Museum focuses on old items of everyday use

NANJING — When was the last time you visited a museum where almost every collection could be touched? In the ancient city of Suzhou in East China’s Jiangsu province, lawyer Mitch Dudek from the United States built a private museum where visitors can have direct contact with all the exhibits on display.

“The museum is named Six Arts because it is about the six senses and stimulating all of your senses. You can touch things. You can smell things. It’s different from other museums,” says Dudek.

Founded in 2018, the four-story museum now houses more than 40,000 Chinese antiques dating back to the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911), with another 60,000 items stored in warehouses. The antiques include wooden beds, folding screens, sedan chairs, washbasins and stone statues, among others.

“The collections not only help revisit old times, but also render a sense of beauty,” says Xu Yun, a visitor from Shanghai. “There is even a smell of herbs emanating from the medicine boxes here.”

Xu says that most of the antiques were items of daily use in Chinese families before the 1990s, which have been overshadowed by new designs and styles.

Having never seen or used such items in his own country, Dudek is seized with a strong admiration of the delicate designs and complicated carvings of these old items.

“I think they are just beautiful, and I should collect them,” says Dudek, adding that the condition of most items may deteriorate once randomly packed in the warehouses or ramshackle residences, but they could shine again via meticulous renovation and waxing.

Born in Ohio state in the US, Dudek came to China to study at Tsinghua University in the early 1980s. He moved to Shanghai in 1998 and later became a partner at law firm Morgan Lewis. He has been living in Shanghai since then.

Out of interest, Dudek started to collect Chinese antiques about 30 years ago. Back then, the poor transportation facilities and communication means prevented him from quickly tracing the items. The owners could only tell him how special and beautiful these items were via the telephone.

To obtain more details about items he was interested in, Dudek would have to personally travel across the country by slow train, which could take him several days to reach the intended destination.

“But it gave me a good chance to practice my Chinese by talking with different passengers during the long journey,” says Dudek.

He adds that most of his museum collections are from shabby houses and buildings being pulled down in remote rural areas. “Usually, their owners may discard the old items and buy modern furniture for their new houses,” he says.

Over the past decades, he also witnessed the great transformation of China in different aspects.

“When I first came to China, I felt the country lagged far behind the US, but the gap between the two countries is narrowing,” he says.

As more people learn about his interest in Chinese antiques, they offered some of their belongings.

“Collections in the museum have become more varied and abundant. Now, I plan to invite scholars and craftsmen to discover more cultural and historical stories behind them,” he says.

However, it is hard to run a private museum solely on ticketing revenue.

“We have also opened a hotel and a restaurant which we hope will share the burden of the museum,” says Dudek. “And we will look for other ways that are culturally significant to help with our finances of the museum.”