Also offered for sale are laquered paint-boxes and bundles of paper: I had always thought this was rice-paper, but Zadig Bey revealed to me that rice has nothing to do with it – the pith of a certain reed is taken out and beaten flat; it is then treated with alum, which preserves the colours and keeps them marvellously vivid over many years. Then there are brushes: some have no more than a single hair and some are as thick as my wrist; and they are made from the hairs of a fantastic bestiary of animals, some of them completely unknown to the world.

From the shop you ascend to the next floor by means of a narrow staircase – a ladder really, with banisters running along one side. You step off it to find yourself in the very heart of the workshop. There are several long tables, like those used by carpenters and tailors. The apprentices are seated on benches and each has his own work-space on which all his materials are neatly arranged; nowhere do you see a careless splash of colour or an unmindful smudge of ink. They sit with their heads bent over, their queues coiled around their caps, and they do not in the least mind being observed – for they are so intent upon their work that they are totally unaware of your presence.

And now was revealed one of the most important secrets of their picture-making: stencils! There is a stencil for everything – for the outlines of ships, trees, clouds, scenery, clothing. Zadig Bey says these stencils are sold by the dozen and can be bought in the market: every studio keeps hundreds of them at hand. By varying their placement and position, the painter can achieve all manner of interesting effects.

To watch the progress of a single painting is an astonishing thing: it starts its journey at one end of the table, as a blank sheet of paper, and is quickly prepared with a wash of alum. As it passes down the bench, going from hand to hand, it acquires outlines, colours and more washes of alum and yet more colours, until it arrives at the other end as a complete painting! And all this in a matter of minutes. It is breathtaking – a veritable manufactory of image-making!

Zadig Bey says the methods of these studios hark back to the porcelain kiln, where a single cup or saucer may pass through as many as seventy hands, one tracing outlines, one painting the rim, one applying the blues and another the reds – and so on. He insists that the world owes these studios a great debt because they have made possible what people of modest means could only ever dream of: to possess likenesses of themselves and their dear ones, and to have real paintings on their walls. (I cannot understand why we have no such studios in Bengal: indeed, Puggly dear, I think it quite possible that my fortune may lie in creating something similar there …).