Field Museum receives grant to preserve, conserve Chinese textiles

Targets the world’s largest, most exclusive collection of Chinese folk embroidery

May, 2003

The new system will feature different-sized storage areas to accommodate a variety of items. For instance, cabinets with large shallow drawers will house small, flat textiles while large, heavy robes that need full support will lie flat in trays about eight feet square. Each storage system is designed to provide support so textiles are not creased or torn, protection from light and dust, and a safe and convenient means of viewing and moving the textiles.

“All materials deteriorate over time; we cannot deny basic laws of physics and chemistry. However, we can do our best to significantly slow down the rate of deterioration so that collections are available for many generations to come,? said Ruth Norton, The Field Museum’s Chief Conservator.

The most significant parts of The Field Museum’s collection of textiles from China are the 1,200 embroidered folk textiles collected by anthropologist Carl Schuster and long-term Bejing resident Caroline Bieber in the 1930s, and the 1,000 historical costumes and other textile items collected by former Field Museum curator Berthold Laufer in the early 20th century.

The Schuster collection is unique and is by far the largest and most exclusive collection of Chinese folk embroidery in the world, including China. The well-known Austrian anthropologist Carl Schuster assembled it in western China during four long journeys between 1932 and 1938. Traveling by cart, boat and foot, he not only purchased a large number of splendidly decorated textiles but recorded exactly where each one had been made and used, sometimes even recording the names of the individual women who produced the textiles. Because of this extraordinary level of documentation, the collection has unusual potential for the study of traditional Chinese textile decoration techniques and symbolism.

Supplementing the Schuster collection are the approximately 200 pieces collected by Caroline Bieber in Beijing in the late 1930s. With a Chinese friend, Bieber established a cooperative textile workshop for needy women and in connection with this began to assemble traditional embroidered cloths as models for use in the workshop. Bieber knew Schuster as well as American and British missionaries working in Sichuan. Schuster and Bieber’s collection have attracted many scholars and American needle workers over the past few decades. Unlike many Chinese and other Asian textiles, which were made by methods and with materials that are not available in the modern United States, the designs and techniques devised by Chinese folk embroiderers are not only attractive but also accessible to modern American textile artists.

Of equal importance are The Field Museum’s holdings of 1,000 silk textiles collected by one of its curators, the brilliant sinologist Berthold Laufer, in 1908-1910 and again in 1923. The most exceptional parts of the collection are approximately 40 full theatrical costumes for Beijing-style opera and Buddhist religious drama, about 250 18th ?19th century embroidered pouches, 100 woven sutra covers dating as far back as the 15th and 16th centuries, and numerous robes and other costume items made for use at the Imperial court, many by members of the Imperial family, in the 19th century.

Modern needle workers are particularly interested in the wide variety of motifs and stitch decoration techniques of the pouches, and the sutra covers (cloth wrappings for sacred Buddhist texts) represent historical weaving methods and design concepts that did not survive into the 18th ? 20th centuries. Of special importance to Chinese-Americans whose families came from southern regions are the Museum’s strong holdings of middle-and-upper-class clothing from Guangdong or Canton.

The Field Museum’s Chinese textile collections are unique because rather than just focusing on Imperial art, they include folk and other types of art that represent a broad range of social classes. Examining these works can give scholars a more complete sense of what constitutes Chinese culture and Chinese art and it helps us to comprehend contemporary China, Tibet and Taiwan in a more profound way.

The grant was prepared by the following Field Museum staff: Steve Nash, Anthropology Collections Manager; Anne Underhill, Assistant Boone Curator, Asian Archaeology; Ruth Norton, Chief Conservator; Ben Bronson, Curator of Asian Archaeology and Anthropology; Yuhang Li and Brandon Olsen, Boone Interns; and Deborah Bekken, Academic Affairs Sponsored Program Administrator.