Harrison Schley Appraisals, LLC

Harrison Schley, Ph.D., International Society of Appraisers, Member, is a specialist in fine and decorative Asian art as well as Judaica from across the globe. 

Harrison speaks, reads, and writes Japanese and can translate texts written in Japanese, Classical Chinese, kuzushiji (Japanese cursive), as well as decipher seals and Chinese clerical script. For Judaica research and appraisals he can provide translations of texts written in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Aramaic. 

In 2020, Harrison was awarded a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania where his research focused on Japanese history, art, and the history of Japanese ceramics. He is a former Fulbright Fellow and has spent over two years living and researching in Japan. 

Harrison has worked extensively with some of North America’s most substantial collections of Asian art. In 2021 and 2022 he was a Smithsonaian Institution Postdoctoral Fellow and the National Museum of Asian Art. Since 2010, Harrions has worked regularly with the Asian collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, including three years as a Curatorial Research Assistant in the East Asian Art department. 

All appraisal work strictly adheres to the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) and is completed to the highest standards for accurate and detailed research.

Harrison is also an independent scholar of Asian Art. His doctoral thesis (2020), “Makers and the Art Market: Marketing and the Aesthetics of Edo period Ceramics” explores the role of merchants and marketing in the development of ceramics aesthetics during Japan’s Edo period (1615-1868). Other research interests include the history of cataloging and canonizing art in Japan and elsewhere, the history of foreigner communities in Japan during the 15th through 19th centuries, and the history and material culture of early Jewish communities in Japan and East Asian more broadly.