Exhibition features historic botanical ties

An exhibition in the unlikely surroundings of a decommissioned church opposite the Houses of Parliament in London is shedding new light on an 18th century botanical exchange between China and England that sowed the seeds of a shared knowledge partnership that continues to the present day.

The exhibition, Seeds of Exchange: Canton and London in the 1700s, is at the Garden Museum, the first such museum anywhere in the world, and focuses on the work of John Bradby Blake, an employee of the East India Company, who, in the late 18th century, commissioned local plant expert Whang At Tong and artist Mak Sau to help him compile a detailed record of the plants found in regions around the city that was then known as Canton, now Guangzhou.

When Blake died young, Whang At Tong took over his work and traveled to London where Blake's father introduced him to many important people, including Joseph Banks, the first director of London's Kew Gardens.

To this day, Kew, which in February hosted a Chinese orchid festival, remains one of the world's most prestigious centers for botanical studies. It works closely with leading Chinese institutions, and last year signed a new 10-year partnership with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The collection of Blake's study notes and Mak Sau's paintings was later split between Blake's descendants, with the notes ending up in the library of Canterbury Cathedral in England, and the pictures being purchased by the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia in the United States.

This exhibition is the first time the papers, including an early bilingual pictionary and plant catalogs known as herbals, and 30 of the collection's 130 watercolor paintings, have been reunited and displayed together.

Curator Emma House said the true value of the collection of pictures and research notes is the insight it offers into an early exchange of knowledge between the two cultures.

"It's unique to have the archive material — we know the name of the person who did the research and we know who they were," she explained. "Often, we know who the British person involved was, but we have no information on the local input. Here, we have all this and we know who the people were. Whang At Tong's voice comes through.

"After Blake died, he didn't need to come to London and bring the collection, but it was obviously important to him, so, he safeguarded the project and brought it over, and stayed working with Blake's father. His name is mentioned a lot (in the annotations)."

Blake was sent to China for commercial reasons, to study, catalog, and report back to his employers about local plants, with an eye on commercial exploitation. But this collection was compiled outside of work, in his free time, as a genuine labor of love, because of his clear passion for the subject.

Blake's father shared his enthusiasm for botany, which ensured the collection came into being in the first place. And, after his death, the work was continued and preserved, allowing the exhibition to take place centuries later.

"It was quite a long-term project, as they had to return to different plants at different times of year, such as flowering time or fruiting time, to update the pictures, and they had to keep records," explained House. "We don't know a great deal about Mak Sau, although you can tell that the pictures have all been done by one person, but Blake's notes talk a lot about Whang At Tong's local knowledge and input."

Whang At Tong made such an impact on London society that he ended up having his portrait painted by one of Britain's most famous artists, Joshua Reynolds, a picture that can be seen in the exhibition. House said there was a genuine enthusiasm for people to meet him, as "there was an interest in looking out towards the empire and the people Britain was engaging with through the empire".

In the spirit of this meeting of minds across the globe, on May 7, the exhibition will host a seminar featuring academics and researchers from all over the world, who have been working on the Blake collection for more than a decade and who can bring the pictures and pages to life in a three-dimensional way through their insight.

But for all that has sprung out of what was, originally, a business research project, it is one of the personal effects in the exhibition that is most revealing about the exchange of knowledge all those centuries ago — Blake's pictionary.

"There were dictionaries before, but they tended to focus on trade," said House. "This seems to be a private thing of Blake's. It's more about things that might interest someone personally, like food and animals, which is what makes it quite unique. It's heavily annotated, so that shows people were using it to understand language and words, and to exchange information."