I was in Kingston, New York on Sunday for the Spring Market edition of Field + Supply, and enjoyed the afternoon. As I was leaving town, driving west on Broadway to get to the New York State Thruway, I noticed this house, above, with a “yard sale” sign out front. While it seems to be more of a “front porch sale,” my curiosity told me to pull over and check it out.
There was plenty of art and cultural objects of interest, more so than any sort of housewares or other things that one might expect at a yard sale. It made me wonder if this guy puts out his stuff every weekend, hoping to find buyers on their way in or out of town on the main drag of Broadway? There was a high percentage of Asian objects and art, and the guy who was there – while he understood my English, he needed to use Google translate to speak to me, speaking in Chinese (I think), and then showing me the translation to English on his phone.
One thing that caught my attention in particular was this two piece set of paintings on leaves. They look to be Indian miniature paintings, I had never seen paintings on leaves like this before … there were no markings on the back of the frames to give any indication of the artist’s name or how old they were. Seeing my interest, the man used Google translate to offer me the pair for $45, saying I could “look online and see that this is the best price.”
In some ways, my gut instinct was to buy them, because I had never seen anything like these, although I would have preferred to buy just the one on the left, but he was only selling them as a pair. But then I held off, because I’ve rationalized buying way too much stuff at antique stores and thrift shops lately with the justification that I had “never seen anything like this!” I’ve finally wised-up to the fact that one can Google search any sort of object, either by text description or image search, and find more about it if you try hard enough. There’s no surprises out there, no hidden undiscovered gems … although the 5-headed Shiva in Lambertville might come close. After I left the yard sale and sat back in my car, I did a search for “Indian paintings on leaves” and sure enough, found plenty very similar to what I was seeing here – and plenty that were priced about the same amount, $40-$50, so his “best price” claim was just hype.
I did learn a few things, though – the type of leaf is a “Peepal” leaf, also known as a sacred fig leaf, and comes from the Ficus religiosa tree that is revered in Hinduism and Buddhism. According to Buddhist belief, Buddha gained enlightenment while meditating under this tree. The leaves were also used for writing before the invention of paper. They were dried before being used for painting or writing. But – the unexpected twist is that the leaves are not just plucked and dried, but instead the process to make them more archival is to soak them first in a bowl of water for approximately ten to fifteen days! From what I read, the purpose of this long soaking is that it removes the outer layer of the leaves, sometimes even washed by hand or with a tooth brush very carefully. Only after this initial treatment are the leaves kept out to dry under the sunlight.
Here’s a closer look at the left piece, to get a better view of the intricacy of this Peepal leaf painting. Of course, now that I’m armed with this historical information, I wish I had bought them. Oh well, it seems there’s enough found online that I’ll have other options if I choose to pursue adding something like this to my art collection in the future.
