Jade, Bronze and Stone

By his own account, collecting for John M. Crawford, Jr. has been the principal theme of his life. His early interests were exclusively with western artistic traditions, but the profound effect of extensive travel in east Asia led him to begin collecting Chinese art as the Second World War was ending, beginning with Chinese porcelains of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During the 1950s his collected broadened into scholar jades, large sculpture, small gilt bronzes, Shang bronzes and Japanese art. By the middle of the decade he had acquired several Northern Sung landscape paintings, followed shortly by Sung calligraphies. These latter acquisitions represent a turning point, and over the years he has amassed one of the finest and most important private collections of Chinese painting and calligraphy in existence.

This exhibition examines a less well-known side of a remarkable career of collecting. The objects assembled here document an emerging sensibility, one marked by breadth of vision and keen discernment. In addition to spectacular examples from Japan and Tibet, the majority are of Chinese origin, and an early concern for later carved jades and hardstones is clearly evident. Jade has always held a special importance in Chinese art, and it was the nature and significance of the material as much as subject matter or function that lay behind the fascination with the stone. Jade was treasured above all precious stones and metals, regarded as the quintessence of heaven and earth. From the earliest times it was believed to possess certain rare qualities, such as preserving the bodies of the dead, and for ceremonial occasions it was used as emblems of rank and as sacred ritual objects.

The secular use of jades became more prevalent in later periods, particularly during the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties, when patronage by literati often resulted in objects for display or for the desk, such as book weights, brush pots and holders. These occurred in a number of modes: archaistic, naturalistic, exotic. As objects made in limited numbers for the artistocracy and the intelligentsia, jades were able to satisfy teh Chinese penchant for metaphor, and themes of good omen, puns and anecdotal scenes abound. The fact that the Chinese character for jade (yu) is rich in metaphoric connotations--precious, pure, noble, excellent, virtuous--made it all the more appropriate as a vehicle for expressing philosophical concepts and symbolic virtues.

For the Chinese, the scholar's retreat was a place of contemplation, where friends came together bound by a common aesthetic, by a wish to share a profound experience. John Crawford has viewed the purpose of an exhibition in much the same way: "Most collectors have something of the missionary in them. What they collect has so much meaning for them that they wish to share the pleasures and spread knowledge." IT is his wish that this exhibition be a way of sharing as well as an opportunity for rewarding aesthetic experience.