Porcelain

[By Christopher Lotis and Michel D. Lee; Foreword by P.M. Taylor. This full book is uploaded here while the Smithsonian website, where it was published online, is being revised.]

An important theme of this volume is the relationship between ceramics and cultural identity, especially as it relates to a particular family’s collection, and also to the broader study of the personal and social aspects of collecting. The book thus forms a contribution not only to the study of Korea’s material heritage but also to Korean-American or Asian-American studies, and to the
history of collecting. It will surely be of interest to art as well as social historians, and to all those who appreciate the aesthetic quality of Korea’s ceramic art.

The authors’ “behind-the-scenes” study of this private collection included the creation of an extensive research database about it, not only the ceramics included in this volume but also paintings, costumes, bronze works, and many other objects that could form the basis for subsequent studies. The collection includes some important twentieth-century ceramics that have not been included within this volume; these await study alongside other works by contemporary artists in this wide-ranging
collection. As the authors emphasize, the component of the Chang collection selected for publication here has been extensively tested using thermoluminescence testing. For this reason, these objects constitute an important “type collection” of tested pieces for this type of materials analysis, against which other ceramic works may be compared.

This book should therefore serve as an important reference for work on its topic, as a unique and well-illustrated introduction to this private collection and its significance; and hopefully also as a stimulus for other studies within this and related private collections.

[NOTE: 2 photos, available in the print edition (p. 12), have been extracted from this online book because the copyright holder disallows online publication of those photos.]

The article discusses the processes taking place in modern applied art of Tashkent on the example of the work of three modern masters - the wood master Gulyamjon Yuldashev, the miniature master Shorasul Shoahmedov and the porcelain master Rimma Gazaliyeva. The author determines the artistic originality of the process. Also revealed some problematic issues.

Die Geschichte des Porzellanikons ist eine ganz unwahrscheinliche Museumsgeschichte. In weniger als vier Jahrzehnten entwickelte sich das Haus aus bescheidenen Anfängen zum größten Spezialmuseum für Porzellan in Europa mit einem Bestand von über 240.000 Exponaten. Die Standorte des Museums – eine ehemalige Fabrikantenvilla in Hohenberg a. d. Eger und die 1866 von Jacob Zeidler begründete, später von Philipp Rosenthal übernommene Fabrik am Bahnhof Selb-Plößberg – sind bedeutende Zeugnisse der Industriekultur.

English version, for German version see below:

The dream of large-scale sculpture in porcelain in Meissen in the 1830s was not only fostered by personalities such as Elector Friedrich August I of Saxony and King of Poland, known as August the Strong (1670–1733), and modelers such as Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706–1775). Gottfried Semper (1803–1879) designed large scale objects made of porcelain around the middle of the 19th century, too. Examples of the materialization of this dream can also be found in the present. A dream, of course, which in the course of its almost 300-year lasting history has proven to be an extremely demanding undertaking and its road to realization, has also been paved with technical difficulties.

Deutsche Version:

Den Traum von der Großplastik in Porzellan hegten in Meißen in den dreißiger Jahren des 18. Jahrhunderts nicht nur Auftraggeber wie Kurfürst Friedrich August I. von Sachsen und König von Polen, genannt August der Starke (1670–1733), und Modelleure wie Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706–1775). Auch Gottfried Semper (1803–1879) versuchte sich gegen die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts an Großobjekten aus Porzellan. Beispiele der Materialisierung dieses Traums finden sich ebenfalls in der Gegenwart. Ein Traum freilich, der sich im Laufe seiner fast 300-jährigen Geschichte als ein äußerst anspruchsvolles Unterfangen erwies und dessen Weg zur Realisierung zudem mit technischen Schwierigkeiten gepflastert war.

In 2003, Australia's National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in Canberra commissioned a rising Australian contemporary artist, Ah Xian, to create a portrait of Dr John Yu, one of the country's most celebrated paediatricians. Both the artist and the subject have contributed greatly to Australian society and culture, yet it was to a certain extent their Chinese heritage that brought them together. The resulting portrait – Dr John Yu (2004, Figure 1) – communicates this ‘Chineseness’ in three interconnected aspects: above all, it is a deeply personal portrayal of a Chinese-Australian by a contemporary Chinese-Australian artist; at the same time, its medium, as well as the manner and location in which it was created, evoke an association with the history of Chinese porcelain; finally, Ah Xian's use of an iconic Chinese motif and the link that this creates with his other works suggests an added layer of cultural meaning. It is this third, cultural element that attains most significance, uniting with the personal and historical dimensions of meaning to communicate Ah Xian's and Yu's shared experiences as migrant citizens, shaped by their individual negotiations of ‘Chinese-Australian’ identity.

La porcelaine est un fil conducteur qui traverse les vicissitudes des époques. L’Empire, héritier de l’Antiquité, diffuse par l'ornementation les signes de ses victoires : la feuille de laurier, la palme, le bouclier, le trophée militaire. Le style rassemble donc les symboles du pouvoir et de la gloire, si-bien, qu’au départ de Napoléon, la Restauration l’adopte en faisant simplement évoluer les couleurs qui deviennent plus délicates avec le jaune, le blanc et le violet.

This other is available at e-Publications@Marquette: http://epublications.marquette.edu/haggerty_catalogs /18 ... Russian Imperial Porcelain from the Raymond F. Piper Collection June 1 - August 19, 2001 ... Organized by the Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette ...

高麗青瓷在十二世紀的高度發展，一般認為係受到北宋汝窯的影響之說，向來是許多研究者的論點。台北故宮博物院在北宋大觀展時將館藏汝窯與高麗青瓷一同展出，更意欲突顯兩種瓷器之間密切的影響。然而本文認為北宋汝窯與高麗青瓷之間的關連性，似乎不若一般所言那樣確鑿。因此，本文擬從探討汝窯與高麗青瓷時所常提到的文獻記載、器型釉色(外觀)、燒造技術此三方面進行比較，透過一般論者拿來當作證據的紀錄當中，試圖重新釐清北宋汝窯與高麗青瓷兩者之間的關連性與相互影響的可能性。本文認為，這些關連性過於薄弱，若要視作北宋汝窯影響高麗青瓷的證據，仍顯不足。加之汝窯目前仍有許多課題尚待解決，因此高麗青瓷受到北宋汝窯的影響，此種說法似不應成立。

This essay looks at female objectification through literary depictions of  Chinese porcelain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, examining how porcelain was used as a literary motif for women's suppression and was simultaneously used to fight back:

'European importation of Chinese porcelain begun in the sixteenth century, but truly flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Happening alongside this economic trend was the establishment of women as economic players in the market; as Alexandra Shepard argues, ‘women in England have […] been acknowledged as significant creditors of the economic growth that is discernible from the mid seventeenth century if not earlier.’  Women were appraising and buying wares, and many flocked to the fashionable New Exchange (built 1609), the main site of the Chinahouses. It is not surprising, then, that Chinese porcelain became a symbol of women’s position as a consumer and the problems that meant for male economic, sexual and domestic authority. This foreign object, brought into the domestic sphere, served as a metonym for effect that being consumers had on women.'

Colloque international. Collaboration entre le Centre André Chastel de l’université de Paris-Sorbonne et l’association Low Countries Sculpture:
"Le rôle de la sculpture dans la conception, la production, le collectionnisme et la présentation des arts décoratifs parisiens en Europe (1715-1815)"

In Southeast Asia, porcelain from Vietnam has been developed into a very sophisticated and fascinating industry. In addition to the favorable geographic location and the surrounding natural resources, Vietnamese artisans had the ability to master the skill of ceramic making. For example, during the 14th century, China and Vietnam were the only two countries capable of producing blue and white porcelain, thereby allowing the footprints of Vietnamese blue and white wares to travel across the world by means of trade.

For the future Southern Branch in Chiayi, the National Palace Museum has worked ceaselessly to acquire Asian artworks. This fine exhibition uses thirty-eight carefully selected works from the collection to represent Vietnamese ceramic culture. The collected Vietnamese blue and white porcelain dates from the 15th to 16th centuries, a period that approximately corresponds to the mid-Ming dynasty in China. Besides one or two works of art, the vast majority of the porcelain was found at the bottom of the ocean on sunken ships, alluding to the busy oceanic trade activities of the time. Thus, the items in this exhibition not only show the revolutionary and innovative character of Vietnamese porcelain, they also demonstrate a multi-faceted view of Asian culture.

Like a lotus rising from the water, this exquisite exhibition of Vietnamese blue and white wares will emerge in Chiayi, giving residents the pleasure of being first to experience the plentiful and rich cultural features of Asia through Vietnam.

« Limoges Unique France » (1928-1938), Le patronat collectif de la porcelaine et la défense ou l’illustration d’un produit spécifique », Cl. DRUELLE-KORN (dir.) Les Corps Intermédiaires économiques. Entre l’État et le marché, PULIM, 2011, p. 175-195.

Blue-and-white porcelain is a white-bodied porcelain decorated with cobalt-blue pigments which is once-fired at a temperature of 1,200 degrees Celsius or above. Until the early 20th century, blue-and-white porcelain was still considered an invention of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). However, in 1929 R. L. Hobson discovered in the collection of the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art a pair of elephant-handled blue-and-white vases decorated with dragons amid clouds that were inscribed with the date of the eleventh year of the Zhizheng era (1351), thus dating the invention of blue-and-white porcelain to the earlier Yuan dynasty. Today, Yuan dynasty blue-and-white porcelain continues to attract much attention from academic researchers and art collectors. At that time, producers of celadon wares working at the Longquan kilns in Zhejiang were seeking to compete with the underglaze blue porcelain of Jingdezhen, but celadon proved to be a poor rival to exquisite blue-and-white wares with their decorative patterns.

Outside the Yuan Court, blue-and-white porcelain wares were used as ritual vessels in monasteries and temples and were also seen in cellars and tombs. Overseas, blue-and-white porcelain found their way to Southeast Asia, Central Asian trade centers such as Khara Khoto, and even as far as palaces in India, Iran, and Turkey. During the Yuan dynasty, Jingdezhen’s underglaze blue porcelain was unrivalled—the products of other kilns in China and abroad simply could not compete.

As the Yuan dynasty gave way to the Ming, the rise in popularity of blue-and-white porcelain was meteoric, and the craze spread from Jingdezhen, taking other kilns by storm. The first place to be caught up in the craze was, surprisingly, Yunnan in China’s southwest corner. Yunnan already had a sophisticated tradition of high-temperature celadon manufacturing. Inspired by the underglaze blue wares imported from Jingdezhen, during the Hongwu reign (1368–1398) in the early Ming dynasty Yunnan successfully produced its own version of blue-and-white porcelain. The Yunnan kilns used local cobalt pigments that had a gray tint, but their wares were similar to the Jingdezhen porcelain in that they also had a multiple-layer design. Unfortunately, Yunnan blue-and-white porcelain was produced only during the Ming dynasty and was discontinued when the Qing dynasty took over.

However, in the late 15th century, enforcement of the ban on maritime trade that had been promulgated during the Hongwu period began to slacken off, and domestic and overseas demand for porcelain spiked, leading to an expansion in production of blue-and-white porcelain in China. Yaoli, Leping, Jizhou in Jiangxi started to produce underglaze blue wares, and by the 16th century, production has spread to Zhangzhou and Dehua in Fujian and Chouzhou in Guangdong. By the 17th century, local kilns had even developed the transfer printing technique in order to mass-produce blue-and-white porcelain.

Blue-and-white porcelain mushroomed in China during the Ming dynasty, and during this 300-year period kilns in other Asian countries were also turning out impressive blue-and-white porcelain wares. Vietnam, which had the most mature ceramics industry in Southeast Asia, first turned out high-fired underglaze blue porcelain in its northern kilns in the second half of the 14th century (i.e. early Ming dynasty). Towards the middle of the Ming dynasty, as imperial kilns during the Zhengtong, Jingtai, and Tianshun reigns (1436–1464) entered an ambiguous “dark” period, blue-and-white porcelain emerged in Korea. Although Korean blue-and-white wares were of limited number and used only in the court, they still form an important chapter in the history of the Korean ceramics industry, which was long dominated by white porcelain and celadon. The Japanese invasions of Korea in the late 16th century (1592–1598, known as the Battle of Bunroku and Keichō in Japan and the Wanli Korean Campaign in China) dealt a significant blow to the Korean ceramics industry. Japan captured Korean pottery craftsmen during the war, who enabled the techniques for producing high-fired porcelain to take root in Japan’s Kyushu region, and Japan started producing blue-and-white porcelain in the second decade of the 17th century. Later on, the chaos of war-torn China during the late Ming and Qing dynasties caused the country’s porcelain industry to come to a halt, and the Qing Court once again imposed a ban on maritime trade, so Japan took advantage of the vacuum to produce export items, primarily blue-and-white porcelain, and took over the Southeast Asian and European markets from China. Until Europeans cracked the secret of how to produce this “white gold” in the 18th century, China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan were the only four countries that were able to produce blue-and-white porcelain. With the exception of Korea, which produced blue-and-white porcelain for domestic use, the other three countries all exported their immensely popular wares across the world.

The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History states: “In general, the most creative response to Chinese porcelain by other ceramic traditions arose in regions with a sophisticated culture (as characterized by density of urban life, organized religion, and some measure of literacy)”. Undoubtedly, China had the most advanced porcelain-making techniques, and the other three countries mentioned above also had sophisticated cultural traditions, and their geographical proximity to China facilitated technical exchanges. However, a fact that cannot be overlooked is that all three of these countries started to produce blue-and-white porcelain during the Ming dynasty, which indicates not only that conditions for production were falling into place, but also that they may have interacted with Ming kilns.

Art historian Jonathan Hay once commented on cultural interaction, saying:

Thus contact between cultures always brings us back to the geographical transfer of makers, objects, or images. These last two have to be distinguished, since images (whether in three dimensions or two) can also travel, sometimes very effectively, through the medium of copies. To this list can be added technologies, but since the transmission of an artistic technology usually requires the physical transfer of either a maker or an object, it tends to represent a ‘secondary’ case.

When looking at the interaction between Asian blue-and-white porcelain industries, in addition to the transfer of makers, objects, and images, other factors should also be taken into account; for example, indispensible raw materials (porcelain clay and cobalt pigment), driving forces, and sponsors. Moreover, the interaction between Asian countries cannot be understood within the monolithic, China-centric framework of the Sinitic/barbarian dichotomy, but has to take into consideration existing local traditions. This study uses cultural interaction as a point of departure and provides an overview of Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese blue-and-white porcelain created at the time of the early, mid and late Ming dynasty, respectively, and imitations across the world.

The paper discusses the Huihui characters in the Cheng-te official kiln, and the
Ming Wu-tsung’s role to the style of his imperial porcelains.
After reviewing the shapes, decorative patterns and Xiaojing scripts of the
Cheng-te official wares, it is discovered that the emergence of the Huihui porcelains
in the early Ming dynasty is the result of the influence of North-west Islamic culture.
The Cheng-te official kiln wares with Huihui characters are the evidence of the
official Islamic religious heritage in the middle of Ming dynasty and also an example
of how the style of the official wares was influenced by Ming Wu-tsung at the time.

Das „weiße Gold“ – diesen Namen und den damit verbundenen Wert trug das Porzellan in Europa über Jahrzehnte. In China entdeckt, im 17. Jahrhundert neben Seide und Tee nach Europa eingeschifft, rief es großes Staunen und Aufregung hervor. Mindestens genauso viel wert wie Gold, zählte es zum Inbegriff von Luxus. Schließlich, als man bei Johann Friedrich Böttger Porzellan auch in Europa herstellen konnte, blühte die Kunstszene damit auf.
Vom 17. bis ins 21. Jahrhundert spannt sich ein großer Bogen, dessen Entwicklung durch Höhen und Tiefen gekennzeichnet ist. Diese Seminararbeit bildet das Ende dieses Bogens und behandelt das Porzellan im Kontext der Zeitgenössischen Kunst.
Um die Wertigkeit des Porzellans heute zu verstehen, muss man jedoch zunächst seine Wertigkeit damals verstehen. Im Zuge dessen werde ich im ersten Kapitel einen kurzen Einblick in die Geschichte des Porzellans geben und vor allem seinen Bedeutungswandel vom 17. Jahrhundert über die Industrialisierung bis heute erläutern. Daran anschließend werden drei verschiedene zeitgenössische Werkbeispiele und der individuelle Zugang der verschiedenen KünstlerInnen besprochen. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf Ai Weiweis Sunflower Seeds, um das Porzellan aus dem Blickwinkel eines zeitgenössischen Künstlers zu betrachten, der 2011 von ArtReview zur einflussreichsten Person der Kunstwelt ernannt wurde. Als weitere Werkbeispiele wurden Regular / Fragile von Liu Jianhua und All It Contains von Erica Nickol ausgewählt.

Museums around the world all share in a common purpose: To enrich our lives through the collection, research, and display of our histories, arts, and cultures. With this as our guiding star, Guangzhou Oriental Museum has struck out on an international course in the research of Chinese ceramics, thus refining a new method of ceramic research, Ceramics Trace Model Study.  This report is a mere glimpse into the concept, strategy, and focus of this method, as well as a progress report of the research and publications to date.

L'exemplaire numérisé est l'exemplaire de travail de Germaine Faider-Feytmans, ancien conservateur du Musée de Mariemont. Les précieuses annotations qui y ont été apportées par Mireille Jottrand corrigent, entre autres, certains numéros d'inventaire et indiquent les pièces détruites lors de l'incendie du Château de Mariemont en 1960.

Chinese porcelain has always conveyed a sense of mysticism and exoticism to the occidental spectator. Marco Polo established a connection between the lustrous ceramic and naturalia, an association that was to persist into the Kunstkammers of British aristocracy. Kraak porcelain took on the role of an object of social indication through the process of transculturation, where sinocentric notions permeated a growing consumer culture. This study explores Elizabethan curiosity in the Far East through the close examination of a kraak porcelain lobed bowl, housed at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. It argues that distant origins, enigmatic alchemy and maritime deprivation all contribute to porcelain's conspicuous status amongst the Tudor elite. In a world with deficient access to the peripheral lands of 'Cathay,' kraak porcelain became an object of social indication and status in late-sixteenth century Britain. Elizabethan literature including Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and Jonson's Britain's Burse will help discover England's growing fascination in China and the semiotic capabilities of applied art.