by Juliet Chase

Created on: September 09, 2009

Whether you are a fan of art, history, or a good story the Peabody Essex Museum has something to offer. It is both a local museum, focusing on the history and objects of Salem, and an internationally famous institution. It features both standard museum displays with cases and labels and historic house museums for those that would prefer to learn in context.

It should come at no surprise to those familiar with the location of Salem, Massachusetts on the coast that it was a town that was heavily tied to the sea as an industry. It was a place where 18th and 19th-century residents were so active in shipping and importing there is a unique window open into the cosmopolitan nature of early American material culture and decorative arts. The risk in ocean voyages was huge but so was the profits to be made and so much of Salem was wealthy and invested in items that have since made their way into the museum's collections. Much of that early shipping trade was to China and so the Chinese products made especially for the foreign, western market make up one of the most key collections in the museum and the one it is most famous for.

For whatever reason, very few traditional Chinese items were imported during that era - items that a modern visitor to an Asian art museum might see. These are instead items that were quickly and relatively inexpensively made expressly for the export market, featuring styles and colors that had proven to be popular. Even if early Asian porcelain, silver, silks and furniture don't seem that fascinating, the examples of what happens when skilled craftsmen copy from drawings without understanding the object they are trying to create is fascinating and a lesson to all of us in how we observe things that we are not familiar with and how we attempt to find a parallel within our own culture and understanding.

Until the mid 19th-century the Chinese were the only culture creating porcelain or silk fabrics willing to trade with Europe and the Americas and thus had a monopoly on world trade for these incredibly valuable items, things that we still use today and often take for granted. With a returns not being an option, when mistakes were made in monogramming or design, the recipients lived with it, happily or not, and many of those examples are on display.

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