Page 180 - Ming_China_Courts_and_Contacts_1400_1450 Craig lunas

Chapter 19
Paper Money of the Ming
Dynasty: Examining the
Material Evidence
Caroline R. Cartwright,
Christina M. Duffy and Helen Wang
170 | Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450
In recent years there has been unprecedented interest in the
Ming paper money in the British Museum and British
Library collections. Much of this interest was prompted by
the inclusion of a Ming note in the British Museum/BBC
project ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’. People
involved in the production of the radio series, the website,
the book and the CD longed to describe the note in a
superlative way. But, the Ming notes are not the world’s
1
earliest paper money, the earliest surviving or the most
enduring notes in history. They are not even particularly
2
beautiful examples of Ming dynasty printing. It is well
known that the notes were made of mulberry paper, but the
sources give different botanical terms: some say Morus alba
and others Broussonetia papyrifera. In order to address this
question of which type of mulberry was used, the Ming
Dynasty Paper Money Project was initiated. Fourteen Ming
dynasty notes in the collections at the British Museum and
British Library were analysed in the first combined
microscopic examination of Ming paper money. This is a
pioneering study, providing unprecedented data for Ming
dynasty papermaking and is likely to be of interest to
historians of Ming painting, book production and
printmaking. Preliminary findings were first presented at an
international and interdisciplinary workshop on Ming
paper money at the British Museum in May 2013; then at the
Ming: 50 years that changed China exhibition and ‘Ming China:
Courts and Contacts’ conference on 9 October 2014, and at
the ‘Chinese Paper Money ad 1000–1450’ workshop at the
British Museum on 11 October 2014. A full report of the
microscopical analysis was published in the British Museum
3
Technical Research Bulletin in autumn 2014. The present
chapter starts with a short section on provenance, and then
follows with a summary view of what the curator sees when
looking at Ming notes and how much more can be
ascertained through the expertise of both the plant scientist
and the imaging scientist.
Outline history of the collections
The Ming Dynasty Paper Money Project looked at 14 Ming
notes: nine in the British Museum and five in the British
Library. Although the Museum and Library are today
separate institutions, they were previously one single
institution. In the early 1970s there was a small collection of
world paper money in the Museum’s Department of Coins
and Medals, and there was also a collection of world paper
money in the Department of Printed Books, in the Museum’s
library. The former remained in the British Museum while
the latter was moved to the newly formed British Library,
explaining why there are Ming notes in both institutions. 4
In 1977, David Wilson, Director of the British Museum,
initiated a planning committee to discuss the development
of the Museum. One of the outcomes of those discussions
was that the Department of Coins and Medals should collect
paper money, and in 1979 Virginia Hewitt was appointed as
the Museum’s first Curator of Paper Money. At that time the
Museum’s paper money collection was housed in two filing
cabinets, with each note mounted in a card frame.
Gradually, these were transferred to a new housing, with
each note placed inside a Melinex envelope and housed
within acid-free card casing. The nine Ming notes currently