Chinese 19C Green Silk Embroidered Altar Cloth Panel. The fine 19th century silk panel depicts butterflies amongst exotic foliage. The panel is exquisitely hand embroidered in brilliant silk floss embellished with a gold thread vase motif and forbidden stitch flower. Accented with blue silk embroidery. Finished with a silk multicolored rope edge and backed with pink fabric backing. In good condition, aside from some very minor light water staining. Measures 28 inches by 28 inches. From the estate of Dr. J. Ward Hall, dentist to the Chinese Imperial Family, personal dentist to the emperor. The antique textile will include photos of the interior of Dr. Hall's Shanghai residence taken in the 1880's showing his collection of antique Chinese textiles on the wall. Textile panel will also include original Jordan family note cards, with the Jordan family crest.

Dr. James Ward Hall (1849-1908) graduated Missouri Dental College in 1876 and was named professor of surgical and operative dentistry in 1878 - Worlds Columbia Dental Congress. At the solicitation of a friend, he moved to Shanghai, China in 1878 and began a lucrative dental practice becoming dentist to the Emperor of China. Dr. J. Ward Hall resided in Shanghai for the rest of his life, some thirty years. And in the ensuing years amassed an impressive collection of Chinese antiques, some possibly gifts from the Chinese Imperial Emperor Guangxu (1875-1908). Dr. Hall beautifully displayed the collection throughout his Shanghai residence.

In a May 16, 1907 letter Thomas Barbour of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University recounts being introduced to the American dentist Dr. Ward Hall in his 1913 book “Letters Written While On A Collecting Trip in the East Indies. He describes Dr. Ward Hall as…… “a collector of old Chinese things and I never saw or imagined anything so filled to overflowing with attractive things as his house is. He has in one room a screen over fifteen feet high of dark wood heavily and magnificently carved with dragons, birds, clouds, bats, flowers, etc. and panels of mosaic silk, which looked like the finest embroidery. This came from an old emperor’s palace.” Barbour goes on to describe the collection….. “of old China and porcelain, bronze incense burners and oil vessels…..He has been years and years collecting them.”

After his death in 1908, Dr. Hall’s sister Mrs. Clifford Hall Jordan of Chicago inherited much of the collection. She and her husband Scott Jordan, president of C. H. Jordan & Co., Funeral Directors, (a firm established in 1854 that handled arrangements when Abraham Lincoln’s body was brought to Chicago in 1865), displayed the collection of fine Chinese antiquities in their gilded age stone mansion in the Edgewater neighborhood on Lake Michigan in Chicago. The collection was passed down to their only child, W. Beaumont Jordan (1898-1973) and then on to his family descendants. Hall and Jordan family members emigrated from England to Massachusetts in the 1600’s, eventually settling in Piqua, Ohio.