Robert Neff has authored and co-authored several books, including Letters from Joseon, Korea Through Western Eyes and Brief Encounters.
The Pearl and the gingko
The 400-year-old gingko tree in Yangsu-ri in Gyeonggi-do.
By Robert Neff
In 1885, Captain C. F. Anderson sailed to Korea in search of pearls ― his small schooner was, appropriately enough, named The Pearl. His quest was a financial failure but he did return to San Francisco with one valuable item ― a chair.
It is unclear how true the account is, but according to Anderson (who did not speak any Korean), while visiting Seoul, he encountered a Korean “harvesting [a] chair” from a giant gingko tree ― “cutting it away from the ground just as one would clip off a bunch of lettuce.” In all of his 40 years of traveling around the globe, Anderson had never seen anything like it and had to have it.
Anderson's description of the “furniture horticulturist” seems rather romantically generic: the Korean gentleman was dressed in “loose yellowish white breeches, white stockings and long white gown, all tied on with strings, as buttons were unknown in that country at the that time. Around his waist was tied a great green bag in which he carried tobacco, flint and steel. His hair was wound in a tight knot on top of his head, and as a fitting climax, he wore a wide bamboo hat with a metal rim.”
The captain claimed that the Korean man's father had personally planted the tree and “for 20 long years, this patient [Korean] proved faithful to the task, never missing a day, always watching and studying for effect, and giving nature a course in discipline such as she had never known before, and probably never will know again. Much pruning was necessary to make the lower branches develop in size and strength. The chair was slowly formed by tying the young and pliable twigs together with strong fiber ropes, and as the tree expanded the ropes held firm, even though the wood bulged all about them in knotty deformity. The chair is three feet four inches in height and 25 inches in width, and some of the knots that formed between the binding ropes are 21 inches in circumference. The wood, which is golden brown in color, rivals the imperishable oak in hardness and durability, and has taken a fine polish.”
The Korean clearly “seemed overcome with sorrow” as he harvested the chair ― perhaps remembering how his “father had toiled and struggled for so many years” nurturing the tree ― but the family's economic plight and the American's offer of a handsome price left him with no choice, and the once treasured living-heirloom became the property of an American sea captain.
Korean curios on display in Vietnam in 1902. Korean furniture ― especially the items sold in the Jeongdong area ― was quite popular with Western visitors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Anderson quickly loaded his newly acquired prized possession aboard his ship ― no easy matter as it weighed well over 100 pounds ― and left Korea bound for the United States. The Pearl arrived in San Francisco on November 28, 1886. Curious to note, that while it was reported to be filled with a wealth of Korean artifacts (“five cases of specimens of minerals, rocks and productions”) for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., there is no mention of the chair.
Perhaps it was because the good captain immediately took it to a San Franciscan dealer and pitched the item as “a solid mass of nature growth, where branches have coiled and curved and intertwined, and for once, at least, nature achieved the unusual feat of cheating the hardware man, the upholsterer and the cabinetmaker.”
We are not sure how much Anderson received for it but several years later, T. P. Lukens, a collector, paid “an exorbitant price” and the chair became part of his valuable collection. What became of it afterward is unknown. Perhaps it was destroyed in an earthquake or fire or, hopefully, maybe it is in someone's dusty attic waiting to be rediscovered.