Talk:Great Pagoda, Kew Gardens

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A fact from Great Pagoda, Kew Gardens appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 2 June 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the 18th-century Great Pagoda in London is considered the most important surviving example of Chinoiserie: Chinese-inspired design in Europe?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2021/June. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Great Pagoda, Kew Gardens.

Wikipedia

For later

Porcelain Tower of Nanjing

*[1]

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Desertarun (talk) 11:47, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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Comment or view
Article history

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The Great Pagoda in London's Kew Gardens

... that the 18th century Great Pagoda (pictured) in London is considered the most important surviving example of Chinoiserie: Chinese-inspired design in Europe?
- ALT1:... that holes were put into the Great Pagoda in order to test smoke bombs during the Second World War? Source: [2]
- ALT2:... that all but 8 of the 80 dragons made to restore the Great Pagoda (pictured) are made of nylon to reduce their weight? Source: [3]

Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Drought in Turkey
Comment: One hook as suggested by EEng.

Created by KJP1 (talk). Nominated by Chipmunkdavis (talk) at 15:40, 21 May 2021 (UTC).[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

Adequate sourcing: - The quote that begins "the walls of the building" does not quite match the source. If some phrases were left out intentionally, that should be indicated with ellipses.
Neutral:
Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

Cited: - ALT1 says "smoke bombs", but as far as I can tell the source just says bombs. (ALT2 looks fine, and I've rephrased ALT0 slightly to better reflect the article and source.
Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Very interesting article. Just a couple of minor issues. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 12:21, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed quote mentioned. KJP1 probably better placed to address the particular type of bomb. CMD (talk) 12:48, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, take the point. Somewhere else I definitely read it was smoke bombs. And when you think about it, it’s not likely to have been high explosives. I just need to remember where. Many thanks for the helpful edits. KJP1 (talk) 16:51, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

[4] - there we go - I shall add it as a second source.KJP1 (talk) 16:55, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good – thanks! —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 18:22, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pillar restoration: not a color balance issue!

I was a little thrown off when I saw photos of red pillars on the Great Pagoda instead of the white we have in the article photo. After some futile fudging in GIMP, I checked the gallery and it clicked: the pillars and the ground floor roof used to be red (just like the Beijing and Guangzhou stuff), but the restoration turned them white.

I hope this comment saves someone as clueless as I am from wasting 10 minutes. It would also be useful to hunt down how Historic Royal Palaces decided that white is the original color and who turned the pillars red to begin with. -- Artoria 2e5 🌉 15:57, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Artoria2e5 - I hope the time wasn’t entirely wasted, in that you spent 10 minutes thinking about a fascinating building - and am pleased the article sparked the interest. In answer to the specific question, I simply don’t know. But the restoration was lengthy, expensive and scholarly, so I think it very likely that HRP and Kew had evidence for the original colouring. The Victorians certainly associated red with China (see Biddulph Grange) so perhaps they repainted them red in the 19th century. I’ll have a look to see what the sources I have say. KJP1 (talk) 16:26, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]