>> Hello, everybody. Can you all hear me OK? I should be on the mic. My name is Maureen Warren. I'm curator of European and American
Art here at Krannert Art Museum and I welcome you this Valentine's
Day to this excellent lecture. I'd like to begin by stating that Krannert
Art Museum is part of the University of Illinois stands on the lands of the Peoria,
Kaskaskia, Piankeshaw, Wea, Miami, Mascouten, Odawa, Sauk, Meskwaki, Kickapoo,
Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Chickasaw nations. These lands were the traditional territory of these indigenous nations
prior to their forced removal. And they continue to carry the stories
of these nations and their struggles for a survival and identity today. As part of a land grant institution dedicated to
promoting the critical power of art in the past and present, Krannert Art Museum has a
responsibility to acknowledge the peoples of these lands as well as the histories of this
possession that have allowed for the growth of this university over the past 150 years. We also recognize the particular role
they have played in this history. Using our collections, programming and
collaborative relationships, we seek to address and reflect on this histories and the role that
the U of I continues to play in shaping them. I'd like to welcome this
evening, Dr. Stacey Pierson. She is here in conjunction with the exhibition
Blue and White Ceramics: A Global Obsession, which is on view through August 31st, so I
hope you take a look if you haven't already. I think it's apt that we're celebrating
Chinese ceramics and porcelain in particular today on Valentine's Day. It's certainly something that I'm
fondly in love with and I hope that you develop even more fondness
over the course of the next hour. Dr. Pierson, we're very lucky to have her. She's one of the world's foremost
experts on Chinese porcelain. She is Senior Lecturer in the history of
Chinese ceramics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She served as curator of the Percival David
Foundation of Chinese Art which houses one of the foremost collections of
Chinese ceramics outside of China, which is now on loan at the British Museum. I urge all of you to visit. And she's published widely. Now, I would read to you her very long
and extensive CD, it's very impressive, but I'm just going to highlight the one thing
I have most enjoyed, "From Object to Concept: Global Consumption and the
Transformation of Ming Porcelain". It really is accessible to a
wide audience and riveting even if you don't have quite the
bug for porcelain that I do. And also I like to thank our generous cosponsors
for this event, the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies and the Lorado
Taft Lectureship on Art Fund at the College of Fine and Applied Arts. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Pierson. [ Applause ] >> Well, thank you, Maureen,
and welcome everybody. Tonight, I would like to tell you the
story of Chinese blue and white porcelain. And it's a story that I want to start
with from its humble beginnings in the 8th to the 9th century to its development as
an imperial product in the Ming dynasty to its emergence as a worldwide product
through export from the Ming dynasty onward up to its status as a cultural icon today. So this will be a kind of chronological
overview focusing on production in China. But I think you'll find that much of what I'm
going to say tonight will actually help you to better appreciate the exhibition that's
on view, which I was really impressed with, I have to say, because it really kind of gives
you a wonderful global perspective on blue and white as a style, but
also on ceramics themselves. So our story begins with a shipwrecked. Now, in 1998, fishermen diving for sea
cucumbers off the Island of Belitung in Indonesia discovered hundreds of
ceramics and precious vessels on the seabed. Now, when this site was excavated and studied,
it was discovered that it was the remains of a cargo of a 9th century Arab ship. Now, in the cargo remains,
they found these amazing gold and silver vessels, which were really stunning. And these have a very particular style and it
tells me that they're of the type that you find in what you called relic deposit. So in temples in China at this time in the 9th
century, people would give gifts to the temple for ritual and for good fortune and these
would be buried in the crypt normally often with relics, and the relics would be allegedly
the finger bones of the Buddha for example. So these are quite familiar but it's
interesting to see these on a shipwrecked that was obviously had left China. So, gold and silver specialists
get really excited about these, but I as a ceramic specialist got
much more excited about these, because they found three blue and white
dishes in the remains of the cargo. Now, there may have been
more but, of course, they-- it was on the seabed, so it had been disturbed. But these three were such a surprise because
they're the only intact blue and white vessels from this date that were made in China. So these are the earliest surviving
whole pieces of blue and white. And the wrecked has been dated to about 1826,
so we now have a secured date for the production of the first blue and white in the world. Now, if anyone in the audience is a specialist
in Islamic ceramics, I'm sure you will disagree with me, but I have proof that
these are earlier than the ones that were made in Islamic ceramic tradition. So, we had actually known about these
blue and white pieces since the 1970, but only from those fragment and these
small fragments were found in the remains of an area that's in a coastal part of China. So it does appear, however, now that they
have discovered where they were made in China as well, that these were made
for local consumption in China, but also for export in the early 9th century. Now, I think it's interesting to think
about those fragments and how they developed into these kinds of spectacular pieces
because that's where this tradition started. It's the aesthetic as well
as the wares themselves. So I hope you recognize the one on the far left. Yes? OK, good. We'll talk about that one more later. But all of these are very
important example of what blue and white would develop into
from those early pieces. So from those fragments, we can see
that they became imperial porcelains. And all of these are actually imperial. The one in the middle is-- has been placed
in the-- a silver stand that's deteriorated and it had a special gold lid made for it. So it was buried in an imperial
tomb in the early 15th century. But I think in order to understand that
journey from the 9th century onward, I need to take a step back and really
talk about what blue and white is, particularly from a Chinese perspective. So if you'll bear with me,
we're going to do a tiny bit of material science for the next five minutes. So what exactly in ceramic
term is blue and white? So by definition, it's porcelain or
white stoneware that's been decorated with cobalt blue pigment under the glaze. Now, what that means is if you look at the
image on the right, that's a photograph I took through the microscope of the
bottom of a early Ming dish. And it has the Chinese character for year on it. And can you see it it's covered with bubbles. So the blue is actually under a layer of glaze. Now, in order to produce that, there's
a very specific technique and potters in the audience might be familiar with it, but
in case you aren't, if you look at the slide on the left that shows you how you
produce an underglaze decorated vessel. So the one on the far left, you make your
form, so a simple dish, let it try slightly, and then in the next image as you can
see, they've painted it with a kind of a leaf design in iron pigment. And then the third image is all white because
they dip it in glaze, but the glaze is opaque because it hasn't been fired yet. And then when you fire it,
the glaze becomes transparent and you can see the decoration
under that layer of glaze. So it's actually a very practical
technique as well because it protects the decoration,
it makes it permanent. So that's the technique. What about the pigment? So just tiny bit of science. So cobalt as you probably know is
a metal when it's a free element, but it's not found in nature as a free element. So it's found in mineral ores that is found
with other elements like iron and manganese. And as a pigment, it's used as an oxide. So it's a colorant for glass
forming material silicate. OK, bear with me. And as a colorant, it is the most powerful one. But in the glass and glaze making
repertoire, it's so powerful that-- I mean, I sometimes can't believe
the statistics when I see it, that it creates strong blues
and as little as 0.0005%. OK, imagine how strong that pigment must
be, but that's why it's uses so often. So it's very strong. You don't need to use a lot of it. It's very predictable. It's not going to change color, you know,
depending on whatever base you're putting it in, whatever temperature or atmosphere
you're firing at. So it's a really predictable color and
therefore it's not just aesthetically pleasing, but technically it's a very
good product to be making. So where did the cobalt come from? Now, in the history of Chinese ceramics, you
read a lot about cobalt coming from Persia. That's one of the common myths. Now, it's possible that some of it came from
Persia and there are Chinese sources who I blame for this myth from the 16th century
which use a name for cobalt that equates to the name they use for a place
in Iran, which is known as Qamsar. It's near Kashan. And at Qamsar, there are cobalt mine, however, there are lots of different
profiles for cobalt in the area. So we don't know which one they use. And it is similar to the cobalt that's used for
local ceramic that were made in Persia as well. And that's a good example that's in
the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. But similar cobalt have been
found in China as well. So there are sources of this cobalt
elsewhere besides Persia, so it's possible. But those of you who are mineralogist
would probably know it's really difficult to find the source of a particular mineral,
particularly when if you're trying to test for it today, one that was used back
in the 15th century possibly in Persia. So it may be Chinese sources, it
may be imported, but either way, it's a pigment that produces a very strong color
and one that became universally liked worldwide. So the first time you see it being used in the-- consistently in the ceramics
repertoire in China, is during the Tang dynasty, from 618 to 906. Most of the surviving examples, those
pieces we saw from the shipwreck and the ones they've excavated from the kiln
site date from the 8th to the 9th century, so the later part of the dynasty. And it was introduced into a kind
of wider color pallet at the time. If you look at the image on the left,
do you see the box with the flowers on the top that has a blue background? So, that's been-- blue has been
added to a pallet that's known as three color or santai in Chinese. And many of those products were
made for every day use, for export, and for funeral purposes in the Tang period. Interestingly, if you look
at the one at the back, you can see they also started producing the
color combination blue and white on its own. So those are-- that's where this
particular aesthetic comes from. However, you can see they're also using blue as
a monochrome or single color at the same time. Interestingly, the blues from that period,
if you're ever trying to identify a date of a piece, they're slightly green, because in order to produce those bright
colored glazes, they're really high in lead. And so any iron that's present with the
cobalt gives the greenish tinge to it. That's one thing I've notice that the fakers
never get right is that greenish tinge. So look out for it. So it really becomes a fairly common product in
ceramics in the Tang period, but for some reason after the end of the Tang period it disappeared. You don't see that color combination in
Chinese ceramics for several hundred years and you don't see blue being
use much in Chinese ceramics. And it's really not until the next period
interestingly when the Mongols conquered China that you begin to see the return of blue
and white as a ceramic product in China. So during the Yuan dynasty as
it was called, it was revived, its production was centered,
however, in the South of China. And it became a major export product
from that area in the 14th century. And that area is known as Jingdezhen. It's still the home of porcelain today. If you go to Jingdezhen,
everything is made of porcelain. The street lamps are made of
porcelain, the sinks, the toilet. I mean-- but blue in white. It's really-- It's quite
disconcerting sometimes. There's some much blue and white everywhere. But they're very proud of their heritage because they've been producing
it since the Yuan dynasty. And they were making a wide
range of blue and white product. One of their biggest markets at that
time were countries in the Middle East, including Central Asia and
west of that, so West Asia. And one of the most important
surviving collections in the Middle East from that time is now in
the National Museum in Iran. And that's one of the pieces that's from that
collection on the left, which is a large flask. Its shape imitates leather by the way. And it was acquired perhaps during not
long after it was produced and it remained in the Persian rural collections up until,
you know, basically the Iranian Revolution. So it is one of hundreds of blue and
white pieces that were in that collection. Another big collection was
formed by the Ottomans in Turkey. So the market for these products
was worldwide as we'll see, but the major consumers were in the Middle East. Now, it doesn't exclude places in
Asia like Japan and Southeast Asia where Yuan pottery blue and
whites have also been found. One interesting site, which
is now Japan, is Okinawa. And in the 14th century, Okinawa was a
very important trading port and a kind of trading entrepot from multiple different
countries and they have found 250 Yuan blue and white jars in sites all
over-- castle sites in Okinawa, including that one that was found in a tomb. So in a tomb in Okinawa, they had this
piece of a blue and white porcelain that most people would look at and say,
"Oh, that's typical Chinese porcelain for the Middle East," but actually
it was found in a tomb in Japan. They've also found fragments of
a number of jars in Singapore. And we know that from textual sources that
there was a Chinese community in Singapore in the 14th century, so perhaps it
was for Chinese consumers overseas. And that's an important market that we
should try and remember when we think about the export of blue and white. But blue and white, of course, was also
being made for the Chinese consumers in the 14th century and interestingly a
number of them are very special pieces, including these two, which are arguably
the most famous and most important blue and white porcelains in the world. And the reason is because of the
inscription right at the-- on the neck. So both of them have an inscription
which dedicates them to a temple. And because they are temple dedications, the
inscription has a date, and the date is 1351. So they are securely dated to
the very end of the Yuan period. And they're decorated all over with all the
patterns you would expect from that period. Their popular name in English is the--
well, I have to say it like the British, the David Vases, because they were both owned by Sir Percival David whose pieces you will see
throughout the lecture because I can't help, but I was the curator of the--
these are kind of my benchmark. And he acquired them from two
different collectors then realized that they should have been a pair. But they would have been a temple set to
place on an altar with a large incense burner as the third piece and no one's ever
found the third piece, so keep an eye out. If you find a third piece
without inscription on it, it would be worth an absolute
fortune, I can assure you. But thinking more about the decoration, so these
would have been especially commissioned pieces, so the decoration need to have
been appropriate for that purpose. So a lot of it is very auspicious. And you can see along the
bottom, I've done a detail there, there's this interesting wave pattern. Now, those wave pattern became really popular
in blue and white in this particular period and you can see them on another jar that
represent a second type of blue and white that was being made for Chinese
consumers in the 14th century. And you can see the wave just along--
just below the mouth rim on the neck. And this is an example of a type that was very
fancy at the time it was made because it relate to popular literature and
famous stories from the past. So the image you can see along the middle of
it, that wonderful kind of narrative scene with a gentlemen and a cart that's being
drag by a tiger and a leopard comes from very famous story from
the third century BC. And that story had been recently published
in these popular illustrated volumes that came out in the 14th century. They are known as Pinghua or plain tale. And you could either read the story and then
look at the picture, but if you couldn't read, you could also appreciate
the story from the picture. And this particular story was one that
would have been quite familiar to people because it was also performed
in dramas and plays. And those of you who can read
Chinese, you can see what it's called. But it's a story of-- Well, do you know "The
Art of War", Sun Tzu and "The Art of War"? So Sun Tzu was kidnapped during a battle. And so the county where he
was from sent an emissary to a famous militarist strategist
who's the guy in the cart, who is from a place called
Guigu so he's known as Guiguzi. And he's come to rescue Sun Tzu. And he's always depicted coming in a
cart being dragged by two kind of feline. And with the popular story at the time
that people would be familiar with, but you had to be fairly wealthy to be able
to afford to commission a piece like that which translates the image
from this popular tale. Saying that, they've taken
that exact same format. So it runs along the top in a strip and that's
been applied exactly the same way on the jar. So another interesting tidbit about this
jar is that it sold for $20 million. At the time-- This was about 10 years ago. At that time, that was the most expensive
piece of blue and white in the world. But it since been surpassed. So at the end of the Yuan dynasty,
a native rulership takes over and that becomes the Ming dynasty. But this is when you see a
really significant change in the production of blue and white in China. And that's the advent of
imperial blue and white. So it's in the very early Ming dynasty
when an imperial porcelain factory is built and established at Jingdezhen,
so as early as 1369. And from then on, they start
making imperial product that are blue and white polychrome-monochrome. They start making porcelain at that time because the Ming has spent quite a
long time defeating the Mongolian and the imperial cupboards were basically empty. So they couldn't afford to be using precious
materials like gold and silver and jade and bronze for their imperial vessel. So the first Ming emperor decreed that from
that date, 1369, imperial vessel had to be made of porcelain, until further notice. And that was the real stimulus for
the production of blue and white. So Ming blue and white, there's a wide
range of different markets for it. I want to concentrate just now on the imperial
pieces because they're quite distinctive. Because they're imperial, they actually have
very highly regulated designs, and style. Some would say that they're very conservative. But what that means is that
the motifs are restricted and how the motifs are depicted is
restricted to the extent that even a dragon, there is several different versions of a
dragon depending on your place in the hierarchy of the imperial family or the court. So the highest place of course
would be the emperor. And so that jar on the right which also sold
for $20 million-- Actually that's a mistake. It says 20 million pound. So it would be a bit more
than that, about 35 million? That dragon has, do you see it, has five claws. So within the hierarchy of dragon motifs,
only the emperor can wear on his costume or be surrounded with the five-clawed dragon. Every time your hack went off,
you go down in the hierarchy. So I guess if you're like a
junior prince, you might only have like one claw or something [laughs]. But the five-clawed dragon is a very specific
symbol, you know, of imperial authority. So not surprisingly, it appears on
this imperial blue and white porcelain. Now, that's one clue that it's imperial. Another clue is what you can
see in the slide at the bottom. Do you see it has four characters on it? When they start producing imperial porcelain,
they start branding it as, you know, effectively made at the imperial factory. So that-- Only four characters. It says the name of the emperor or
the reign period that he ruled over. So that the Xuande Emperor,
so that's 1426 to '35. And that the third character is like
year and the last one is kind of made in, so made during the reign of Xuande Emperor. And interestingly, so Christie sold that
one and they recently found excavated one from the imperial-- the remains of
the imperial kiln at Jingdezhen. So you've seen almost identical one on the left. And that imperial dragon has a
very distinctive style as well. It's very closely related to the dragon
that you see, this is a small part of a giant scroll that's probably as long as
this room called "The Nine Dragon Scroll", which is now in Boston but it was
formally in the imperial collection. And it was painted in the Song
dynasty and it's dated 1244. Now we know that a version of this was in the
imperial paintings collection during the time of the Xuande Emperor, from
when that jar was made. So it's entirely possible that this
could have been used as a model for those dragons particularly because
that emperor himself was an artist, and very eager to support the
production of art and paintings at court, and insisted that the court
artist refer to, you know, the important paintings of
the past in their work. So we know that that was
probably an inspiration. And then on the shoulder of the jar are
these kind of monster mask type motif. And those also can be seen have
parallels in other imperial objects, interestingly in imperial kind of
ceremonial arms and armor, such as that one. That one is in a military museum in England but it has an imperial inscription
on the sheath of the sword. But the style of imperial blue and
white is really very much dependent on the taste of the emperor. So the Xaunde Emperor, one could
argue because he was an artist, he probably have quite sophisticated taste. That's not necessarily true
with some of his successors. You know, I mean, we're not there yet. This is actually quite an important piece. And what I want to point out is that even
though he had very sophisticated taste, that doesn't mean that bright
colors and other sort of items were not also being made for the court. And it shows however, there's a consistency
in the imagery, which is very important. So that's a really large jar. That's in the British Museum collection. It has also hard to see but a reign
mark just under the mouth rim. And the blue and white jar would
have been pretty much the same shape with that type of lid. But Xaunder Emperor's own paintings
as well are quite colorful too. So we shouldn't just assume that blue and
white as an aesthetic was purely representative of his taste because some of his successors
had questionable taste in imagery, including one of his successors who is known as
the Jiajing Emperor who reign from 1522 to 1566. Now, he was not an artist. His great passion was Daoism. But one particular aspect
of Daoism really appeals. So an important concept in Daoist belief
is kind of a quest for immortality. And that was accompanied by a lot
of alchemy and the consumption, in this particular emperor's case elixir
is said to guarantee your immortality, and even better could change you into,
transform you into an immortal, like a deity. So he was really frankly quite obsessed with it,
particularly in the second half of his reign. And he lived in this place called
the West Park where he insisted that Daoist immortality ritual
be practiced 24 hours a day. So he ordered a lot of porcelains from the
imperial factory related to these beliefs. And so, all over these two
examples are kind of Daoist symbol. So the one of the far left, you see there's a
god sitting in the middle with a giant forehead, so that's probably, if you into immortality,
the most important god to be familiar with. So he's known as Shou Lao, shou
being the word for long life. It's like long life old man. And he's always depicted as an
old man with a long white beard and a very high forehead reflecting his wisdom. And he's surrounded by other symbols of
Daoism, but he's kind of the focus of that jar. Slightly more subtle is the
references on the bottle to the right, because that bottle, the shape is interesting. It's a traditional shape that's used to
hold elixirs, I mean it's double-gourd. But do you see that branch, that
twisting branch on the top part? That's the character for long life, turned
into a kind of branch that twists from a rock. It's also one of my colleagues has pointed out
who is a specialist in kind of Daoist imagery, it's also meant to look like a kind of
spiritual vapor which is a reflection of the vapor that's popularly
known as chi, a form of energy. And this particular motif was invented on
imperial porcelain in the Jiajing period. So needless to say, he didn't live to
an exceptionally old age because one of his favorite elixirs was mercury. So one have to imagine that in his last
days were not very pretty is all I can say. But you can see how his taste
had a really strong impact on imperial blue and white of that time. Now, moving aside from the imperial product, of
course during the Ming, there are lots of blue and white wares being produced
for other markets. And you begin to see blue and whites like
this one which I hope you might recognized because a similar one appears in the painting
that's in the blue and white exhibition, which I'm sure Maureen can
tell us a lot more about. It is an example of a type of ware that was
exported all over the world, not just to Europe, from the late 16th century onward. Most of the ones we're familiar with appear
in Dutch paintings or in Dutch collection, but they also went to Japan and Southeast Asia. So it's during the Ming period that you
begin to see blue and white coming to Europe and having an impact on consumers
there as well as ceramics. Now, we know that some of the earliest blue
and white to reach Europe went to Italy or what became the Italian states. Lorenzo de' Medici had blue and white
in his collection and the Medici family in general were active consumers
of Chinese blue and white. You see some of the earliest
depictions of Chinese blue and white in renaissance paintings like this one. If you look at the cup that just at the bottom
has a detail of it, you can see a representation of what could only at that time have been
Chinese blue and white, because nobody else in the world was making blue and white. Nobody of course was making
porcelain apart from China. Well, Korea was, but they weren't exporting it. And so, therefore, it's depicted
as a special kind of exotic but also therefore very expensive
object in this painting. And we also have to thank the Portuguese for
making blue and white so popular in Europe at-- during the Ming period because they were the
ones, of course who are the real pioneers in establishing trading posts all over Asia. Just to give you some example,
they had one in Hormuz in 1507, in Goa in 1509, and Malacca in 1511. They tried to get into China but China had
banned foreigners from about 1522 to '55. But nonetheless, some entrapped
Portuguese, merchants and traders like Antonio Peixoto himself tried to
get into China, was kicked out of China, but still managed to acquire Chinese products, including this really special
blue and white pitcher or jur. And it's special for several reasons. If you see on the main decoration,
it's an-- it's a family crest. So that's the crest of his family. It's one of the earliest known
European crests on Chinese porcelain. And next to it is a view
of the base of the vessel which has a Chinese imperial reign mark on it. So interesting combination of designs
and it raises a lot of questions about access to imperial products. It also interestingly has a silver lid
and the tip of the spout is silver. It looks like-- Specialists have looked at it. There's a Turkish mouth and they're
contemporary with the picture. So it looks like it may have gotten
broken on its return back to Portugal and then he got it repaired on the way. Now, the Portuguese were also important
because they not only controlled a lot of these trade route but they also
performed a lot of diplomacy as a result. And one other ones that is quite important
for this respect is John IV of Portugal. He reigned during the Restoration
and the 30 years war. He sent emissaries all over and with them
diplomatic gifts, but he often used Chinese blue and white for these diplomatic gifts. And one of the most famous in the export
porcelain world is this set of jars which are in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in
Stockholm, these large blue and white jars that would were given as a diplomatic
gift to Queen Christina of Sweden. Queen Christina is a who because she
was quite a radical for her time. And a contemporary text described her
in a way that really summed it up, "She the Queen without a realm, a Christian
without faith, and woman without shame." Now, the reason she was described in that way
is because she did-- she refused to get married, apparently she dressed like a man,
but most importantly she was Catholic, you know, in very protestant Sweden. So she abdicated, moved to Rome and
became a kind of counter affirmation hero. And she went to few women who
are buried in the Vatican. So, she had taken over from her father when
he died and she became queen for short period. And so she was empower when that
diplomatic gifts came from the Portuguese. But at the same time that
all of this is happening, there's new competition now from Japan. So in the first part of the 17th
century, Japan starts making porcelain and crucially starts making blue and white,
specifically to compete with the Chinese. So, we have lots of examples from
the early period of production in Japan including these two that are in the
British Museum where you can see the Chinese one on the left that was made for the
Japanese market, and then on the right, the Japanese one imitating the Chinese
one made for the Japanese market. So this was total industrial espionage
and very successful at it as well because they were helped by some of
the European, including the Dutch, because the Dutch East India Company that
had been set up in the early 17th century. And in order to capitalize on China's weakness
at this time, they started commissioning copies of Chinese blue and white from porcelain
factories in Japan stimulating production there and really kind of flooding the market in Europe with these Japanese copies
of Chinese blue and white. So it all becomes very complicated. But-- And, you know, today we can
see the difference but, you know, it's hard to say whether consumers in Europe at that time would have known
the difference between them. So how is this possible? Because in China, the 17th century
was a period of great disruption. It's often called the transitional period
because this is when for, you know, a good 75 years the Ming were
constantly fighting with the Manchu who would eventually establish the final
dynasty, the Qing dynasty in China. Now, this of course affected
porcelain production. So the imperial factories itself
ceased production in 1608. A few brief commissions were
completed after that but very few. Jingdezhen were destroyed in riots
in the early 1670s, and therefore, all the production there had to shift away from the court towards commercial
factories and popular kiln. And they really put a greater
emphasis on exports. So there's a lot of disruption. Japan enters the market to fill the gap. Then when China can kind of-- The porcelain
producers can get back on their feet, they're now competing with
Japan for the same market. So it really was a difficult time. Nonetheless, there were advantages
to not having imperial oversight and that saw new techniques
and styles coming in. So, when people think of this period,
which they called transitional period ware, they think of pieces like this because what
you can see now are unrestricted styles. You see new forms like this really simple
long vessel like the one on the right. A lot of interesting landscape designs,
you know, moving away from dragons and imperial imagery, that
landscape that are taken from traditional landscape painting techniques. So for example, that one,
the landscape is kind of a-- kind of cascading monumental landscape
that's imitating landscape styles from the 10th century in painting. Then you also see an improvement in the
refining of mineral generally including cobalt. So that much more pure cobalt is being used. And so you begin to see lots more tonal
approaches to decoration on the blue and white. This one is quite important because it's
a rare dated piece of the 17th century and dated by inscription to 1639. So finally though, in 1684, the imperial
factory is rebuilt and production resumes again and you begin to see blue and white
being made consistently for the court. But now, of course, it's a new court. And so this is now in the last
dynasty, the Qing dynasty. And what you see are particularly during three
reign periods in which there were emperors who were very interested
in the style and quality of imperial products, including porcelain. So that would be the Kangxi,
Yongzheng and Qianlong emperors, mainly from covering the late 17th
and all through the 18th century. So in the Kangxi period, what you see
are the reintroduction or the return of imperial design including the dragon. What's interesting though is
that the style changes a bit. I have someone who shall remain nameless, but
who did train me who used to say a good trick for identifying the Qing dragon is
to imagine that it's water skiing. And that's what the posture is. But I look at it because I'm from LA, I'm like
it's not water skiing, its surfing, right? So that particular posture is quite distinctive. And you do see it however on imperial costumes. So it looks like that's the
inspiration for the style. But what's also different is the
porcelain is of exceptionally high quality. So you see a lot more of it showing now. The designs are simpler for the
most part and you can see the beauty of the white porcelain next
to the really rich blue. And of course the reign marks are
added again but they're of the Qing. So that's the middle two
characters there are Kangxi Emperor. And then his successor, the Yongzheng Emperor, where they're really interested
in styles from the past. And so now you see, and this gets bit
complicated, so the one on the Qing one. Now you see Qing imperial copies
of Ming imperial porcelain. So the one on the right and the base of it there
on the left is early 18th century, so Qing. The mark on it however, is the mark of the
early 15th century emperor that produced that dragon jar that we looked at. So, in comparison, the original 15th
century piece is the small one on the top. So it's very similar. So it appears that they're copying actual pieces
that have remained in the imperial holding. But that was the fashion that you see across
the imperial product from this particular time. Now the one who is not known for
his taste is the Qianlong Emperor. However, I would argue that there
were some exceptionally fine blue and white pieces produced in his reign period. Because he too was interested
in the past but in a-- in some ways in a much more sophisticated way,
because what you see in blue and white here, something we haven't seen before,
impossible to see in a photograph. But in real life, you can see that the blue
is not under the glaze, it's on top of it. So this kind of decoration is
what we call overglaze enamel. And to do that, you need the purest blue
pigment and you need a very steady hand. It's really difficult to be
painting that on a glossy surface. And painting it with such
delicacy and technique, it almost looks like pen and ink drawing. And that design on that dish
is exactly copying the style of a landscape painter named Wang Hui
who's one of the famous Four Wang painters who were court painters who
painted in a very distinctive style. So to the right kind of viewer, this would have
been instantly recognizable as the imitation of a very important painter's work, you
know, overglaze enamel on porcelain. So even though most Qianlong blue and
white frankly is a little bit scary, there are some truly exceptional pieces. But bear in mind that this is not what
people outside the court are seeing. These are the exceptional exclusive pieces. What the rest of the world is
seeing is more like this material, which I'm sure is instantly
familiar because so much of it went out of China in the 18th century. And that's mainly down to the European trading
companies who finally had established basis, legal basis in Canton, in Southern China. And just to give you an example, these
pieces are all from a shipwreck known as the Geldermalsen which was a Dutch
East India Company ship that sank on its way home in 1752 in Indonesian water. And it was discovered to be
carrying over 150,000 porcelain. Saying that, that wasn't the main cargo. The main cargo was tea. And these were use as ballast
for the tea product. But that's why porcelain was such a great export
product because you could use it as ballast for tea shipments and then you could sell it on. So, it was useful and also profitable. Plus they could buy it really cheaply in China. And it's because of this massive
shipment that I would suggest that blue and white really became a kind of
world style and a truly global product. And you can see that, you know, in
the second half of the 18th century when really ordinary pattern pieces like
the one on the left, that's one that was in George Washington's dinner service
collection which is Chinese, but quite crude, nothing like the imperial pieces, but it has
the pattern that inspired the one you see on the right which is the
so called Willow pattern. So it really did have an original chinoiserie. But at Spode in England, they transformed it into a slightly more palatable
version of a Chinese scene. And then of course, all that exposure meant that other people wanted to
compete in that same market. And so that's when you see Europeans and
Americans, well, actually English moving to America trying to find
out how they can produce that same product and make a profit on it. So, it really had an impact on ceramic
production outside China as well. But the ubiquity of it meant
that it was becoming inexpensive. People were kind of falling out of-- Porcelain was falling out of
favor with a lot of consumers. Saying that though, it meant
that it was affordable to people who wanted to use it in different ways. And in the 19th century, what you really see
is people buying it in bulk but as antiques and using it either to kind of, you know,
decorate their walls or as props in painting. And so-- Of course the person who really
popularized that was James McNeill Whistler. And you can see one of his
famous paintings where he's kind of populated it with Chinese blue and white. But he also designed a very famous interior
which is now of course in the Freer Gallery in Washington for Frederick Leyland,
rich industrialist who lived in London and Whistler designed this dining room for
him, you know, with his paintings the focus but the walls were then lined
with blue and white porcelain. So, it became part of the kind of visual
landscape of the wealthy home starting, you know, as early as 1600 in Europe,
but that continued in the 19th century. And so porcelain, particularly blue and
white, the attitude towards it was changing. It was kind of divorced from China. It became China in the sense of China
the product rather than China the place. And a lot of people were making fun of
it particularly in London where everybody and anybody was decorating
their homes with blue and white. They were writing plays about blue and
white, stories about blue and white. Even Oscar Wilde was complaining about
so much blue and white everywhere. So they actually called it "Chinamania" and
complained about particularly those members of the Aesthetic Movement who
were promoting blue and white. And after the 19th century, it became a problem
in the sense that people stopped taking blue and white seriously as something that kind of sophisticated consumer
should have in their home. But that really kind of enabled
people to look at it differently. And it's the 20th century when you see blue and
white really being considered art as opposed to pottery, as opposed to ceramic. And you begin to see much more scholarly work
written about blue and white for the first time. And so the fact that it's fallen out of favor
with collector almost gave people license to treat it more seriously as art. And museums in England and America also
began actively collecting blue and white. So you begin to see a number of
publications about blue and white, many of which were promoted by the
Oriental Ceramic Society in London. And I would argue that it's this that helped to
transform blue and white into a cultural icon. And to the extent that you can see
it in all different guises here. It's not just ceramics anymore, it's the
inspiration for a dress by Roberto Cavalli. I'm guessing she's probably not
happy with that picture now, but that's taken from an
actual blue and white jar. And then the computer, I thought
you'd be interested to see that because it's a computer version of
the bottle that's in your exhibition. That was in Taiwan about 10 years ago. I saw it in a computer fair. I couldn't believe it. And then there's also a New York
interior designer who specializes in blue and white and that's her decorative theme. So it kind of feeds into that
continuous association of blue and white with the kind of luxurious fancy interior. But you know that an object or an
idea has really become ubiquitous if contemporary artists start to challenge it. So I'll leave you with this which Ai Weiwei,
the top and the bottom, who's you know, famous for subverting popular culture has
really taken on blue and white and treated it in ways that are somewhat unexpected. The jar at the bottom is-- Remember the early
jar I showed you with the man in the cart with the tigers, he turned them
inside out and done them in red too. But in the middle, that's by another artist
called Xue Lei who then turned tin cans, like soda can, into blue and white porcelain or
turned blue and white porcelain into soda can. So it become a topic now that
is there to be challenged. But it just tells us how much blue and white has
become part of the popular conscious that all over the world really starting from those very
humble beginnings in China in the 9th century. So I hope you'll agree that it has
become an enduring global obsession. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> We do have time for some questions. So if anyone would like to ask
questions, we have the expert on hand. Yes. >> So you've charted for us the cobalt. Can you talk a little bit
about the clay body itself? >> Yes. But I'm going to say
a really pedantic statement. It really depends which time period. So do you want me to just talk
about it in general in China or? >> You know, my interest is the Islamic world and the story we always tell is they didn't
have the porcelain so they have to make up the stone paste that was this good. >> Right. >> So you have these chunky white
things that they then glazed to make them look like a porcelain. I don't know if that's true or not. I just want to kind of hear-- >> OK, yeah. So-- >> -- more about that. >> OK, that helped. Because I thought you were going
to ask me a really tricky question about the different porcelains
they were using in which period. So that question, it's actually a good one
because there's a lot of blue and white made in, you know, Islamic ceramic traditions or Middle Eastern ceramic
tradition, including any exhibition. There is some Iznik ware for example. That's a classic example of a glass-based
body which is what you're talking about. Because they didn't have the right clays that
is kaolinitic white clays which are the basis of porcelain production,
they created a version of it that is glass based as opposed to clay base. So it's actually not. Some of those, they're called
fritware bodies that you find in Middle Eastern ceramics are really fine,
particularly the ones that were made in Iran in the Seljuk period, would that be right? Yes, I think so. So 12th, 13th, 14th century, really fine white
bodies that are imitating Chinese porcelain. Whereas Chinese porcelain,
it's a much simpler material. Again, depending on the time
period, it's made from about-- Let's say those 18th century
imperial pieces I showed you, those are made from about 50%
porcelain clay and 50% porcelain stone and it makes a really good,
fine, well-behaved body. >> So just to follow-up on that. So when we see porcelain
being made in Japan and Korea and then eventually in, you know, England-- >> Yes. >>-- in Virginia, are they-- where
are they getting their porcelain? >> Well, that's a long-- I'll have
to give you a long answer to that. So, Japan and Korea have sources of porcelain
stone which you can also use to make porcelain without porcelain clay and
so they had it locally. You find porcelain clays in-- OK, so
I'm going to show my ignorance here. There's a place called Thuringia in what
was part of Sachsen, Germany, that's where-- Somebody wrote a book about German porcelains. Yes. Can you say more about where the clay
came from because it's from a specific place? >> Yeah. It was actually very-- It's in a
very specific place because the European stuff because they couldn't find the secret of true
what were told in the west hard-paste porcelain. In the east, it's more related to firing
temperature in the early uses of it. >> Well, it depends on what
material they were using. >> Right. >> But, you know, like the
Vienna factory was getting clays by stilt firm from the Meissen factory. >> Yup. >> And there are some sources of
porcelain clays in Central Europe. There's also some in the
West of England in Cornwall. But that's not to say that all of
these products were actually porcelain, because there's something called soft-paste
porcelain which is slightly different. So there is-- it's actually just
not really complicated question. >> In the west. >> Yeah. >> The Germans mostly were--
in Sachsen were the first ones to make true hard-paste porcelain
of [inaudible] and-- >> And they have it. >> And they had it. They had it-- >> Yeah. >> -- locally from places like very local. They have local. And then the espionage started
and somebody absconded to Vienna with a secret and, you know, all of this. And the English didn't know, and the French
didn't know how to make hard-paste porcelain so they made a variation of it which is called
soft-paste, slightly different materials, slightly going firing temperature [inaudible]. It's, you know, as you said,
it's very complicated. But everybody wanted the
whole porcelain [inaudible]. Well, yeah, there's [inaudible] as I remember. And the English did finally
would have made hard-paste. And also the French actually could have
made hard-paste earlier but the king refused to let the stones proper to do it. So, yeah, it's all intriguing espionage. And it's all about the raw materials in the
end and the fire and the kiln, so anyway. >> Do we have any other questions? Yes. >> There are other colors of porcelains,
right, not only blue and white. Blue is not the only one? >> Blue is not the only decorative
aesthetic for porcelain, blue and white. >> Oh, definitely not, no. I mean, you know, blue and
white is only one style. If you're talking about Chinese imperial
products, even the commercial products from Jingdezhen, there is red
and white, which is copper. They also made various polychrome styles,
which is a lot of different pigments. And, of course, monochrome style. So it's one of many porcelain products. >> If you go on this gallery
level there is celadons which is greens, and oxbloods which is red. On view, you can see some in
our decorative arts gallery. >> This is more famous? >> Yeah. Yeah, it' is . I always try and have to explain it when
I'm in China, because people always say to me, why blue and white, you know? Because in this-- in the hierarchy
of porcelain products in China, blue and white is not the highest. So-- But outside of China
it just became so popular. And it's really hard to say why, you know. It's just that particular color
combination was so popular elsewhere. Yup. >> Do you think that it was partly
tradition because what was coming through the Dutch East India Company
or Portuguese Dutch East India Company of that first, you know, the 17th
century was mostly blue and white. >> Yes, yeah. >> You know, very little polychrome. >> But a lot of polychrome stuff was
coming out at the same time as well. So maybe not in such great numbers
but it's interesting that it's kind of transcended European and kind
of American taste because blue and white was not the most popular porcelain-- Chinese porcelain product
in Japan or Southeast Asia. But now, you know, it kind of has become that. >> Yeah. Great. All right. Well, I'd like to thank Dr. Pierson for her
lecture and thank you for coming this evening. >> Thank you. [ Applause ]
