PBA Galleries

120pp. Original binding of marbled boards and leather spine. First Edition. Bookplate on front pastedown of L.P.Bush, M.D., an amateur Delaware historian, then a young physician at a Philadelphia hospital. Catalogue of the first comprehensive American exhibition of Chinese life and art. 

The exhibition was assembled over decades by Philadelphia merchant Nathan Dunn, who lived in China from 1818 to 1832. On his return to the United States, he displayed his massive collection in a “Chinese Museum” that drew over 50,000 visitors before it was moved to London in 1842. This catalogue lists, with explanatory notes, over 1000 items of all varieties, from paintings to porcelain, displayed in 53 cases, plus 50 life-size clay figures modeled after Dunn’s Chinese acquaintances in Canton. The added information in the catalogue attempted to paint a picture of Chinese social life and culture, giving educated Americans their first informed view of the intriguing empire across the Pacific. The Dunn exhibition predated by nearly ten years the Boston “Chinese Museum” which displayed objects collected by a young engineer who accompanied the first US diplomatic mission to China in 1843. Curiously, the Boston catalogue, published in 1847, was almost identically titled to this 1839 imprint.