Mar 15 2005
The Newark Museum is giving a present to those of us who love weddings. From now through September 4, 2005, they are presenting Here Come the Brides: Fairy Tales, Folklore and Wedding Traditions, a series of five exhibitions that showcase the wedding customs, fashions and traditions of China, Victorian America, Morocco, Korea and Japan. Hundreds of items, including dresses, jewelry, furnishings, historic photographs and videos from the museum’s collection as well as from private lenders, including several New Jersey families, are on view throughout the Museum. The exhibitions, which explore this universal life event celebrated by all cultures and peoples, are titled: The Bride Wore Red: Chinese Wedding Traditions; Alice Ballantine’s Victorian Wedding; A Bride in Rural Morocco; Queen for a Day: Korean Bridal Traditions and A Bride in Old Japan. The main exhibition, The Bride Wore Red: Chinese Wedding Traditions, is the first exhibition of its kind in this country. Traced from China and Chinese families in the United States, more than 280 items dating from the eighteenth century to the present will be set among festive pavilions and gardens in the Museum’s special exhibition spaces on the first floor.
“Marriage is such an important institution in Chinese society and the continuation as well as transformation of wedding rituals and traditions is fascinating,” says Valrae Reynolds, Curator of Asian Collections for The Newark Museum. “We are grateful for the generosity of so many families willing to share their stories and mementos, as well as those of their parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents.”
The first item that visitors will encounter is an ornate nineteenth-century wedding palanquin, a carriage used in the past to transport a bride to her new home. The last component in the exhibition is a recreation of a traditional Chinese bridal chamber, circa 1890; a beautifully carved and lacquered bed, covered with embroidered silks and special decorations, is accentuated by paneled screens, decorative lanterns, porcelain teacups and other furnishings.
Between these two settings, viewers can see a variety of bridal dresses spanning two centuries, such as the finely embroidered silk jackets and skirts of the 1880s, the tight spangled “chipao” of the 1920s and ‘30s, and the western-inspired “princess” dresses common today. These garments will be situated in vignettes that include family photographs, wedding gifts, invitations, and elements of the trousseau. The important tea ceremony, in which the parents are honored, will be set in a traditional Chinese room, with formal chairs, tables and portraits of the couple’s ancestors.
This exhibition was organized by Ms. Reynolds, with the assistance of Wei Zhou, The Newark Museum’s Marketing Manager and liaison to the Asian community, Connie Wu, Engineering and Pattern Information Specialist, Rutgers University and Dorothy Ko, Professor of History, Barnard College, Columbia University.
In The Ballantine House, the nineteenth-century mansion located on the museum’s campus, Ulysses Grant Dietz, Curator of Decorative Arts, is recreating the 1899 wedding of Alice Isabel Ballantine and Henry Young Jr. Alice Ballantine’s Victorian Wedding, a special installation based on eyewitness accounts from Newark newspapers, will give visitors an opportunity to view the forerunner of today’s “princess weddings.” As they walk through the National Historic Landmark, elaborately decorated with orchids, cala lilies, roses, lilies-of-the-valley and potted palms, they will see “Alice” in a silk embroidered gown, similar to the one she wore more than a century ago. Her widowed “mother,”will be in the master bedroom, wearing a black lace dress that was designed for her by Jeanne Paquin of Paris. The “groom,” in tailcoat and white tie, will be waiting in the library, with examples of period and contemporary engagement and wedding rings on view nearby. An assortment of nearly 40 wedding gifts such as coffee sets, plates, candlesticks, vases, bowls and sculpture, are displayed in the Billiard Room; made of silver, bronze, ceramics and glass, they include of number of items made by Tiffany. In the Dining Room, set up for the reception with five small tables, an extravagant three-tiered cake sits on the bridal table. An ornamental cake topper, nearly 15 inches tall, was created in Newark for a bride in 1891; perched on a pedestal, it completes the installation.
The great Tudor-style library on the house’s third floor was a wedding gift for Alice and Henry, but it is rarely accessed by visitors today. Until September 4, it will be opened for tours and special events related to the exhibition.
Continue to Page Two to read about Moroccan, Korean, and Japanese wedding traditions.
