7. Ibid., p. 19.
8. From an account by William Henry Seward, who went on to become US Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. William H. Seward’s Travels Around the World (New York, 1873), p. 135.
9. Bushell, Chinese Art, Introduction, p. 1.
10. Ibid., p. 22.
11. Shirley Gordon, ‘Demands for the Education of Girls, 1790– 1865’ (MA, University of London, 1950), pp. 188–9.
12. H. E. Davies, The Life and Works of John Charles Robinson (Ph.D., University of Oxford, 1992), p. 46.
13. S. W. Bushell, letter to Philip Cunliffe-Owen, 20 August 1880, Bushell archives.
Chapter 19
1. For an account of Townsend’s career, see G. Townsend, Memoir of the Rev. Henry Townsend (Exeter: James Townsend, 1887). Details of the early history of Exeter Museum are from G. T. Donisthorpe, An Account of the Origin and Progress of the Devon and Exeter Albert Memorial Museum (Exeter: Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 1868), p. 24.
2. Quoted in George Robertson, Traveller’s Tales: narratives of home and displacement (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 168.
3. See Kate Hill, Culture and Class in English Public Museums 1850– 1914 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 75.
4. Many acquisitions were noted with pride in local papers. See L. Jessop and N. T. Sinclair, Sunderland Museum: The People’s Palace in the Park (Sunderland: Tyne and Wear Museums, 1996), p. 40; The Exeter Flying Post, 6 April 1870. Details of other objects are taken from unpublished accession notes in local museums.
5. A Guide to the Exhibition Galleries of the British Museum (London, 1899), pp. 98–101.
6. Illustrated London News, 8 May 1886.
7. The Orientalist (1869), quoted in J. Jones, ‘Fugitive Pieces’, Guardian, 25 September 2003.
8. Handbook for Travellers: Baedeker (Leipzig: Baedeker 1885), pp. 278–80.
9. Bushell, Chinese Art, vol. 2, p. 34.
10. Sir Rutherford Alcock, The Capital of the Tycoon: A Narrative of Three Years’ Residence in Japan (London: Longman Green, 1863), vol. I, p. xix. Alcock (1809–95) was, like Bushell, a physician by training. He had previously worked in China, having been appointed Consul at Foochow in 1844. During his ministry in Japan, he was reputedly the first foreigner to climb Mount Fuji in 1860. From 1865 to 1871, he returned to China, where he was British Minister in Peking, working of course with Bushell.
11. Leigh Hunt, ‘The Subject of Breakfast Continued.–Tea-drinking’, London Journal (9 July 1834), p. 113.
12. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 51 (October 1875), p. 658.
13. Catalogue of Chinese Objects (London, 1872), p. 57. See also the discussion of Eastern art in ‘The Empire of Things: Engagement with the Orient’, A Grand Design: The Art of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: V&A Publications, 1997).
14. A. W. Franks, letter to General Alexander Cunningham, 21 February 1881; quoted in Caygill and Cherry (eds), A. W. Franks, p. 259.
15. A. W. Franks, letter to Colonel Sir C. Euan Smith, 26 May 1891.
16. S. W. Bushell, letter to Philip Cunliffe-Owen, 9 February 1882, Bushell archives.
17. S. W. Bushell, letters to Philip Cunliffe-Owen, 23 February 1882, 13 November 1882, Bushell archives.
18. S. W. Bushell, Chinese Art, vol. 1, Preface.
19. Fraser, A Diplomat’s Wife in Many Lands, p. 111.
Chapter 20
1. S. W. Bushell, Chinese Art, vol. 1, p. 94. There were all kinds of early-nineteenth-century explanations for ‘magic’ mirrors. Some investigators claimed a copy of the mirror’s back design was drawn on the face and then concealed by polishing; others that the phenomenon was caused by variations in the mirror’s curvature. More recent research suggests that there may have been several methods of producing the mirrors, and that variations in the bronze caused by punching, stamping and polishing may all have produced an effect.
2. Bushell, Chinese Art, vol. 1, p. 115.
3. Ibid.
4. Bushell, Chinese Art, vol. 2, p. 17.
5. Lacquering is an ancient technique for laying down extremely thin layers of a natural varnish made from the sap of the lacquer tree.
6. Bushell, Chinese Art, vol. 1, pp. 39, 47, 49.
7. Bushell, Chinese Art, vol. 1, pp. 50–51.
8. Figures given by Chen Mingjie, Director of the Imperial Summer Palace, Bejing, in the state-run China Daily newspaper, 19 January 2010.
9. By 1874, Salting’s collection had completely outgrown the space in his London home and he lent large numbers of pieces to South Kensington. When he died in 1909, he left a huge bequest to the museum which was displayed in separate Salting galleries.
10. Obituary, New York Times (23 November 1894), p. 9.
11. Born in Worcester, James Callowhill studied at the Worcester School of Art, before working at the Worcester Royal Porcelain Works from 1853. In New York, during the 1880s, he worked for the Faience Manufacturing Company at Greenport, Brooklyn.
12. Obituary, New York Times (23 November 1894), p. 9.
13. S. W. Bushell, letter to H. R. Bishop, 23 April 1889. On his death, Bishop left his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the letters with Bushell are held there as part of the Jade Correspondence.
14. H. R. Bishop, letter to S. W. Bushell, 27 February 1891.
15. Preface, The Bishop Collection: Investigations and Studies in Jade (New York: privately printed, 1906).
16. S. W. Bushell, letter to H. R. Bishop, 24 July 1892.
17. W. G. Gulland, an art historian, observed in 1898 that the Chinese interest in porcelain stemmed largely from ‘the object of making large profits’ from the fashionable market. See Nick Pearce, Photographs of Peking, China 1861–1908 (New York: Edwin Mellen, 2005), p. 61.
18. See Pearce, Photographs of Peking, pp. 60–61.
19. The I.G. in Peking: Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs, 1868–1907 (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), vol. 2, p. 877, letter 827.
20. Note in the file, November 1898, Bushell archives.
21. Museum minute, 16 January 1899, Bushell archives.
22. Ibid.
23. S. W. Bushell, letter to Purdon Clarke, 25 November 1898.
24. Minute note, 18 February 1899, Bushell archives.
25. Minute note, 8 April 1909, Bushell archives.
Epilogue
1. See Burton, Vision and Accident, p. 122.
2. Some of Charlotte’s pieces remain on display, however, at the heart of the V&A’s Ceramics Galleries, and modern technology has even made it possible to glimpse a shadow of the past by virtually re-creating the original collection. Although the pieces on exhibition are still integrated with objects from all kinds of other sources, the Schreiber name is resolutely attached to everything from the original bequest, both on display and in store, and from online records it is possible to bring them together again. Those who want to see exactly what it was that Charlotte sought out so energetically can use searches and keywords to dip back into the past and assemble details and images of her bequest. Although it is unlikely that we will ever again be able to view all the objects together in a real space, breathing their collective connection to history, this virtual exercise can at least give a glimpse of the original magnificence of the Schreiber collection.
3. The fully restored sarcophagus is on display in the World Museum, Liverpool, alongside other of Mayer’s pieces, identifiable from the letter M prefixing the acquisition number.
4. D. B. Elliott, Charles Fairfax Murray: The Unknown Pre-Raphaelite (London: Book Guild, 2000), p. 89.
5. See Ann Sumner, ‘Sir John Charles Robinson: Victorian Collector and Connoisseur’, Apollo (October 1989), pp. 226–30.
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