At the Independence Seaport Museum, America’s 250th becomes a lens on early trade with China.
It’s an exciting time for directors and curators of museums across the United States who are digging deep into their vaults and planning exhibitions in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation this year. The team at the Independence Seaport Museum (ISM) in Philadelphia has been preparing a special exhibition that will open on March 20 to honor America’s entrance onto the world’s stage as a sovereign trading power with China in the years during and after the Revolution. Seeking Profit and Power: Philadelphia, China Trade, and the Making of America will feature more than 150 objects and documents.
Although the ISM collection has several notable objects related to the China Trade, as the market was known in its early years, it was clear as work began to curate the exhibition that there were gaps in the museum’s holdings. Remedying that started in 2022 with the purchase of a collection of documents from the Livezey family of Philadelphia at a small public sale. The Livezeys were prosperous Quaker flour merchants whose personal tastes included Chinese export goods. Among the items was a rare card incorporating samples of various Chinese silks with period notations from the family that provide a rare and fragile window through which we can see the tastes of Philadelphians after the Revolution. Similarly, a rare export sample cup and saucer of 1800 acquired at auction in 2023 and decorated with various painted borders shows what a client could choose from in ordering tea wares.
Identifying the original owners of early Chinese export wares can be challenging as families subsequently dispersed their possessions over the centuries. As a result of a casual conversation with a new donor, Independence Seaport Museum received seven pieces of pre-Revolutionary export porcelain that had descended to the donor from the Shipley and Stokes families of Philadelphia. They are important additions that demonstrate pre-1776 China Trade goods brought into Philadelphia.
ISM is fortunate to have a small acquisitions fund that has grown thanks to generous donors. Perhaps the most interesting of the museum’s recent acquisitions is a late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century export bowl with a painted central motif of a man-of-war flying an American flag that was up for auction with a provenance from an old Philadelphia family. Research determined that pieces from the same service were in the collections of Winterthur and the Shelburne Museum. Following work to reverse an old restoration, the bowl will be featured in Seeking Profit and Power.
Part of the creation of any exhibition is the art of identifying and securing objects for the installation, which requires both skill and knowledge of the materials. What is often not discussed, however, is the role luck plays in securing great objects for a show, which is one of the greatest joys of working in a museum.
