Asian Collections

The Longfellow family’s collections reflect generations of interest in Asian art, culture, and literature. They are significant because of their provenance and context and provide insights into the importance of international art to one nineteenth century family. Asian objects came to this house as purchased export items, gifts, and travel souvenirs.

Most notably, Charles Longfellow, Henry and Fanny Longfellow’s oldest child, collected extensively during his travels in India, China, Japan, and other Asian countries in the late 1800s. Charles Longfellow's papers include his journals and letters describing his experience of these travels. His collected photographs include views of landscapes and people from Japan (including rare images of Ainu people), Thailand, Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Indian subcontinent.

 

Charles collected many Japanese bronzes, including this incense burner featuring a figure of Hotei surrounded by seven boys. (LONG 7486)

NPS Photo / James P. Jones

Because of Charles Longfellow’s twenty-month sojourn in Japan, from June 1871 until March 1873, the collection is particularly rich in Japanese objects and art. This group of objects reflects transformations in both Japanese and American culture. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japanese culture became increasingly westernized. In turn, late nineteenth century Americans' lives were transformed by the increased availability of Japanese imports and access to travel. A "Japan Craze" spread through Boston and beyond in the period between 1870 and 1890.

During his stay in Japan, Charles Longfellow spent freely and collected a wide range of ceramics, textiles, bronzes, and paintings. Charles collected according to his own taste, seeking “curios” of all types which he saw as authentically Japanese rather than limiting himself to high art. He shipped more than twenty crates of furnishings and decorative arts to his family in Cambridge.

Soon after his return from Japan, Charles and his cousin Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow Jr. decorated his sitting room in the Longfellow House with many of his finds, covering the ceiling with Japanese paintings in the shape of fans, and displaying prints and furniture in the room.

The collections include a rich assortment of silk kimono, obi, and other Japanese textiles, including some outfits custom designed for Charles Longfellow. Other early Meiji-era items include atlases, printed books, watercolors of Noh theater productions, and scrolls.

 

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  Kimonos in the Longfellow Collection

  This virtual exhibit explores the kimonos collected by Charles Longfellow in Japan and questions of cultural exchange and appropriation.

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  Japan Room

  Charles Longfellow’s sitting room was among the earliest American examples of a personal domestic space decorated in Japanese style.

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  Online Exhibit

  "Thoroughly Japanese"

  This virtual exhibit explores Charles Longfellow’s tourism and collecting in Meji-era Japan.