Papers From China
Once freed from the restrictions of the Acts of Trade and Navigation, Americans began to import goods directly from other countries, including China. In 1784, the ship, Empress of China, sailed from New York Harbor bound for Canton, China. It returned laden with precious commodities including a set of wallpaper ordered by Robert Morris (1734-1806), a Philadelphia banker who held half interest in the Vessell. An account of the receipts from the voyage records Morris’ payment of "one hundred dollars for paper hangings," an extraordinary sum at this time.
Chinese papers from the eighteenth century were hand-painted in gouache or tempera on mulberry-fiber paper which was then reinforced with bamboo paper. The papers were typically sold in sets of twenty-five to forty panels, each approximately twelve feet long by three to four feet wide and decorated so that it could be trimmed at the top without affecting the layout of the design. Papers from this period can be divided into three distinct stylistic types; the earliest are figural scenes that depict life and trades in China, the second is known as "bird and flower" and is a variation on the Eastern tree-of-life motif, and the third and latest style is known as "figure and trees." The latter two types are characterized by a high degree of botanical accuracy and though many of the species of flowers depicted are now easily identifiable. They were unfamiliar to Westerners at the time. SPNEA’s collection contains examples of each stylistic type and all of them are believed to have been ordered directly from China.
For unknown reasons, Morris never installed the set of Chinese papers he purchased. The rolls, stored in their original crate, were discovered in the attic of the Elbridge Gerry House, Marblehead, Massachusetts in the early twentieth century and purchased by Henry Davis Sleeper (1878-1934) for the decoration of his summer residence, Beauport in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The original set of papers depicted scenes of three Chinese industries - rice, tea and porcelain. By 1924, Sleeper sold the tea panels to E. Bruce Merriman of Providence, Rhode Island, and installed the remaining wallpaper in the China Trade Room of his house, where it remains today.
The panels on the south wall of the room depict, in a continuous narrative format, the cultivation of rice. Workers are shown in all stages of production from planting the young shoots in flooded paddies to the harvesting and threshing the rice grains. The pristine condition of the paper preserves the meticulous details and bright colors of this early Chinese wallpaper.
