The season is commencing for Chinese calendars and those foreigners with friends in the bongs most prone to the presentation of these reminders of the flight of time are from now on likely to be constantly besought by Chinese to obtain calendars for them.. The love of these things amongst the Chinese is truly remarkable; they will even pay money for them. knowing that originally they had been given away, and will treasure them for years. Originally—these calendars were chiefly noted for their sheet inartistic merit, ill-chosen subjects being badly drawa and poorly lithographed, but nevertheless they were liked. Nowadays the improvements which have been made in the methods of design and reproduction have made some of the pictures worthy of keeping by even the most fastidious foreigner, and this remark applies more particularly to the work of recent years turned out by Mr. J. Norbury, who has forwarded us delightful lithograph of an old Ming picture. The picture itself is of a sufficiently commonplace subject, the meeting of a Chinese lover and his lass, but the manner in which the Ming artist worked it out, the drawing and the colour scheme, made the picture well worth Mr. Norbury's while to reproduce, and he has done it in a manner which catches the spirit of the picture, securing not only the colours that the artist used, but that general tone which only age can procure. It is truly a delightful piece of colour printing.
Mr. Norbury was good enough to give aw representative of this paper some interesting facts about calendars in China. The huge number which must be distributed each year is evidenced by the fact that his own deliveries this season have amounted to over 2,000 cases, representing the large total of 2,000,000 calendars. The ability to -do this work so well and in such large quantities is due to the fact that Mr. Norbury occupies the favourable position of being able to place his contracts all over the world, and while he naturally favours British printers, he fully recognizes that when, for certain styles of work, he can obtain better work by employing American, Japanese, Philippine and Chine: printers, it is his duty, in the terests of his clientele, to employ them. He is, however, hoping eventually to be in a position to establish his own printing works in Shanghai with artisans drawn from the various sources of supply upon which he is at present drawing. Although he occupies this independent position, Mr. Norbury still represents his old finn of Norbury, Natzio & Ca., Ld., of London and Manchester, and is assisted doing so by Mr. G. H. Murphy, while his own particular work is being carried on with the assistance of Mr. H. E. Jones and a-staff of about 10 Chinese clerks and artists.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.