Collectors, dealers, and beautiful things
Collectible objects are never just things in themselves. Rather they are material tokens of stories — stories that can range from the mundane to the exotic, but all of which provide insight into the myriad motivations and manifestations of peoples’ propensity to collect and possess.
The seven objects in the photograph above represent the modest Oriental porcelain collection bequeathed to Cape Breton University in the will of Marion Mathieson in 1998. The two large vases in the back are Japanese, as is the oval bowl, missing its lid. The water jug shaped like twin ducks, used by calligraphers to wet their ink stones, is Chinese, dated around 1600 — a whole other story. The remaining three pieces were produced in the Qianlong period (1735–1796) of China’s Qing dynasty (1644–1912), and are decorated in the globally popular famille rose style, introduced to China by Jesuit artisans in the early 1700s.
In what follows, I focus on the story of the matched, but clearly not identical, pair of smaller hexagonal vases pictured below.
The collector
The only biographical material we have on Marion Mathieson comes from the citation that was read when she was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1990 by the University College of Cape Breton (now Cape Breton University), a portion of which follows.
She is a charter member and past president of the Canadian Federation of University Women, Cape Breton, and an active member in The Voice of Women, Ploughshares Cape Breton, Women Unlimited, the Cape Breton Nuclear Disarmament Committee, and the United Church of Canada Presbytery, Working Group on social Ministry. Mrs. Mathieson is currently vice-president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, and the National Action Committee’s representative on the Steering Committee of the Canadian Peace Alliance. … Long associated with the University College of Cape Breton through the Centre for International Studies, Mrs. Mathieson was responsible for bringing the exhibit “Understanding China through Cartoons” to the University College.
The extent to which any of her organizational affiliations and activism provided her with an opportunity to travel to China, or to be in contact with Chinese communities in Canada, or to be associated with groups trying to raise awareness of social conditions in China is an open question. All we can glean from this citation is that she was sufficiently interested in increasing the public understanding of China for her to arrange for an exhibition to be brought to a decidedly remote location like Cape Breton.
The exhibit “Understanding China through Cartoons” was created by Yves and Cynthia Bled, a pair of University of Ottawa faculty members, who selected 356 cartoons from the 1982 edition of the China Daily and, along with commentaries, published them in a book. A smaller selection of the cartoons, blown up into posters mounted on display panels, toured Canada in the mid-1980s, including the showing in Cape Breton. A collection of the original panels from the exhibit was donated by the Bleds to the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa, in 2019.
Looking elsewhere for evidence of Mathieson’s association with China, I discovered that the Cape Breton University Library holds a copy of the Dover reprint edition of R. L. Hobson’s Chinese Pottery and Porcelain ([1905] 1976) that once belonged to her. On the book’s title page, along with the penciled in call number and library ID stamp, is an imprint of a seal identifying its original owner. The three Chinese characters below the owner’s English name (from right to left) are: mai (wheat), xue (snow), and shuang (frost) — an attempt to render the surname phonetically.
Compared to cartoon exhibit, the seal, which was most likely carved in China, is a far more tangible, though no less mysterious, clue to her link with China. We have no idea how she came by this seal, but she clearly felt a strong enough association with what it represented to use it as a symbol of ownership for her books. Furthermore, the fact that she possessed a book on Chinese porcelain suggests that she might have had a a deeper interest in the vases and other objects than would be the case with someone who was collecting them simply because they were beautiful things.
Thankfully, we can learn a good deal more about the story of these vases from Mathieson’s interactions with dealer who sold her the items.
The dealer
Mathieson purchased the vases in the early 1980s from Potter’s Gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia. Carole Potter was the daughter of Cape Bretoner Reuben Lipkus, who by all indications was someone well known to Mathieson, as Potter always included greetings from Lipkus in her correspondence with Mathieson. A biographical sketch of Lipkus indicates that, following his wife’s death, he had moved out west to be with his daughter and grandchildren.
While we don’t have any of the letters Mathieson wrote to Potter, we do have a few of the letters Potter wrote to Mathieson. These were handed over to the University by Mathieson’s husband to provide some background on the porcelain collection — perhaps in an attempt to demonstrate how important these objects were to his wife, as well as to emphasize their importance more generally. In a letter dated 4 June 1981, Potter writes:
It was clearly stated on both the pro forma invoice, and on the final invoice that the vases you purchased were Chieng Lung period (1736–1795), it was clearly stated to you at the time of purchase. The Tudor-Hart collection belonged to the founders of the Bank of Montreal and Patricia Tudor-Hart owned these vases, and on her death, some of her collection was sold to an agent of mine — and the rest of her famous Chieng Lung collection is in the Royal Ontario Museum. The Chieng Lung period is one of the finest in Chinese history, the Ming period extends from 1368–1643 during which time no famille rose pieces were made. The Ming period made vases mostly one at a time, and the predominant colours would be blue and white, or red/green/blue combinations known a wu’tzai — harsh colourations — never in large pairs of large vases — so your dream to fulfill — a matched pair of Ming vases — is highly unlikely to exist. Mr. R. Lipkus showed you clearly the beauty of these fine vases — Christie’s of N.Y. and London would be proud to have such a pair — they have seen them and admired your taste.
As an initial observation, the tone of this letter would suggest a level of familiarity between Potter and Mathieson that would not be typical of most client relationships. The content alternates between rather blatant chastisement and two different attempts — one based on provenance and the other on taste — to construct a story around the vases that would shift Mathieson’s perspective on the objects from one of disappointment to one of pride.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to infer that Mathieson was interested in obtaining a pair of Ming dynasty vases, but that she wanted them to be decorated in the famille rose style — clearly an historical impossibility.
With respect to provenance, the reference to the Bank of Montreal is curious. The only Hart that was part of their history was one George Arnold Reeves Hart, born in Toronto in 1913, who worked for the Bank from 1931 until 1984, serving as its president and chief executive officer from 1971 to 1984. Arnold Hart’s second wife was named Patricia, but she did not pass away until 2014.
Percyval Tudor-Hart (1873–1954) was a Montreal-born painter. I was unable to verify whether the Bank of Montreal ever owned a collection of his paintings. However, based on a personal communication with a member of the Asian Collections Department at the Royal Ontario Museum, I learned that a small number of items were received from Catherine Tudor-Hart (Percyval’s third wife), consisting mainly of paintings and textiles, with one Japanese screen, and no Chinese items, porcelain or otherwise. Furthermore, the Museum has no record of ever receiving any items from anyone named Patricia Tudor-Hart.
Having constructed an impressive, if highly questionable, provenance for the vases, Potter moves on to a more glaring bit of flattery, by offering a third party — and therefore objective? — affirmation of Mathieson’s sophisticated taste. The reference to Christie’s seems as spurious as the provenance — the vases are truly beautiful, but they are neither exceptional nor rare. Similar objects by the many thousands were exported to Europe and the Americas during the Qianlong period. It’s interesting that Reuben Lipkus is positioned here as a sort of moral authority, as if to say, “You trust him, don’t you?”
Whatever else transpired between Potter and Mathieson on this matter, it seems safe to conclude that Mathieson adopted Potter’s story of the vases as her own, as evidenced by the fact that about one year after purchasing the vases, she also purchased the famille rose bowl in the center of top photograph.
Where there’s an object, there’s a story — that’s what really matters.
