i've been trying to revive that term as an aesthetic term for a mixture of opposites (e.g. curviangular, abstract/figurative, ktp)--which we don't already have a word for--, but i spell it "sharawadji".

m.

That's certainly a better way to spell it, since it clearly indicates the pronunciation; I wish you well with your revival effort!

It seems to me it sounds more like a Japanese than a Chinese aesthetic desideratum.

Ooo, I saw a Disney character sheet once that demonstrated that when you draw a character, you should make the pose asymmetric (turn the head a bit, have the arms and legs in slightly different positions, maybe make a gesture with one arm, etc.) It pointed out that a perfectly symmetric pose looks unnatural and lifeless.

So animators use sharawaggi too, even if they don't know it by that name!

see Stephen Gwynn, "The Life of Horace Walpole". He quotes from a Walpole Letter to Mann about the style of Strawberry Hill, saying that Grecian is not an appropriate design for a private home;
"The variety is little, and admits no charming
irregularities. I am almost as fond of the
Sharawaggi, or Chinese want of symmetry, in
buildings, as in grounds or gardens."
This is Walpole's defense for his choice of the Gothic.

Of course, the quote is no help at all in a search for "origins" but I think it a nice example of "Sharwaggi's" use in the 18th century.

A note on "sharawaggi" in The Architectural Review (UK), 1949.

AR editor Hugh de Cronin Hastings used the term in the context of his manifesto or proposal for a new way of thinking about architecture and the built environment, in contrast to the predominant organic/romantic and functionalist approaches. His "Townscape" philosophy (or what might be called "Cityscape" philosophy in American English because of the British predilection to use 'town' when Americans would use 'city') was a historic but underestimated (perhaps because of that town/city confusion) contribution to thinking about cities. Hastings borrowed the term from English garden and landscape theory, citing Uvedale Price's Essay on the Picturesque (1794). In spite of the merits of the idea, its association with picturesqueness, a much debated aesthetic concept, closed many minds to not just his urban theory but ostensibly to the term 'shagwaggi' itself.

P.S. An edited version of Hasting's [aka Ivor de Wolfe's] essay can be found in Joan Ockman's anthology, Architecture Culture 1943-68, Rizzoli (1993).

Peter Laurence
Ph.D. Program in Architecture
University of Pennsylvania