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The Boone collection contains a number of Chinese artifacts, including paintings, ceramics, decorative art objects, textiles, and coins. Although the Chinese section of the Boone collection only accounts for a small percentage of The Field Museum's Chinese holdings, they are still significant, especially for studying Japanese and Chinese cultural interaction. Since Commander and Mrs. Boone gave special importance to symbolism in East Asian culture, and studied the similarity between Japanese and Chinese cultures, they collected art with popular themes shared by both the Chinese and Japanese. In this sense, the Boone Chinese collection provides us with an important perspective for studying the relationship between Japanese and Chinese art history.
The rest of the China collection at The Field Museum contains 23,500 archaeological, historical and ethnographic objects made between10,000 BC and 1980 AD. It covers many types of Chinese works including Buddhist and Daoist sculptures, calligraphy, paintings, prints, Han to Tang dynasty pottery and late imperial ceramics, textiles, ink rubbings, and decorative objects of the 18th to 20th centuries. The collection is strong in textiles and rubbings of stone inscriptions. Three quarters of the collection was acquired in China between 1908 and 1923 by Field Museum anthropologist Dr. Berthold Laufer. Laufer tried to approach works of art from ethnographic, historical, and aesthetic perspectives. Because of Laufer's influence, the museum's Chinese collection is unique and substantial with respect to various aspects of Chinese cultural history, such as religion, ethnology, and material culture from different geographical regions and classes.
Commentary on snuff bottle and ivory carving
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