Abstract

When American Nathan Dunn, who had been a trader in Canton, China, for 13 years, returned to his home in Philadelphia in 1831, he brought with him a large and remarkable collection of Chinese artistic and cultural objects. In 1838, he opened the “Chinese Museum” in Philadelphia, with an accompanying 120-page catalogue, romantically titled, Ten Thousand Chinese Things. 100,000 visitors saw it in Philadelphia and an equal number in London, where the Collection was displayed in a pagoda-like exhibition hall at Hyde Park Corner in 1842. 70,000 to 80,000 catalogues were sold in the U.S. and England. Although Dunn died in 1844, his partners brought the Collection back to London in 1851, to coincide with the Great International Exhibition. This time it was all but ignored and much of the collection was auctioned at Christie’s in December of that year. While this brought an ignoble end to one of the most important educational exchanges of the 19th century, the auction opened a new chapter in the story of Asian influences in British arts. Fully a third of the objects were bought by one London dealer, formerly a tea importer, and through his shop the remnants of the Chinese Collection were disseminated to young British artists and designers ready to transfer global discoveries into modern design.