Footnotes

1839-1841年 金纍絲花蝶龍紋紀念手鐲

Provenance:
Dane and Peter Fay

The choice of designs is rife with meaning. Two facing butterflies，hudie, symbolizes a joyful encounter, xi xiangfeng, referring either to friends, or a husband and wife. Butterflies symbolize happiness and longevity, and placed among flowers symbolizes joy, love and good fortune, dielianhua. Together with a peony it implies, "May you have an accumulation of blessings, wealth and high social status." Each of the curved panels has an openwork reserve containing a tree squirrel and grapes, songshu putao, which imply a wish for ceaseless generations of sons and grandsons. [1]

A very similar bracelet in the Walters Art Museum Baltimore, has no maker's mark or inscription and was until recently identified as French. The front panel is a rounded octagon, the convex sides filled with scrolling dragons chasing pearls, and the side reserves separated by flower heads rather than butterflies. There is also another unmarked related example in the K. L. Leung Collection of Export Art. [2] All three appear to be by the same goldsmith.

Although undated, it is most likely that between 1839 and 1841 Chinese merchants in charge of the hongs of Canton presented the gold bracelet to Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge (1796-1876) and a covered silver cup to her husband Joseph Coolidge (1798-1879), an American merchant.

Each of these dedicatory pieces was engraved with one of their names and those of fourteen Chinese merchants. The bracelet was crisply engraved: "HONG MERCHANTS / Howqua Mowqua Pounkeyqua / Kingqua Linchong Gouqua/ Mingqua Louqua Pounhoyqua /Lamqua Thonching Quinshing/ Lounching & Cumvor/ in token of good wishse [sic] / to / Mrs Coolidge." This has been described the "most impressive list of all the major hong merchants of the 1830s." [3]

Ellen Wayles Randolph was the granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States (1801 to 1809). She was the favorite granddaughter of Jefferson, and with lived her mother and siblings from the ages of 13 to 28 at Monticello, Virginia, the primary plantation of Jefferson, designed and built by him beginning in 1779.

After traveling in Europe, Joseph Coolidge returned to the United States in 1824 and attended the reunion of Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette at Monticello. While there, he met Ellen whom he married the following year in the parlor at Monticello.

Ellen moved with him to Boston and remained there with her six children while Joseph traveled to China on business. In 1838 she went to London and during her stay kept at journal which has been published as Thomas Jefferson's Granddaughter in Queen Victoria's England: The Travel Diary of Ellen Wayles Coolidge, 1838-1839. [4] She joined her husband in China in 1839.

As a resident in Macau, Joseph Coolidge made two appearances in the diary of Harriet Low, written before Ellen arrived, and then appears frequently in the letters of Robert Bennet Forbes, who became the head of Russell & Co. [5] After Joseph left China in 1844, he and his family lived in Switzerland, spending some years in Europe before returning to Boston. Ellen died in April 1876 and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Joseph died in 1879 and is buried next to her.

The silver covered trophy cup was made for Joseph Coolidge by the Chinese silversmith Cutshing (marked, CUT and pseudo London hallmarks). Cutshing worked at No. 8 New China Street, Canton, from about 1850 to about 1870, and possibly from as early as around 1835 when the mark "CU" conjoined was used. An original box with a silver filigree card case bears the label "CUTSHING Gold and Silversmith, New Street No. 8." [6] Although the bracelet is not marked it may have been made by Cutshing who advertized as a goldsmith. The engravings of names on the bracelet and cup are by the same hand. Gold jewelry seems generally not to have been marked, but unmarked gold jewelry by Wonshing, Haoching and Leeching are known through labeled boxes.

The silver cup, in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum, [7] is engraved in script with the legend, "Presented to Joseph Coolidge Esqre / as a token of respect from his friends ..." and is followed by the same names as on the bracelet, ending with the term "Hong Merchants" in script rather than block letters as on the bracelet. [8] Around the upper half of the cup is depicted a rowing race, one of the few leisure activities allowed Westerners in Canton on the Pearl River. It was said that Coolidge was famous for his rowing.

Neither the bracelet nor the cup are dated. Harriet Low remarked in her journal for August 15, 1832, "Mr. [Joseph] Cooli[d]ge has come out as clerk in the house of R[ussel] & Co." [9] He became a partner in 1834 but he left Russell & Co. 1839 and became a resident partner in Heard & Co., and later an agent for Jardine, Matheson & Co. When Robert Bennett Forbes arrived at Russell & Co., he and Howqua (1769-1843), the principal Hong merchant listed in the inscriptions, leader of the Canton Cohong and for many decades an important ally to American merchants, were against Coolidge continuing in the company and Coolidge was forced out in 1839. [10] Is it possible that the extraordinary cup and bracelet were made then to save face between the Coolidge and the Chinese hong merchants?

A more likely date is 1841 when Coolidge was imprisoned (for two days) by the Chinese when the British attacked Canton during the First Opium War. Much of what he owned, including a cow and a dog, disappeared. The hong merchants were obliged by Chinese authorities to pay damages. [11] As all the hong merchants were responsible for damages, and their names are included on these pieces, it may have been an offering from them in addition to payments. These were extraordinary gifts, as both the bracelet and cup were rarely matched by other gifts of such magnitude to Westerners from the hong merchants.

1 Terese Tse Bartholomew, Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art, San Francisco, 2006, pp.33, 41, 79.
2 Libby Lai-Pik Chan and Nina Lai-Na Wan, eds., The Silver Age: Origins and Trade of Chinese Export Silver, Hong Kong, 2017, p.44. This example has the basket weave ground, a front panel with confronting butterflies, is set with pearls, and is described as gilt silver.
3 Carl L. Crossman, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1991, p.351.
4 Ellen Wayles Coolidge, edited by Ann Lucas Birle, Lisa A. Francavilla, Charlottesville, VA, 2012.
5 Nan P. Hodges and Arthur W. Hummel, eds., Lights and Shadows of a Macao Life: the Journal of Harriet Low, Travelling Spinster, Woodinville, WA, 2002, Vol. 2, pp.492, 587; Phyllis Forbes Kerr, Letters from China: The Canton-Boston Correspondence of Robert Bennet Forbes, 1838-1840 (Mystic), CT, 1996.
6 Crossman 1991, p.353, plate 222, dated ca. 1850.
7 Peabody Essex Museum, E79992. Gift of Mrs. Edward W. Moore, 1975, to the China Trade Museum. The donor was the granddaughter of Joseph Coolidge. Published while in a private collection, H. A. Crosby Forbes, Chinese Export Silver 1785 to 1885, Meriden, Connecticut, 1975, p. 104, no. 58, illustrated 194 fig. 117 (b) and 195, fig. 117 (a). It was also published in Crossman 1991, p. 364, color plate 121, and in William R. Sargent, Views of the Pearl River Delta: Macau, Canton and Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1996, pp. 186-187, no 62, referencing its exhibition history.
8 The disparity between the spellings on the bracelet and those referenced in Forbes 1975 may be from the worn condition of the cup.
9 Hodges and Hummel 2002, p. 492.
10 Jacques Downs, Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784-1844, London, 1997, p. 179.
11 Downs, 1997, p. 195.