The World in Miniature

In a chapter of his book Aberrations, Jurgis Baltrušaitis juxtaposes in an original way the three styles of French, English, and Chinese gardens. He also makes mention of “artificial rocks and mountains pierced from all sides” which attracted the curiosity of garden lovers in the 18th century. The image of the “rocks made by art in the Pekkinsa village,” published in 1735 in La Galerie du Monde, shows a strange assemblage of “jagged, twisted forms with numerous excrescences.” 1 A few years later, the Jesuit Father Attiret published the description of the Emperor of China’s Yve-Ming-Yven gardens. What is surprising about these miniature mountains, which can be up to sixty feet high, is that the rocky Chinese “earthly paradise” appeared as a miniature universe. “Everything that is big in the Emperor’s capital is small there.” 2 Baltrušaitis compared these “fantasy landscapes” with “artificial mountains, carved in parallel layers, jagged rocks, known to the Sienese since the 14th century, but also to be found in Léonard, Bouts, Herri met de Blès and Patinir.” 3

The existence of this “small world” (Rolf Stein) is, however, originally a distinctly Chinese phenomenon, even if it exceeded with time the confines of China and appeared both in Japan (from the 7th and 8th centuries), as well as in Vietnam. Rolf Stein quotes an exemplary episode:

During the reign of Dai-hanh Hoang-de of the Earlier Lê Dynasty, in the 6th year, in autumn, at the 7th moon, an artificial mountain was erected, and people rejoiced in contemplating it by boat. That month, during the full moon, was the anniversary of the emperor’s birth. A boat was built in the middle of the river and an artificial bamboo mound was installed. It was called “Mountain of the South.”4

The art of miniaturization that led to the creation of various artifacts has been documented in China since the Tang Dynasty. The precursor of miniature gardens of various sizes is a specific object, the boshanlu or po-chan-lou, the perfume burner invented during the Han period at the turn of our era.5

The etymology of the term boshanlu, literally translating to “perfume burner of the Bo mountain,” remains unknown. There is no mountain of this name in China. The object in question normally contains a lower part with a small column, covered by a conical upper part. This one is composed of a series of triangular vertices. The whole is richly decorated with animals, birds, trees