Dressed in the ceremonial regalia of masked dance, performing monks became a popular visual motif for representing Tibetan Buddhism.

Traditionally traced to the semi-legendary 8th century tantric Buddhist Padmasambhava, ritual dances are usually held as part of larger religious festivals. Performers portray a range of figures from protector deities and heroes to comic characters.

The photograph, retouched considerably here, was taken by P.A. Johnston and Theodor Hoffmann who opened a studio in Calcutta in 1882 and Darjeeling in 1890. This postcard, likely published in the 1920s, was printed in the epicenter of Asian postcard production at the time, Japan.

The stag mask recalls a dance symbolizing the repulsion of negative forces and the consecration of surrounding space for spiritual practice. One source claims this photo was taken in Bhutia Busty, a village in the Darjeeling district known for its cham performances at the local monastery.

Another ritual performer, possibly a young boy, wears a skeleton mask with a blood-red suit sewn with white skeleton bones. Skeleton dancers can represent the impermanence of phenomena and sometimes play a semi-comedic role.

The central figure is representative of the Black Hat dance, sometimes seen as a celebration for the death of Langdarma, an enemy of Buddhism. For an introductory overview of Tibetan cham, see Ellen Pearlman, Tibetan Sacred Dance: A Journey into the Religious and Folk Traditions.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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