A Bertha Lum (1869-1954) print acquired (by the mother of a ChinaRhyming reader – many thanks) interwar at Helen Burton’s famous shop, The Camel’s Bell, in the lobby of the Grand Hotel de Pekin (on Chang’an Dajie – now the Nuo Hotel sandwiched in between a couple of the ghastly additions to the Beijing Hotel). Ot was titled “Washerwomen in the Western Hills” – apparently the San Francisco Fine Arts Museum also has one (though coloured differently)…
A brass bound camphor wood trunk, early 20th century; with inset strengthening brackets at corners and angles, each end with a brass swing handle.Most interestingly the interior has a paper label:
AH FOO, CARPENTER & CABINET MAKER FROM CANTON, CLOSE TO EASTERN MARKET, NO 32 QUEEN’S ROAD, HONG KONG
Coming November 2024…. the audiobook of my latest book, Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson – available on audible for pre-order now (here) and then on November 14 2024…
Posted: September 26th, 2024 | No Comments »
An early heads up – i’ll be at the Enoch Pratt Central Library in Baltimore (in the Edgar Allan Poe Rading Room – no pressure there!) on November 12 talking about local girl Wallis Simpson, her time in China, the roaring 20s in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Peking, a few warlords, some jade markets and what she got up to in her “lotus year” in Asia…
Jack Chen’s (or Lao Chen as he was known to the Chinese villagers he lived amongst) A Year in Upper Felicity: Life in a Chinese Commune During the Cultural Revolution is about a year Chen and his wife spent in the Henan village of Upper Felicity from winter 1969-1970. The book is essentially his diary of that year on the Upper Felicity Collective Farm at this tumultuous time. It is perhaps especially interesting as Chen was the son of the Chinese Trinidadian lawyer and Republican-era Chinese foreign minister Eugene Chen. The book is organized around the four seasons describing the day-to-day life of Chinese peasants and how urban intellectuals were “sent down” to the countryside. Click here to read….
Scotney Castle (now National Trust) at Lamberhurst, Kent, is a house built around 1837-1843 in a previous style by several generations of the Hussey family, and was modernised in the 1950s. The house has extensive ground with excellent views over the Kent Weald, an older castle ruin and a charming walled garden. However, the interior of the house is rather gloomy and not in terrifically good taste. Apparently Thatcher liked to weekend there (a woman on no taste herself) and this rather casts a pall over the place too.
What makes Scotney interesting is that it was once home to Arthur Herbert Hussey who spent significant time in East and Southeast Asia in the early 1900s. For reasons I cannot discern Hussey was granted a Chinese passport in 1906, settled in Singapore and remained there until his death from Blackwater Fever in 1923. Hussey joined the British Army in 1882 and served in both the Boer and the First World Wars, but not the Boxer campaign. When I get some time I’ll have to dig out Hussey’s China connection? Unless anyone can save me the effort?
Anyway, a few Chinese/Chinoiserie items from Scotney on display…
Black laquer ware cabinet Chinese made c.1730 for the English market
