Provenance:
Don Pedro Alejandro Paterno (1857– 1911) and
Doña Luisa Piñeyro de Lugo y Merino (Sra. de Paterno, d. 1897)

Exhibited:
Exposicion General de Las Islas Filipinas, 1887,
Palacio de Cristal, Parque de Retiro, Madrid;
Exposicion Historico-Americana, 1892 alongside the Exposicion
Historico Europe, Palacio de Biblioteca y Museos Nacionales (National
Library and Museums) 1892, Parque de Madrid (formerly Parque de
Retiro), Madrid
Exposicion Historico-Natural y Etnográfica, Palacio de Biblioteca y
Museos Nacionales (National Library and Museums) 1892, Parque de
Madrid (formerly Parque de Retiro), Madrid, 1893
Exposición Regional Filipina, Manila, 1895

ABOUT THE WORK

This Japanese hanging lamp of tinted lightwood has five reverse–painted glass panels depicting hunting scenes during the Meiji period (1868–1912). The first panel is an access door to the crosshatched lamp base where the user could put an oil lamp or a candle. This type of hanging lamp was documented to have hung in residential pavilions in the various “treaty ports” during the reign of the enlightened Meiji Emperor (1868–1912). This particular Japanese hanging lamp once hung in a Winter Garden/conservatory of Don Pedro Paterno’s apartments at the Palacio de Duque de Salamanca at Calle Sauco #16 in Madrid, Spain during the 1880s. This Japanese hanging lamp was thought lost to time until it surfaced with a group of singular objects owned by Don Pedro Paterno from the estate of his wife Doña Luisa Piñeyro y Merino in Spain. It was well–documented in photographs as one of the lighting fixtures Paterno used in his Calle Sauco #16 home. The objects remained in the Piñeyro residence when the childless Paterno couple returned to Filipinas in the 1890s; Doña Luisa passed away in Manila in 1897; Don Pedro passed away 14 years later in 1911. The Piñeyro family did not express any interest to claim anything from Don Pedro’s estate. With its reappearance, the circle of provenance has been completed. Europe had been obsessed with Oriental objects from “Cathay,” specifically Chinese decorative arts --- silk, porcelain, lacquer, ivory --- for centuries. Silk was highly prized by the Romans, although they had little idea of its origins. Those objects first came to Europe through the “Silk Route” passing the Central Asian steppes with the hardy Arab and Persian traders. The powerful trading republics of Pisa, Genova, and Venezia established ties with Canton in the 600s and still held the monopoly 600 years later in the 1200s. In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I of England approved the establishment of the East India Company to trade with Canton, with the shipping route still through the Atlantic down to the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa. By the 1700s, precious Chinese goods crowded the warehouses of the maritime powers in Europe: England, Holland, Germany, France, Spain, and Portugal. When American Commodore Matthew C Perry forced Nippon to open the treaty ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade in 1853–54, and four years later the additional ports of Kanagawa, Hyogo, Nagasaki, and Niigata, the United States of America had opened the long–shuttered country to the world. Matters came to a head in 1869 with the opening of the Suez Canal in Egypt, which significantly cut travel time and most importantly, costs, between Europe and Asia. The 1870s saw the fashions for Chinoiserie, Japonaiserie, and L’Orientalisme sweep through Europe. Every affluent European residence had a Chinese room, Japanese room, Moroccan room, and Venetian room with the corresponding collections. It was a worldwide trend and the fashions spread to the United States and to the rest of the civilized world, including Las Islas Filipinas, where the “ilustrados” who studied in Europe brought home Continental and Oriental furnishings and decorations that were all the vogue in Madrid, Paris, London, and Berlin. The residences of the “ilustrados” all had their requisite Oriental rooms and collections: Trinidad H Pardo de Tavera y Gorricho (Intramuros, Manila), Pedro Paterno y Devera Ygnacio (Santa Cruz, Manila), Dr Maximino Paterno y Devera Ygnacio (Calle San Sebastian, Manila), Dr Ariston Bautista y Lintingco (Santa Cruz, Manila), Pablo Ocampo (Calle San Sebastian, Manila), Juan Tuason y de la Paz (Calle Aviles, San Miguel, Manila), Leon Maria Guerrero (Ermita, Manila), Rafael Guerrero (Ermita, Manila), Marcelino de Santos (Tondo, Manila), Mariano Ponce (Baliuag, Bulacan), Dr Maximo Viola (San Miguel de Mayumo, Bulacan), Dr Joaquin Gonzalez y Lopez (Sulipan, Apalit, Pampanga), Valentin Ventura (Bacolor, Pampanga), Jose Infante y Rodriguez (Guagua, Pampanga), et al.