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September 10, 2004
Nigel Allan, ed. Pearls of the Orient: Asian Treasures from the Wellcome Library Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2003. 215 pp.; 200 color ills. Cloth $50.00 (0906026601)
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CrossRef DOI: 10.3202/caa.reviews.2004.78

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The title of this volume of essays on illustrated manuscripts in the Wellcome Library, London, says more than editor Nigel Allan may have intended. The notion of gems plucked from an exoticized Orient, replete with objects there for the taking, fills colonialist—and, to build on the title, Orientalist—fantasy, including that of Sir Henry Wellcome, who founded the pharmaceutical company that bears his name and who built the collection. The Wellcome Library, a center for the...