Thanks to a Dean F. Failey Grant from the Decorative Arts Trust, Wyck staff have spent nearly a year digging beneath the surface to interrogate the desk’s provenance, material properties, and larger role in the story of Asian export art & commodities in Philadelphia Quaker households.
For nearly 200 years, a small Chinese writing desk has been the simultaneously prized and lamented possession of generations of Quaker women in Philadelphia. Today, it sits in the northwest corner of the front parlor at Wyck. To early Wyck curators, the desk was a story of the Haines’ relentless patterns of adaptability and reuse as it was modified from desk to vanity and back by subsequent generations of owners. Only recently have staff been able to look closer at the desk as an object and wonder about its path to the parlor.
Made in China roughly between 1810 and 1830, the desk’s lacquered decoration shows scenes of water travel and well-dressed figures surrounding ornamental pagodas. It is a visual outlier whose unusual form reflects the eccentricities of multi-generational ownership and gestures to its owners’ participation in a global network of exchange. Quaker Ann Haines (1793-1869) likely purchased the Chinese writing desk while living at Wyck. Ann’s curiosity and intellectual connections likely led her to visit the Chinese Museum collection as it arrived in Philadelphia in 1838 with Quaker trader Nathan Dunn, and inspired to bring a piece of these new discoveries into her parlor.
Nathan Dunn: Sailing on Hope to Canton
Nathan Dunn (1782 –1844) was an American Quaker merchant best known for his collection of “Ten Thousand Chinese Things,” which he exhibited at the Philadelphia Chinese Museum, housed in The Philadelphia Museum building. Born in Pilesgrove, NJ, to Quakers Nathan Dunn Sr. and Rhoda Silvers, his family was well acquainted with the Salem Monthly Meeting. Haines family members also belonged to this meeting and were acquainted with Dunn’s family.
Dunn moved to Philadelphia in 1802 and became a Member of the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. He accrued significant debt from bad investments, though, and his recklessness caught the attention of the Society of Friends. He was subsequently disowned in 1816. Outcast and indebted, Dunn searched for ways to sustain himself. Seeing a new and profitable market, Dunn decided to venture into trade and sailed for China in 1818. Dunn became the supercargo for the packet ship Hope, which entailed organizing inventories and recording trade expenses. Many of these accounts are still held at Haverford College.
Dunn spent roughly 12 years in Canton, seldom travelling to any other part of China or to Europe aside from a brief trip to London in 1821. In 1831, he returned to Philadelphia having made his fortune brokering trades of Chinese goods. His accumulated wealth was sufficient to repay his creditors in full with interest. Dunn also returned with a massive collection of Chinese items. Dunn built his collection by establishing connections with local merchants, who Dunn paid to travel throughout the country acquiring desirable goods. These included natural specimens, clothing and household wares, lacquered furniture, food, porcelain, and other objects associated with day-to-day life in China.
“A Peep at the Celestial Empire”: The Chinese Exhibition Delights Philadelphians
“[Dunn’s exhibit] is so unlike any thing we are accustomed to behold, that we are at a loss for epithets exactly descriptive of it. Brilliant, splendid, gorgeous, magnificent, superb — all these adjectives are liberally used by visitors.” – -Enoch Cobb Wines in A peep at China in Mr. Dunn’s Chinese Collection : with Miscellaneous Notices Relating to the Institutions and Customs of the Chinese, and our Commercial Intercourse with them, 1839.
The exhibition opened to the public on December 23, 1838 under the title “Ten Thousand Chinese Things.” A corresponding catalogue guided visitors through nuances of Chinese life as told through Dunn’s perspective. The exhibit was an incredible success, and Curator William B. Langdon later recalled “hundreds of thousands of guests” in his later description of the collection’s initial reception. Langdon’s retrospective description was published in 1843, three years after the collection moved to Hyde Park Corner in London. The true reason behind the collection’s move abroad is largely unknown, though many sources suggest that it was inspired by the Peale museum’s diminishing success and a series of legal troubles that marred Dunn’s reputation in Philadelphia.
While Dunn exaggerated the extent of his museum’s holdings, the collection reflected a wide breadth of topics and materials. While Chinese export objects such as silk, tea, porcelain, and artwork were prominently displayed, the exhibit featured everyday objects, including:
- Natural specimens collected from various regions of China
- Mannequins modeled after Dunn’s Chinese acquaintances dressed in regional clothing reflective of their class and rank
- Segments of residences showcasing traditional Chinese architecture
Why were Philadelphians so Obsessed with Dunn’s Collection?
Following the American Revolution, merchants identified China as an expanding trade market, capitalizing on the raging popularity of imported goods like silk, tea, and porcelain. Inspired by the grand displays of the British East India Company and the Salem (MA) East India Marine Society, American merchants also began to assemble smaller independent collections, both to emulate these prestigious models and to demonstrate their own cosmopolitan reach.
A combination of trade policies, cultural stereotypes, and physical distance created an image of China as a land shrouded by mysticism. Foreign merchants were forbidden from travelling beyond the port city of Canton (now Guangzhou), and foreign women were not allowed outside of the resort city of Macao. These laws were strictly enforced, meaning that first-person accounts of China were limited and often sensational. Americans therefore encountered China most directly by engaging with the objects it produced.
c. 1838, Albert Newsam Collection, V-100, Box 10, Folder 2.
Nathan Dunn’s Chinese Museum, blending theatrical vignettes with conventional display cabinets, offered a radical new perspective on material and social life in China. The accompanying narrative catalog added colorful detail enriching the objects and scenes on display, enhancing the customary first-person narrative account structure by pairing it with curated displays. While Dunn’s presentation of Chinese life was mediated by his personal experiences, his exhibit offered a far more expansive and immersive view of Chinese culture than most existing published accounts. Still, the exhibition showcased an idealized version of life in Canton, exclusively highlighting cultural beauty and artistry amidst a time of economic hardship and an opium crisis driven by American & British smugglers. Dunn, ever the strategic promoter, offered an escapist experience for Philadelphians that allowed the visitor to be “transported to a new world” as they moved through the museum.
The Haines Collectors
Many generations of the Wistar-Haines family at Wyck collected Chinese objects as souvenirs and household goods. Wyck’s diverse collection includes objects such as tea sets, silks, ginger jars, paintings, and lacquered furnishings. It also includes historic botanical specimens still growing on the landscape, like the “White Pearl in Red Dragon’s Mouth” rose. The lacquered writing desk is just one of many objects crafted in Asia that found their way into the Wyck collection.
Ann Haines (1793-1869), purchased the Chinese writing desk while living at Wyck with her extended family.
Educated at the Westtown School, Ann was dedicated naturalist. She kept decades of detailed weather records, attended lectures at the Academy of Natural Sciences, ran experiments at Wyck, and collected books and pamphlets on scientific disciplines. She maintained a close network of friends and colleagues who shared her passion for knowledge, including neighboring entomologist Margaretta Hare Morris and botanist Elizabeth Carrington Morris, who visited Wyck almost daily in the early 1830s. Her curiosity and intellectual connections might have led her to visit the Chinese Museum collection as it arrived in Philadelphia, or inspired to bring a piece these new discoveries into her home.
Wyck Manager of Interpretation Grace Ford-Dirks and undergraduate intern Cristina Freire spent the summer of 2025 researching Nathan Dunn’s connection to the Wistar-Haines family in order to build out a network of relationships linking Ann and Dunn. While no direct correspondence has yet been discovered between the two, Freire identified longstanding connections between the Haines and Dunn families in New Jersey. Generations of Haines and Dunns lived alongside one another in Burlington County, where Dunn would eventually build his elaborate Chinese Cottage. Back in Philadelphia, Ann and Dunn shared connections among elite scientific and artistic circles, which might have allowed Ann to purchase the desk in a private exchange.
Ann owned several properties, so she may have intended to display the piece in her Phoenixville home. While a beautiful addition to a wealthy woman’s front parlor, the desk was not the most practical. Moving the desk shortly after its purchase revealed latent structural issues, suggesting a reason why Ann was able to buy it in the first place. Moving the desk not long after its purchase revealed latent structural issues, irritating Ann endlessly and indicating why it was sold from the Chinese Collection. By 1841, Ann was so frustrated by her “Chinese table” that she wished to get rid of it all together but admitted that “procrastination overruled me.”
“In moving this table on one occasion a leg fell out, which caused me to examine the others when I discovered as I thought they could all be taken out without any injury.” -Ann Haines in a letter to Jane Bowne Haines I, 1841
Ann was not the only family member drawn to the desk, despite its quirks. Niece Jane Reuben Haines (1832-1911) requested the desk during the division of Ann’s assets in 1869. She later transformed the desk by adding a “Japanned” mirror in the late 19th century and used it as a vanity at Wyck.
The desk remained in the family after Jane Reuben’s death. Jane Reuben bequeathed the piece in her will to her great-niece Elizabeth Hartshorne Haines Kimber. She was careful to note its provenance, listing it specifically as the piece that “Ann Haines bought about 1838 when the Chinese museum was established in Philadelphia by N. Dunn.” Connecting the Haines family to significant cultural events in Philadelphia was important to Jane Reuben, who proudly acted as the family historian throughout her life.
Wyck’s final owner, Mary Troth Haines (1892-1983), used the desk for writing and painting. While some family members recall the desk leaving the house at some point in the 20th century, it was returned by the time the collection was inventoried in 1973.
The Desk Revisited: Conservation Treatments in 2025
With the Decorative Arts Trust’s generous support, Wyck contracted with Philadelphia-area furniture conservator Jonathan Stevens to restore the desk. After a consultation with Stevens, we elected to focus on a few key areas to maximize time and resources. The primary areas of focus were the reinforcement of the loose leg joints and the stabilization of loose and flaking lacquer on the legs to enable safe handling and long-term display in high traffic public spaces.
Stevens completed a deep cleaning of the desk and closely documented individual areas of concern by early fall 2025.
Despite ongoing research into context for its construction and export, the desk itself is still a largely anonymous object. During the process of cleaning, a deep red pigment, probably vermilion, was discovered to have been added to detail the lacquered decoration. This detail helped us identify a comparable object, sold at auction via Sotheby’s in 2005, with similar decorative elements on its lacquered surface. During the initial documentation period, Stevens found Chinese characters and numbers written in ink on the back of interior drawers, on the interior of the desk case, and on each of the leg tenons. These characters and the near-identical piece at Sotheby’s further indicate that the desk was produced at scale specifically for the export market, making an individual maker less likely to be identified.
After extensive conversation with Wyck staff, Stevens elected to reinforce the joinery via an Ethafoam block that adds friction to the natural points of connection, thereby reinforcing the joint via added pressure. This is a more flexible, reversable, and less damaging treatment than the application of animal hide glue in the long term. Stevens also focused on consolidating flaking lacquer on the four legs, which were the most worn area after years of contact. We discovered that the legs also had the thinnest layers of lacquer, contributing to their easy wear.
The addition of UV filtered film to windowpanes across the house and the reinforcement and restoration of historic windows in 2025 will prolong the desk’s lifespan significantly by mitigating damaging environmental factors in the long term.
This year’s conservation grant has allowed Wyck staff to take a significant step to address significant, longstanding areas of damage and halt fast deterioration, allowing this important object to become a centerpiece of new interpretation in the years to come.
Learn more! Join us for Desk Project Programs in 2026.
Mt. Airy Learning Tree Tour, March 11: Register Here
Special Curator’s Tour: Asian Export Objects in the Wyck Collection, April 8: Register Here
Chinese Desk Project Lecture (Fall 2026- stay tuned for more information)
Read more about the project in the The Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust (Winter 2025-26).
Thanks
This project was led by Wyck Manager of Interpretation Grace Ford-Dirks, assisted by C. Dallett Hemphill Intern Cristina Freire. Many thanks to the Decorative Arts Trust for funding this year-long project through the Dean F. Failey Grant Program, and to the McNeil Center for Early American Studies for providing support for a summer intern in 2025. Wyck is grateful to Kathleen Foster, David Barquist, and Alexandra Kirtley for their early encouragement, which made this initiative possible.