Chinese
Folklore Students Use Helen B. Chapin Collection
By Carol W. Campbell
One might suppose
that reference tools for East Asian studies students would be dictionaries,
calligraphy manuals, and history books, but with the new emphasis on material
and visual culture, there has been a growing preference for the faculty to introduce
study from original objects. Would Bryn Mawr College be able to provide the
resources?
It was fortuitous two years ago when the East Asian faculty came to the Collections facility asking for examples of calligraphy, that the Collections staff was able to provide several trunks of Chinese, Japanese and Korean scrolls. The scrolls, part of the Helen B. Chapin Collection, had never been studied in detail. Eighteen students during the spring semesters of 2000 and 2001 prepared essays on the translation and motifs of their individually chosen scrolls. The students’ work culminated in spring exhibitions in the Canaday foyer.
The Helen B. Chapin Collection of Asian books, scrolls and objects, given to
the College in 1950, represents the collecting interests of Helen Burwell Chapin
(Class of 1914, AB 1915) during the various times she worked and studied in
China, Japan, and Korea from 1924 to 1948. From 1924 to 1926, she worked in
the American Consulate of Shanghai and from 1929 to 1932 she held a Traveling
Fellowship from Swarthmore College. Her initial experience abroad, and her study
of the fine Asian collections at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, led her to
become a scholar of Asian art and language, with a Ph.D. from the University
of California in 1940. From 1946 to 1948 she was a consultant to the U.S. Government
on the Art and Monuments of Asia. At the time of her gift, Dr. Alexander Soper,
an Asian scholar and Professor of History of Art, wrote an informative article
in the Alumnae Bulletin, Winter 1951, and there was a small exhibition in Thomas
Library’s Rare Book Room. With limited space available for Collections,
the Chapin Collection remained packed away until several Asian consultants were
invited in 1989 to work on the Chapin Collection with the Curator.
Aware of the use
of the scrolls, Juwen Zhang, Lecturer in Chinese, inquired in the fall of 2001
to see whether there were objects that might relate to his spring course, East
Asian Studies 220: Chinese Folklore. Of the approximately 300 available objects,
62 objects of Chinese manufacture, or objects influenced by Chinese culture,
were chosen from lists and unpacked in late fall by Collections student assistant
and Asian Studies major, Emily Snow ‘04. Ms. Snow brings special expertise
in Chinese and Japanese objects from her summer work in the Japanese Department
at Christies in New York, and is aiding the Curator by helping the students
learn how to examine objects, read the inscriptions, and interpret their use
and significance through comparanda in print and web sources. Topics under class
discussion include folk beliefs and behaviors, festivals and dramas, foodways
and dress, house and transportation, rites of passage, children’s lore
and games, tourism, media and popular culture, and ethnicity, nationalism, and
internationalism.
After preliminary oral presentations, the essays will be converted to text for
an exhibition in April in the Carpenter Library’s Kaiser and Fong Reading
Rooms. Collections assistant Rosemary Kovacs ’03 has digitized several
views of each object so that the class may have an online resource.
The multi-cultural
objects being studied are as follows: fine Chinese porcelain of the Song period,
both white and celadon (see photograph); Korean, late Yi (18th century) blue
and white wares; Chinese stoneware; bronze objects, including a mirror; knife-shaped
coins; figurines; a belt hook with inlaid gold ornament; a steel water pipe;
stone writing seals; ceramic and bamboo brush holders and ink sticks; terracotta
figurines from tomb deposits (see rooster photograph); miniature embroidered
silk shoes for bound feet; dolls; toys in the shape of vegetables and kites;
tiles; lacquer fragments; Japanese wood masks (see photograph); and even a green
glazed ceramic grave pillow (Chinese, Song period, 12th century), similar to
one at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Helen Chapin collected many materials from the late 19th to the mid 20th century. Rather than acquiring major museum pieces (although there are a few) she gathered a group of study materials reflective of the current culture, and acquired some early archaeological materials from Chinese Han period tombs (circa 3rd century) in North Korea. Much of what she assembled was not of interest to most collectors at the time and now increases in its importance because some of it was ephemeral and lost. Supplementary objects for the present Folklore class come from Professor Emeritus of History, Howard L. Gray’s Collection by bequest in 1946. Therefore, the long dormant Asian Collection has found its purpose with the expanding, diversified curriculum.