A Chinese Tea Party (Furnishing Fabric) c. 1854

Curator: I find this textile so striking, that dense cobalt background is practically jewel-toned. Editor: And crowded! It feels both rich and…claustrophobic? Curator: It’s “A Chinese Tea Party,” a furnishing fabric designed around 1854 by Daniel Lee & Co. Editor: "Furnishing fabric" immediately tells us about its intended function, right? It speaks to the blurring of lines between art and commodity. The patterns were mass-produced, which says something about the industrial labor that facilitated it, and also, importantly, who had access to this type of textile. Curator: Absolutely. It's a woven textile, and it looks like it was printed, allowing for detailed figuration and layered designs. The way the scenes are arranged, the labor behind designing and producing such elaborate patterns for the consumer textile market... Fascinating. Editor: Thinking about the labor of creation, the subject matter raises questions, too. We see these imagined scenes of Chinese figures drinking tea amidst pagodas and florals— classic Orientalism. How did the designers, the company, conceptualize their subjects' gender roles and social standings? Whose cultural narratives are we centering here? Curator: Precisely, the exoticized representation catered to Victorian England's fascination with the "Orient.” How did such designs circulate within consumer culture, impacting perceptions of foreign cultures? We have the visual elements— the pagodas, clothing—combined with Western artistic conventions of Romanticism. Editor: The "exotic East" became a fashionable commodity itself. Looking closely, the quality of the fabric is very nice, but there is no mention of the worker or place it was manufactured. Curator: Right. Ultimately, this furnishing fabric provides a window into design trends, manufacturing processes, and colonial ideologies intertwined with commerce in the mid-19th century. Editor: It really shows the social context, and it’s beautiful at that!