Collection Spotlight: Asian Export Art

Americans, and especially merchants from Boston and Salem, entered the China Trade in the late eighteenth century and by 1804, they were dominating the trade. Trade was in tea, silk, porcelain and other household goods, and illegally, opium. The Chinese government confined foreigners to the port district of Guangzhou (called Canton), where China trade merchants operated. Art for the export market became an important feature of the trade and copious amounts of Chinese porcelain moved into Boston. 

The Russell family, including Nathaniel Pope Russell, who was Catherine Hammond Gibson’s brother-in-law, were major importers of Chinese porcelain. The Gibsons inherited some of the Russell collection, including a dinner service, a pair of large palace vases, garden seats, and flowerpots. These were imported by Russell in the 1830s; the dinner service has the “R” monogram, indicating it was designed especially for him. 

Porcelain lunch plate, teacup and saucer, and creamer, c.1840
Gibson House Museum 

You can see the influence of East Asian decorative elements elsewhere in the house, including in Rosamond’s bedroom. Her thirteen-piece bedroom set, made by American designer John Vaughn, is fashioned to look like bamboo; it was extremely trendy in its time. 

Bed, John Vaughn, 1871
Gibson House Museum

From Guangzhou to Boston: The Story of the Porcelain Vase

Pair of floor vases, Ch’ien Lung period (1736-1786), Canton. Gibson House Museum.

“As we pass up the Grand Staircase…we come to the Music Room, on our left with double doors of black walnut, …with the original portieres of pink and gold…; pink and blue floral pattern on a pale ground of pale yellow cream, in harmony with the Chinese porcelains.”

So begins Charles Gibson Jr.’s tour of the music room, written in 1939 soon after he started to think about his childhood home as a museum to Victorian culture and society in Boston.

Those Chinese porcelains that get top billing in his tour are a collection of eight matching pieces: two garden seats, two flowerpots, two jardinières (flower stands), and two floor vases. The pieces are decorated with floral designs and Chinese figures; the color palette, known as “famille rose,” is dominated by shades of pink and red. Over two feet tall, the floor vases, or palace vases, flank the fireplace. They are a focal point in a room filled with treasures.