1930s

In addition to glazed ceramics we have, for the first time, actual remnants of wood — not simply imprints in the earth like those found at An-Yang. The first discovery of these woods was an accident, occurring at railroad excavations of the early 1930s in the South China province of Hunan, at the city of Ch’ang-Sha.

Note the presence in the foreground of the fronds of ailanthus, often called “ghetto palm,” now ubiquitous in Baltimore but apparently already common in the 1930s.

Their business model of the 1920s and 1930s, which had catapulted the business to undreamt-of heights, had then turned into something of a ball and chain.