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During the 1870s, stores specializing in Japanese art and merchandise, commonly referred to as Japanese novelty stores or fancy goods stores, opened across the United States—from New York and Boston to Philadelphia, Houston, and San Francisco. These stores sold various items, such as kimono, textiles, art objects, woodblock prints, and fans. Many of the stores were owned by Japanese entrepreneurs. Art historian and print collector Hiromichi Shugio (1853–1927), was born into a privileged family in Saga Prefecture. He arrived in New York around 1880 and became the proprietor of First Japan Manufacturing and Trading Company in New York. Shugio curated the first major American exhibition of ukiyo-e prints at the Grolier Club in New York City in 1889. Bunkio Matsuki (1867–1940) came to San Francisco in 1888, soon moving to Salem, Massachusetts, where he established a Japanese section in the city’s leading department store, Almy, Bigelow & Washburn, stocking more than twenty-thousand items. Matsuki also opened a store in Boston and supplied works of art to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Tadamasa Hayashi (1853–1906) learned French in his native country of Japan before travelling to Paris in 1878 to serve as a translator at the Exposition Universelle. Hayashi decided to remain in Paris and became a highly regarded art dealer, selling ukiyo-e and other artworks to an international clientele. See “Japonisme: A Passion for Japan” on display, post-security, in Terminal 2 and online at: https://bit.ly/JaponismeSFO
This image was posted on August 22, 2022.
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