Photographs of the famous Willow Pattern Tea House, Shanghai.

A collection of scarce photographs of Shanghai's renowned Willow Pattern Tea House in the late Qing and early republican eras. These images capture the bustling atmosphere of sociability, consumption, and conversation in this quintessential Chinese urban institution, and show how tea houses acted as barometers of socio-cultural change during China's transition to modernity. The Willow Pattern Tea House (Chinese: Huxinting or Woo Sing Ding), thought to be one of the oldest tea houses in China, is a Shanghai landmark named in English after its similarity to the design of blue and white willow pattern crockery. Built in the 16th century near the Yu Gardens as a scholar's retreat, it was restored and converted into a tea house in 1855 during the Xianfeng dynasty. Among its most distinctive features is the zigzagging Nine Curve Bridge used by visitors to cross the surrounding lake. A draw for many dignitaries, Willow Pattern was visited by Queen Elizabeth II during her 1986 state visit and by Bill Clinton in 1998. In addition to the early 1930s panorama, this collection includes four stereograph cards from leading publishers: a. "Where Shanghai's Wealthy Natives Pass the Time - Chinese Tea House, China". Underwood & Underwood. Albumen print, photograph taken c.1900 by the traveller James Ricalton (1844-1929). We have traced copies in the Library of Congress, Museum of New Zealand, and UC Riverside. b. "A Pretty Little Tea House Known as the Willow Pattern, Shanghai, China" (two copies). H. C. White Co. Silver gelatine print, photograph taken in 1901, card issued in 1903 or later. Series number 22, negative 3729. No institutional copies traced. c. "Where a Famous Oriental Love Story was Born". Keystone View Company. Silver gelatine print, series number 981, negative 23979, issued as part of Keystone's 1200-card "Tour of the World" series (1935/6). We have traced examples at William & Mary and Marist, and complete sets appear occasionally in commerce. The earliest photograph, "Where Shanghai's Wealthy Natives Pass the Time", shows men of a range of ages in the tea house's refined surroundings, all with prescribed queues and mostly looking out the window, likely toward some form of entertainment or performance typically laid on for patrons at the best tea venues. "A Pretty Little Tea House", also from the late Qing dynasty, shows the exterior as seen looking over the Nine Curve Bridge; once again, the tea house is an exclusively male space, with the addition of two foreign visitors taking a picture against the picturesque background. Keystone's later stereograph and the contemporary panorama taken from a similar angle together capture the changes wrought by the end of dynastic rule and the advent of a more distinctive cultural modernity in urban areas. New fashion styles, advertising boards placed on surrounding structures, and a higher footfall of visitors (still, however, predominantly male) evoke the bustle of Shanghai in the roaring twenties and early thirties. Four captioned stereograph cards (88 x 178 mm), each with rounded corners and two mounted 80 x 78 mm albumen or silver gelatine photographs. Together with silver gelatine panorama (100 x 248 mm) with matt finish and small margin. A well-preserved collection, two stereographs slightly yellowed, one of these with conspicuous brushstrokes, silver mirroring at foot of panorama.…