The greater part of the collection of rare books and artwork at The Holden Arboretum is comprised of the Warren H. Corning Collection of Horticultural Classics which was assembled by Mr. Corning (1902-1975), a Cleveland investment banker with a multitude of interests including plants, animals, books, and artwork.
Among his many passions was a fascination with the Orient which led to his original assignment in charge of the oriental and ornamental plantings of The Holden Arboretum in its formative days when it was run by a committee working out of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. It is also reflected in his former home, Lantern Court, where oriental artwork dominates the master bedroom and is integrated into the downstairs living area.
The different culture of the Orient has fascinated the western world since its exposure via the conquests of Alexander in the fourth century B.C. Through much of the following period - oriental influence was transmitted via traffic with the Near East - a process which accelerated with the crusades. Direct contact between Europe and the Far East - apart from the Mongol invasions did not really begin until the voyage of Marco Polo from 1266 to 1295 (if it took place). European government sponsored trading and missionary efforts to the Far East did not really begin until the Portuguese expeditions of the sixteenth century to India, Malaysia, China and Japan.
The Orient has also provided a rich source of ornamental and exotic plants - many of which first made their way to Europe via specimens grown in the Near East. Later, of course, the Orient became a treasure trove for European and American plant hunters - a tradition which continues to the present day at The Holden Arboretum with the efforts of Peter Bristol, Charles Tubesing, and Ethan Johnson..
To return to our historical perspective, much of the Far East missionary work was undertaken by the Jesuits under St. Francis Xavier. Our first work on display is the product of a Polish member of that order, Michael Boym, who served as a missionary to India and China from 1643 to 1652, and from 1656 until his death in 1659. His work on the plants of China, the Flora Sinensis, printed in Vienna in 1656, is generally considered to be the first published European flora of China. Its main subject matter is Chinese fruits and vegetables which are illustrated by hand-colored woodblocks. Despite its title - it also contains a number of discussions and illustrations of exotic birds and animals - including a rather lumpy looking hippopotamus which was apparently included because of the use of its tooth ivory by the Indians and Chinese.
Although the Portuguese made the first contact with Japan in 1542 and Xavier set up Christian missions there in 1549 - later Japanese rulers adapted a more isolationist policy and eliminated the missions and put severe limitations on European contacts and trading. By 1590, the Dutch had supplanted the Portuguese as the European power in the Far East and were the only Europeans allowed to trade with or even visit Japan. Not all of the employees of the Dutch East India Company were Dutch, however, and two of these foreign employees were to prove instrumental in introducing Japanese plants to Europe.
Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716) was a German traveler and naturalist who served as a physician to the Company - serving it in Japan from 1690 to 1692. The next work on display is his Amoenitatum exoticarum politico-physico-medicorum fasciculi published in Lemgo in 1712, which includes accounts of his observations on an earlier trip with the Swedish embassy to Persia, a discussion of the date palm, a treatise on Japanese papermaking, and a prodromus to a full-scale Japanese flora (which was never to see publication). The prodromus include descriptions of many of the plants which Kaempfer introduced to Europe with engraved illustrations by F. W. Brandswagen and August Moritz.
The Corning Collection also contains a rather curious manuscript version of this work which seems identical with the printed version - except for the addition of references from François Xavier Charlevoix's Histoire et Description Générale du Japon - which was not published until 1736.
Years later, Kaempfer was followed by Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828), a Swedish botanist and physician who was a pupil of Linnaeus. Like Kaempfer, he served as a doctor with the Dutch East India Company - in which role he visited the Cape of Good Hope, Java, and Ceylon, as well as Japan. Like Kaempfer, he wrote extensively of his experiences and brought back many new specimens of plants to Europe. The Corning Collection includes a number of his works including his Flora Japonica (1784) and his Resa uti Europa, Africa, Asia (1788-1793) which describes his travels. The work currently on display is his Icones plantarum Japonicarum published at Upsala from 1794 to 1805, which provides additional plates illustrating the plants described in the Flora Japonica.
The Japanese, of course, had their own vision of their flora, fauna, and culture which serves as the focus of the remaining works in the current exhibit. One manifestation of the Japanese vision was in the art of ikebana or flower arranging. Traditionally the art is supposed to have originated with Buddhist monks in China and India gathering broken flowers after a storm and placing them in jars of water on their altars to preserve them, or, according to other accounts, they were placed on the altars as sacrificial objects. With the introduction of Buddhism to Japan in 553 A.D., the new art form was born through the offices of Prince Sho-toku (Sho-toku-taishi) and his cousin, Ono-no-Imoko, who occupied the Rokkakudo (Hexagonal Temple) of Kyoto who spent their spare time arranging flowers for the temple according to the custom of China in elaborate designs built around religious symbols and nature worship. This grew into a definite art form which some years later was formalized by the creation of the first school of ikebana with Ono-no-Imoko as its headmaster. The oldest of the schools was named Ikenobo, meaning priest of the lake, referring to its first headmaster. The largely vertical elements of the school's designs are shown here in the hand-colored illustration of the Shinsen Heika-Zui (Sketches of Flower Arrangements) compiled by Chuzaemon Yamanaka and published at Kyoto in 1698.
Much of Japanese art is said to be derived from that of China - one of the set traditional forms is the pairing of birds and plants to form a single composition. Our display features two examples of this form in the Hyaku Kacho Gafu, a collection of 100 paintings by Mitsunari Tosa dating from around 1710 - and an anonymous undated collection labeled simply Bairei.
A closely related form is the study of individual flowers represented here by the Shichijuniko Meika Gacho (Album of Beautiful Flowers of 72 Seasons) drawn by Shoseki Kose which was published by Kose Zennosuke at Kyoto in 1892.
The exhibit concludes with an example of the influence of Europe on Japanese botany in the Shoku Gaku Keigen - an 1837 edition of the first European botany printed in Japan - or so our information says. The problem is that this copy features what appear to be paintings rather than woodcuts accompanying the printed text and none of the illustrations resemble that of the 1833 edition shown in Harley Harris Bartlett and Hide Shohara's Japanese Botany during the Period of Wood-Block Printing (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1961).
This is the text of the exhibit in the Rare Book Room of the Warren H. Corning Library and Visitor Center of The Holden Arboretum, 9500 Kirtland, Ohio which may be viewed Tuesday through Friday from 10 am to 4:45 pm, November 1 through November 28, 2000.
Stanley H. Johnston, Jr., Ph.D., Curator of Rare Books