A group of four rubbings of a Northern Wei stele, Early 20th century

Collection of Esther Underhill Haviland (1921-1996) and John McMullen Farrior (1920-1989), acquired in China between 1947 and 1950, and thence by descent.

From 1947 to 1950, Esther Underhill Haviland (1921-1996) lived in Beijing at a moment when scholarship and history converged. As a graduate student at Tsinghua University and a member of the first cohort of Fulbright scholars, she studied archaeology under Chen Mengjia, the first and foremost scholar of China’s ancient bronzes and oracle bones of the period. Analyzing fragments of inscribed oracle bones, Haviland sought to trace the military history of the Shang dynasty, searching for narratives carried across millennia. In Beijing, she met John McMullen Farrior (1920-1989), and the two married in July 1949, with Chen Mengjia, Esther's teacher, mentor and then already close friend, escorting her down the aisle. A summary of Esther’s Fulbright years appears in Wilma Fairbank's America’s Cultural Experiment in China, 1942–1949, Washington, D.C., 1976, pp 186-187, capturing a brief, luminous chapter in the long history of this cultural exchange.