Carl Crossman has traveled widely but never strayed far from home. A lifetime of exploration supports his essential fascination with New England and its historical ties to Asia.
:People who say that there are no characters left in the antiques business do not know Carl L. Crossman, the grand master of the China Trade for the past 40 years.
Crossman was only two years out of Wesleyan University in Connecticut — where he initially roomed with Morrison H. Heckscher, chairman of the Metropolitan Museum's American Wing — when he first published on the China Trade, an evocative term used by collectors to describe the luxury goods and household staples brought home by merchant seamen. A Design Catalogue of Chinese Export Porcelain for the American Market, 1785 to 1840 followed by two years Crossman's debut publication, his 1962 essay on the family portraits of Boston's Saltonstalls.
The Peabody Essex Museum, as it is now called, printed these booklets along with a third, A Catalogue of Chinese Export Paintings, Furniture, Silver, and Other Objects, 1785 to 1865. The latter foreshadowed Crossman's first hardcover book, The China Trade: Export Paintings, Furniture, Silver and Other Objects, 1785–1865, published in 1972. A Book of The Month Club selection, The China Trade sold out quickly. It was reprinted several times before a substantially updated version, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade: Paintings, Furnishings and Exotic Curiosities, appeared in 1993.
Since then, many scholars — William R. Sargent, Christiaan J.A. Jörg, David Sanctuary Howard, Patrick Conner and Kee Il Choi, among them — have delved deeply into Asian export art, but Crossman's well-worn references, offering an overview of the field, are still on every specialist's bookshelf. Crossman himself keeps a high profile. He lectures regularly and for eight seasons was a guest appraiser on Public Broadcasting Service's television series Antiques Roadshow.
In 1964, Crossman and Harriet Shreve organized "Chinese Export Porcelain for The American Market: 1785–1840” for the Peabody Museum of Salem. The ambitious display and accompanying catalog emphasized the chronological evolution of forms and patterns.
"In some ways, Carl has done more than all of us to promote interest in the field. He has a passion for the people behind the objects. He brings the subject to life," says Sargent, curator of Asian export art at the Peabody Essex Museum.
When Jean Gordon Lee published Philadelphians and The China Trade, 1784–1844, in 1984, she dedicated her regional study to two pioneers: H.A. Crosby Forbes, a porcelain expert and founder of the China Trade Museum, whose collections merged with those of the Peabody Essex Museum in 1984, and Crossman, who, as she put it, "wrote the seminal book in the field."
A consultant to Northeast Auctions, Crossman plays a key role in the company's annual marine and China Trade sale, which this past August generated $6.23 million and included a Sunqua portrait of a Newburyport, Mass., ship off Whampoa anchorage. It sold for $226,000, not a record, but still a handsome price. Broadly knowledgeable, Crossman is a superb cataloger and the resident house resource.
