place in the social hierarchy both as a commodity object and as information” (Stolarski, p. 4). Cabinet card (164 × 108 mm), mounted gelatine photograph (140 × 103 mm) with glossy finish, card lettered in red in Russian and Chinese. Small scuff to upper right corner of photograph, image substantially unaffected, couple of faint stains to card, verso skinned where sometime mounted. A very good example. ¶ Christopher Stolarski, “The Rise of Photojournalism in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1900– 1931”, PhD Diss., 2013. £600 [154515] 26 CHINESE TEA CULTURE. Photographs of the famous Willow Pattern Tea House, Shanghai. United States: various publishers, [1900–36] SCARCE VIEWS OF A CULTURAL LANDMARK A collection of scarce photographs of Shanghai’s renowned Willow Pattern Tea House in the late Qing and early republican eras. These images capture the bustling atmosphere o photo@peterharrington.co.uk sent you 154867_4_Chapman.eps via WeTransfer f sociability, consumption, and conversation in this quintessential Chinese urban institution, and show how tea houses acted as barometers of socio-cultural change during China’s transition to modernity. The Willow Pattern Tea House (Chinese: Huxinting or Woo Sing Ding), thought to be one of the oldest tea houses in China, is named after its similarity to the design of blue and white willow pattern crockery. Built in the 16th century near the Yu Gardens as a scholar’s retre photo@peterharrington. co.uk sent you 154867_4_Chapman.eps via WeTransfer at, it was restored and converted into a tea house in 1855. Among its most distinctive features is the zigzagging Nine Curve Bridge used to cross the surrounding lake. A draw for many dignitaries, Willow Pattern was visited by Elizabeth II in 1986 and by Bill Clinton in 1998. In addition to the early 1930s panorama, this collection includes four stereograph cards: a) “Where Shanghai’s Wealthy Natives Pass the Time – Chinese Tea House, China”. Underwood & Underwood. Albumen print, photograph taken c .1900 by the traveller James Ricalton (1844–1929). We have traced copies in the Library of Congress, Museum of New Zealand, and UC Riverside. b) “A Pretty Little Tea House Known as the Willow Pattern, Shanghai, China” (two copies). H. C. White
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25 CHINESE IN RUSSIA. Cabinet card showing two Chinese women. Vladivostok: Livay Studio, No. 11 Svetlanskaya Street, [c.1890] A scarce late 19th-century record of styles of clothing and foot-binding followed by well-to-do Chinese women in the Russian border city of Vladivostok. The Livay photographic studio catered specifically to Chinese residents and visitors; we have not been able to trace any other surviving examples of its work. Following China’s transfer of the Haishenwei region to the tsar in 1860, Vladivostok became a thriving centre of economic activity and cultural interchange. This photograph is a pleasing corrective to the many surviving photographs of late-imperial Chinese women, often produced in cities such as Shanghai, which adopt an orientalizing gaze. Photography remained the preserve of the very wealthy in Russia until the 1860s, when technological changes fuelled an explosion in the number of photographic studios in major cities. “In the hands of commercial studio photographers, the medium retained its original social function, namely ‘to solemnize and to immortalize’ the portrayed subject. The studio photograph was an index and a means of communicating one’s status; it indicated the sitter’s
Co. Silver gelatine print, photograph taken in 1901, card issued in 1903 or later. Series number 22, negative 3729. No institutional copies traced. c) “Where a Famous Oriental Love Story was Born”. Keystone View Company. Silver gelatine print, series number 981, negative 23979, issued in Keystone’s 1,200-card “Tour of the World” series (1935/6). We have traced examples at William & Mary and Marist; full sets appear occasionally in commerce. The earliest photograph, “Where Shanghai’s Wealthy Natives Pass the Time”, shows men of a range of ages in the tea house’s refined surroundings, all with prescribed queues and mostly looking out the window, likely toward some form of entertainment or performance typically laid on for patrons at the best tea venues. “A Pretty Little Tea House” shows the exterior as seen looking over the Nine Curve Bridge;
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SUMMER 2022
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