Page 12 - Bonhams Hong Kong The Skinner Moon Flasks

T H E SK I N N ER FA M I LY M OON FL ASKS:
A FA M I LY, A N I N DUST RY, A H OUSE A N D I TS CO N T EN TS
William R. Sargent
It was the fashion, in eighteenth and nineteenth century
England and the United States, to announce ones
attainment of a certain status in the social sphere by building steaks. He would also attend plays, and he would shop at
a great country house, often on a hill with views, near a
body of water. The grounds would include a formal garden,
sometimes in the Chinese taste, often with a Chinese style
tea house. The house would contain at least one “Chinese
room,” and some number of Chinese or Chinese export
works would decorate various rooms. In addition, it would
be necessary to have a grand staircase, a great hall, a
music room, and an extensive collection reflecting the
refined tastes and connoisseurship of the owners.
For one American example we can examine the Skinner
family of Holyoke, Massachusetts. William Skinner (1834-
1902) immigrated to the United States in 1843, as a poor
but skilled nineteen year old silk dyer from Spitalfields,
the silk weaving center in London. It was said that “The
color sells the goods,” and William was recognized for his
superior dyeing abilities. He eventually went into business
for himself south of Williamsburg, Massachusetts, in 1848.
The “moth to cloth” silk industry had been a dream in the
United States for a century or more. A portrait of the Rev.
Ezra Stiles (1727-1795), the seventh president of Yale
University, depicts some of his most important books on the
shelf behind him. One is Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s “History
of China,” (the English edition was published in 1741) which
had a chapter on silk manufacturing, a particular interest
of the scholar. The difficulty of raising silk worms in the
American climate, however, led to an industry in which raw
silk was imported from elsewhere, mainly France at that
stage, and processed in the United States.
So successful was Skinner that by 1860 the area around his
mills was known as Skinnerville. He was wealthy enough
by 1868 to build a mansion in the Second Empire style, on
the Mill River close to his company. And in 1873 he opened
his own store on Broadway and Worth Street in New York.
When in New York he could be found dining at Delmonico’s
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in Lower Manhattan, one of the top dining establishments
in the United States and home of the famous Delmonico
Tiffany’s for gifts for his second wife Sarah. Tiffany’s new
store, built in 1870, was described by the New York Times
as a “palace of jewels.”
William was an imposing man who was popular in the
industry and was often called upon as a speaker for the
Silk Association annual meetings because “he tended to
keep things short.” Unfortunately for us, his son William
was equally taciturn. So much of his son’s rich and eventful
life was recorded in daily entries of only four lines, which left
little room for details, including the date and circumstances
of acquiring the flasks.
William’s personal and professional life was a model of
success. But on May 16th, 1874 a dam upriver burst and
flooded three towns on its rampage, including Skinnerville.
Many died in the flood, and Skinner’s silk mill was entirely
washed away ~ his house, the only surviving building near
the river, was damaged. He lost the equivalent of $35million
dollars in business in one day.
The town of Holyoke, seventeen miles away, extended
an invitation to rebuild there, and their offer was too good
to refuse. Skinner rebuilt his factories in Holyoke, and
dismantled his three-story house, with its five chimneys and
moved it on twenty-five railroad cars to its new location
high on a hill in overlooking the Connecticut River and his
new mills.
He eventually built a silk industry in Holyoke that had no
rivals and his sons would join him in business. William
Cobbett Skinner (1857-1947) was the first, and William C.’s
younger brother, Joseph Allen Skinner (1862-1946), was
the second. Both continued to add to the business after
their father’s death in 1902, so that by 1912 Skinner’s was
the largest silk mill in the world, with one building stretching
3 city blocks, with over five acres of floor space.