16 October 2025
Grace Tu
Professor J. Gilbert & Cora McAllister’s large and eclectic collection was informed by a deep love for Asian cultures and antiquities coupled with a scholarly approach. Their collection spanned vast time periods, materials, and included pieces from China, Japan, Korea, South East Asia and more.
This November, we are delighted to offer Part II of the Collection of Professor J. Gilbert & Cora McAllister.
The collection was mostly acquired in the 1960s and 1970s, variously from Cora and Gilbert’s friends and fellow academics who made trips to Asia (some of whom were commissioned specifically by Gilbert), their usual dealers and contacts, as well as from fellow collectors.
Dr. J. Gilbert McAllister (1904 – 1993) was Emeritus Professor in Anthropology at the University of Texas. Primarily a cultural anthropologist, he also carried out significant archaeological research. Cora McAllister (1904 – 1995) graduated from the University of Texas in 1924 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In the early 1930s, she and her husband Gilbert spent a transformative year living among the Kiowa-Apache people in Oklahoma, where Gilbert carried out his pioneering field research.
In 1935, Gilbert was lured back to the University of Texas, where, by 1935, he became Chairman of the department and head of a large archaeological program. There, Gilbert (or Dr. Mac as he was affectionately known by his students) made his name as an archaeological administrator and especially as a remarkable teacher for over 33 years until his retirement in 1968. In a Memorial Resolution Committee Memorandum, it is noted that he had a “massive integrity about him” and “we talk about role models these days. He was one of the good ones”.
The snuff bottle collection, mostly acquired in the 1960s and 1970s, was particularly close to their heart. By 1st June 1965 Gilbert wrote that he already had “forty bottles of all kinds: porcelain, agate, glass (both interior painted and overlay), ivory, white jades, cinnabar, rutile quartz etc”. Even by that time he noted that “Perry’s book [“Bob C. Stevens Snuff Bottles” by Lila S. Perry] has created quite a demand around here…” and it was increasingly difficult to get the bottles they wanted. Therefore they were always on the lookout for friends making trips to China.
Gilbert wrote that in 1964 Cora’s friend, Leah Andrews, bought five bottles for them from Hang Tai Art and Curio Co., 38 Cameron Road, Kowloon and in 1965 Emma Schweppe was in Hong Kong and bought more, again from Hang Tai Art.
In 1966 Gilbert commissioned Joseph Jones, a visiting scholar at the University of Hong Kong, to source bottles for him and sent letters specifying his requirements, including forwarding advances. Gilbert cautioned Joe not to get “bitten by the bug” and mentioned he was “terribly indebted” to him to which Joe replied, “I’ll be glad to send you some more [bottles], much as it hurts me to see you spending money like this…”. Gilbert wrote that any “mistakes” or “duplicates” can be easily passed on to his network of dealers. One letter encloses this receipt from Dunt King, Victory House, No.4 Wellington Street, Hong Kong for 14 bottles, including lots 6, 10, 12 and 22.
At one point Gilbert wrote with determination for getting just the right jade bottles. He parted with one jade lamenting that although it is “a lovely little thing and looks quite old” but it “just did not show up in our collection”.
He liked the vibrant shade of green and his white jades and perhaps fully satisfied his search in the early 1970s with the purchase of spectacular Suzhou School type and Russet Skin 'Buddhist Lion' Snuff Bottle.
Cora and Gilbert built an extensive network of friends, dealers and fellow collectors through the years. On February 15, 1968 Hugh Moss wrote in response to a letter from Cora. Although he was just 26 years old at the time he had been collecting bottles since he was 16 and spoke of “an enormous book” he planned to write which would take a couple of years to do. The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle was published 25 years later (in two magnificent volumes).
In late June 1976, Cora and Gilbert purchased most of the Major Curtis Quisenberry Collection from his widow, Alberta. Major Quisenberry acquired the collection in the 1950s when he was stationed in Korea of which two highlights show below.
“Dr. McAllister was … one of the great teachers in America. He was the finest teacher I ever had … He made us think... But most important[ly] he made us aware of our world and taught us how - not what - to think about that world.”
- Joe D. Gilliland in a letter to The Daily Texan
