Collection
Asian Export Art
PEM holds the largest and most comprehensive collection in the world of transcultural works by Asian artists who catered to diverse markets around the globe.
Ideas and aesthetics have always traveled with merchants, missionaries and workers and the objects they brought with them, often evolving in unexpected ways in new cultural contexts.
Beginning in the late 16th century, European merchants raced to thriving port cities in China, Japan, India and the Philippines to seek their fortunes in tea, textiles and other commodities. Asian artists, catering to diverse markets around the globe, adapted and combined design motifs, materials and techniques to create novel expressions of artistic creativity that were among the finest produced in the world. Now known as Asian export art, these transcultural objects — from translucent porcelains to lustrous lacquers to sumptuous fabrics — defy easy categorization.
PEM holds the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of these fascinating hybrid works. The collection is best known for its significant holdings of Chinese and Japanese porcelain, Chinese paintings and silver, Japanese lacquer and Indian furniture. The historic collections of the East India Marine Society and the Essex Institute include important works from China, Japan and India, a vestige of Salem’s intensive trade with Asian ports in the early 19th century. The collection grew gradually during the 19th century, but the largest single initiative occurred in 1984, when the China Trade Museum in Milton, Massachusetts, transferred 9,000 works of export art to the Peabody Museum of Salem. PEM’s international stature in this area, however, is due to concerted, strategic acquisitions over the last 30 years.
For centuries, these astonishing works fueled a complex global economy that continues to shape our world to this day. Export art objects demonstrate the beauty and ingenuity that can be created through blending artistic traditions, materials and technologies, but they also embody uncomfortable truths. Many were originally purchased with profits derived from the illegal trade in opium, which devastated millions of lives in India and China during the 1800s. We invite you to appreciate these complex works of art while acknowledging the unequal power structures embodied within them.
Highlights from this collection
ON VIEW
Charger with the Okeover family coat of arms, 1740 or 1743
On view in the Sean M. Healey Family Gallery of Asian Export Art.
ON VIEW
A complete set of Chinese wallpaper (detail), about 1800
On view in the Sean M. Healey Family Gallery of Asian Export Art.
ON VIEW
Tea Production in China, about 1800
On view in the Sean M. Healey Family Gallery of Asian Export Art.
ON VIEW
Tea packer and tea porter, about 1803
On view in the Sean M. Healey Family Gallery of Asian Export Art.
ON VIEW
Shuja-ud-Daula and His Sons, after 1797
On view in the Sean M. Healey Family Gallery of Asian Export Art.
ON VIEW
Portable shrine, about 1597
On view in the Sean M. Healey Family Gallery of Asian Export Art.
ON VIEW
Mounted crow cup, about 1610
On view in the Sean M. Healey Family Gallery of Asian Export Art.
ON VIEW
Figure of a bijin (beautiful woman), 1690–1710
On view in the Sean M. Healey Family Gallery of Asian Export Art.
Charger with the Okeover family coat of arms, 1740 or 1743
Artists in Jingdezhen, China, Charger with the Okeover family coat of arms, 1740 or 1743. Porcelain. Museum purchase, made possible by an anonymous donor, 1987. E82042.
On view in the Sean M. Healey Family Gallery of Asian Export Art.
Loans and acquisitions
PEM is committed to providing the broadest possible access to its collection through the loan of objects for educational and scholarly purposes. Learn how to request a loan from the museum’s collection.
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