Japanese folding screens in a Western collection: Notes on a representative treatment

Abstract

Summary Scholarship about Far Eastern works of art, their formats and materials, and the procedures used in their conservation has grown in the last quarter century. This article seeks to contribute to that subject by describing the overall treatment of a Japanese folding screen in sufficient detail to be both illuminating and cautionary. While not a connoisseur of the arts of Japan, Charles Longfellow (1844–1893) was an intrepid resident there from 1871 to 1873. He returned to the house of his father, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which he furnished with a group of unusual folding screen paintings that demonstrated the worldly sensibilities of the Longfellow circle. The screens were conserved for permanent display at Longfellow House, a National Park Service historic site. This article describes the derisions taken and the procedures used in their conservation and remounting. Of particular interest are the strategies adapted for the treatment of paintings which were less conventional in format and materials, and how a speciality so intimately identified with a longstanding and respected tradition of conservation can be undertaken with credibility outside of the original geographic and educational framework of practice.