Stacey Pierson

Qingbai ware, or Yingqing ware as it is commonly known, is perhaps one of the most under appreciated ceramics in the Chinese ceramic tradition. It is not one of the wu wei ci, or five classic wares of the Song dynasty. It was not made exclusively for imperial use and its decorative styles and techniques were largely borrowed from other wares such as Ding and Yaozhou wares. With the exception of Jingdezhen, where it was primarily made, it also has not drawn much interest from archaeologists. This is unfortunate because, as we will see, qingbai ware is in fact one of the most successful ceramic types produced in China and was emulated at numerous kilns in many different regions. Very high quality qingbai wares were produced in the Song period which are today some of the finest early porcelains produced in China. Qingbai was also the basis from which Jingdezhen blue and white porcelain was developed and as recent research shows, this ware was noted in ancient records and was buried in hoards and tombs of the Song and Yuan dynasties. In fact, it was considered valuable enough when it was first made that several qingbai wares can be found in the original holdings of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The history of this ware is fairly straightforward but has not been presented in monograph form in English before. In order to show the complete picture of qingbai production, the history of its manufacture needs to be reconstructed and its forms, decoration and patronage need also to be illustrated. This volume will present these issues along with over 100 colour illustrations of some of the best and most interesting qingbai wares in collections around the world, many of which have not been published before. Essays have been contributed from both doctoral students of Chinese ceramics as well as established specialists in the field. Summaries of these essays as well as the catalogue entries have also been provided in Chinese. For reasons of space, this catalogue concentrates on Qingbai ware for the Chinese domestic market and on examples made at Jingdezhen. It is hoped that this catalogue will inspire further research on export wares and the products of other kilns.

... was not produced in Japan until the next century when the two sources for porcelain production were conflated for a short period.46 In some cases, Chinese porcelain is de-scribed in sixteenth century England as 'purslane' or 'porselin' and in others 'china' or 'chyna'.47 In fact, it ...

This book brings together papers prepared for the conference Ancient Vessels: Visual and Material Cultures of Food and Drink in Pre-Republican China organized at SOAS University of London in March 2020. In response to the conference theme, scholars from multiple disciplines concerned with Chinese history, archaeology, anthropology, literature, medicine and art have turned their attention to topics related to food and drink utensils, vessels, representations and spaces in China and beyond from the 2nd century CE to the 19th century, bringing fresh perspectives and new insights to the subject. The contributors also bring diverse global experience to their research, representing institutions around the world including universities in China, Europe and the USA as well as museums in Britain and Taiwan.

The Burlington Fine Arts Club was founded in London in 1866 as a gentlemen’s club with a singular remit – to exhibit members’ art collections. Exhibitions were proposed, organized, and furnished by a group of prominent members of British society who included aristocrats, artists, bankers, politicians, and museum curators. Exhibitions at their grand house in Mayfair brought many private collections and collectors to light, using members’ social connections to draw upon the finest and most diverse objects available. Through their unique mode of presentation, which brought museum-style display and interpretation to a grand domestic-style gallery space, they also brought two forms of curatorial and art historical practice together in one unusual setting, enabling an unrestricted form of connoisseurship, where new categories of art were defined and old ones expanded. The history of this remarkable group of people has yet to be presented and is explored here for the first time. Through a framework of exhibition themes ranging from Florentine painting to Ancient Egyptian art, a study of lenders, objects, and their interpretation paints a picture of private collecting activities, connoisseurship, and art world practice that is surprisingly diverse and interconnected.

This chapter considers how the novelty of the Yuanmingyuan objects was received and conceived of by collectors shortly after the 1860 aggression. It explores how these new objects were incorporated into a developing canon of "Chinese" things, particularly Chinese porcelain, and the most popular type of Chinese object in Britain. With reference to the ceramics, J. H. Lawrence-Archer notes that they have a different visual appearance and style than others, exhibiting "true beauty of form and chaste embellishment." Lawrence-Archer makes a number of interesting comments that are indicative of the reception of Summer Palace material by art collectors in Britain as well as their interpretation. The looting had consequences in the world of objects, both in the art market and in art scholarship, where it is increasingly seen as another example of colonial aggression and therefore an object repatriation issue

Combining strikingly new scholarship by art historians, historians, and ethnomusicologists, this interdisciplinary volume illuminates trade ties within East Asia, and from East Asia outwards, in the years 1550 to 1800. While not encyclopedic, the selected topics greatly advance our sense of this trade picture. Throughout the book, multi-part trade structures are excavated; the presence of European powers within the Asian trade nexus features as part of this narrative. Visual goods are highlighted, including lacquerwares, paintings, prints, musical instruments, textiles, ivory sculptures, unfired ceramic portrait figurines, and Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Southeast Asian ceramic vessels. These essays underscore the significance of Asian industries producing multiples, and the rhetorical charge of these goods, shifting in meaning as they move. Everyday commodities are treated as well; for example, the trans-Pacific trade in contraband mercury, used in silver refinement, is spelled ...

In the British Museum collection, there is an eighteenth-century Chinese teapot that is named on its label ‘Dr Johnson’s teapot’. Evoking the famous lexicographer and tea drinker Samuel Johnson (1708-84), this teapot has been given a name that associates it with a historical celebrity and suggests an authentic provenance. While it has been known as ‘Dr Johnson’s teapot’ since the mid-nineteenth-century, provenance research demonstrates that the connection to Samuel Johnson is somewhat indirect. It also reveals the practice of what might be called ‘provenance branding’ which has a profound impact on the reception and interpretation of objects and works of art. This article explores and defines this phenomenon through the example of the British Museum teapot, tracing its history from its origins in China to several English collections and finally the British Museum. In the process, the names by which this object, and several closely related ones, has been known will be investigated with a view to revealing the strategic yet often haphazard nature of object names which are nonetheless an important yet understudied part of an object’s history. Arguing for an expanded definition of provenance, this article suggests that the names given to works of art and objects are part of a provenance nomenclature that is a potentially innovative critical tool for the interpretation of objects and the evaluation of collecting and its contexts.

In studies of Chinese ceramics of designated periods, it is generally assumed that the forms and decoration produced were universal, that is, they were made by most kilns in most types of wares. In fact, as this study of Northern Sung ceramics will dem-onstrate, there are distinct regional differences in forms and decoration with some types only produced at a single kiln site. This paper will consider some of these regional forms and decoration by examining the contexts for their production, and the impact of technology, consumers and markets.

... ISBN: 9789881736772. ID Code: 11580. Deposited By: Stacey Pierson. Deposited On: 28 Feb 2011 09:45. Last Modified: 28 Feb 2011 09:45. Statistics. Item downloaded times since 28 Feb 2011 09:45. View statistics for "Historical and Cultural Contexts for Ceramics in China". ...

... SOAS Departments & Centres: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Department of Art and Archaeology. ID Code: 11945. Deposited By: Stacey Pierson. Deposited On: 20 Jun 2011 14:17. Last Modified: 20 Jun 2011 14:17. Statistics. Item downloaded times since 20 Jun 2011 ...

... SOAS Departments & Centres: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Department of Art and Archaeology. ID Code: 11946. Deposited By: Stacey Pierson. Deposited On: 20 Jun 2011 14:19. Last Modified: 20 Jun 2011 14:19. Statistics. Item downloaded times since 20 Jun 2011 ...

... 81-102. Full text not available from this repository. Item Type: Book Chapters. Authors/Creators: Pierson , Stacey. Editors: Pierson, S. SOAS Departments & Centres: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Department of Art and Archaeology. ISBN: 0728603659. ID Code: 4242. ...

... SOAS Departments & Centres: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Department of Art and Archaeology. ID Code: 11946. Deposited By: Stacey Pierson. Deposited On: 20 Jun 2011 14:19. Last Modified: 20 Jun 2011 14:19. Statistics. Item downloaded times since 20 Jun 2011 ...

... SOAS Departments & Centres: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Department of Art and Archaeology. ID Code: 11945. Deposited By: Stacey Pierson. Deposited On: 20 Jun 2011 14:17. Last Modified: 20 Jun 2011 14:17. Statistics. Item downloaded times since 20 Jun 2011 ...

The Westward Movement of Chinese Ceramics: Reconsidering the Appropriative Process

Stacey Pierson, SOAS

Traditional histories of Chinese ceramics made for export (or exported) usually feature several common assumptions that have come to be accepted as ‘facts’: firstly, that the appropriation of Chinese ceramics in cultures beyond China was inevitable, once the material of porcelain was encountered; secondly that this would, also inevitably, lead to a taste for Chinese designs (as seen through ceramics); and thirdly that Chinese ceramics actively influence passively recipient foreign consumers. A classic example of this type of history is the somewhat idealized narrative of Chinoiserie in Europe.
The satisfyingly linear history of Chinese export ceramics that sees the material move outward from China to locations which appreciated and imitated its material qualities and design (but not necessarily its national origins) also assumes that this process followed a similar pattern in all locations where Chinese ceramics were appropriated. In Europe and the Middle East, for example, we learn first that there was a new taste for white porcelain, then for Chinese-style designs, then a ‘decadent’ over-popularity of Chinese styles and finally the inevitable abandonment of the category when such styles fell out of favour. While there is some truth to aspects of this history, it is clear that such a history is the result of being derived primarily from the objects – the individual ceramics surviving today - and then being applied to a single, globalised ‘foreign’ consumer perspective. 
However, if this appropriative process were to be reconsidered from a more conceptual and localised perspective, then it would be clear that the history of the appropriation of Chinese ceramics is far from linear and not in any way inevitable. In order to demonstrate the validity of such an approach, this paper will examine the appropriative process in two locations in the 17th century: England and Persia. In each of these locations Chinese ceramics were appropriated and consumed in different ways: sometimes as a material, at other times as a design source and still others as expensive foreign object for display, an important form of appropriation that is often misinterpreted. This paper will illustrate not only different conceptions of Chinese ceramics in the 17th century but also the different forms of reception of Chinese ceramics within foreign cultures, with a view to presenting a history which moves beyond self-limiting, object-based narratives.

... 81-102. Full text not available from this repository. Item Type: Book Chapters. Authors/Creators: Pierson , Stacey. Editors: Pierson, S. SOAS Departments & Centres: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Department of Art and Archaeology. ISBN: 0728603659. ID Code: 4242. ...

This chapter considers how the novelty of the Yuanmingyuan objects was received and conceived of by collectors shortly after the 1860 aggression. It explores how these new objects were incorporated into a developing canon of "Chinese" things, particularly Chinese porcelain, and the most popular type of Chinese object in Britain. With reference to the ceramics, J. H. Lawrence-Archer notes that they have a different visual appearance and style than others, exhibiting "true beauty of form and chaste embellishment." Lawrence-Archer makes a number of interesting comments that are indicative of the reception of Summer Palace material by art collectors in Britain as well as their interpretation. The looting had consequences in the world of objects, both in the art market and in art scholarship, where it is increasingly seen as another example of colonial aggression and therefore an object repatriation issue

In 1640 delegates from a Portuguese embassy gave two Chinese jars to Queen Kristina of Sweden (1626-1689). The jars are Wanli-period (1572-1620) blue and white porcelain decorated with the so-called “hundred
deer” design. They have an interesting biography because they were made in Jingdezhen in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, were acquired by Portuguese merchants (presumably) shortly afterwards, then transported to Europe and presented as a diplomatic gift to Sweden—all within approximately 50 years. As objects the jars represent the complexity associated with the lives of exported things yet they also challenge their somewhat simplistic classification today as “Chinese export porcelain.”
The study of export porcelain is dominated by such reductive classifications of objects and in terms of critical appraisal this area is light-years behind the study of domestic Chinese ceramics. This is partly
related to the relative youth and connoisseurship bias of the field of export ceramic scholarship but also with the assumptions that accompany the othering of this material. The primary assumption is that export
porcelain was not made for Chinese consumption, therefore it cannot be assessed with reference to China or Chinese culture. In fact, this is a problem with the study of many traded objects which are subjected
to one-dimensional evaluations grounded in their interpretation as data rather than as “things,” that is, objects that have lives.

Porcelain from China became a globally traded product in the seventeenth century. It was first exported during the Tang dynasty (618-906) and from this time onward the consumption of this porcelain had a notable impact on many cultures outside China, in a wide range of areas of cultural practice and daily life activities, such as dining and drinking, ritual, burial and design. In Europe, where Chinese porcelain began to be imported in the sixteenth century, its impact was notably transformative, both for the consumers and the porcelain itself, which was altered through this encounter. In Britain in particular, Chinese porcelain was an integral part of tea drinking and its associated activities. Chinese tea was so popular here that by association, Chinese porcelain became an important aspect of British material culture, as opposed to Chinese. British commercial activity through sea trade made this appropriation possible, particularly with the establishment of the East India Company in 1600. The Company was both an importer and a consumer of Chinese products like tea and porcelain, transforming life in Britain but also in the British Empire where a British lifestyle was maintained. As a result, Chinese porcelain came to be a portable element of British life both in Britain and in British territories.

An examination of examples of what is here referred to as ‘British Chinese porcelain’ demonstrates that while this portable material culture was made in China it was not always associated visually or conceptually with its country of origin. The makers’ ability to harness advanced technology to provide a bespoke product ensured that British taste and style was eventually imposed on a Chinese product. Consumers could therefore represent themselves through this product and the porcelain made in China became a material representation of both personal and national identity. As the East India Company and its members were at the forefront of this material appropriation, this chapter will examine the Company’s role in the phenomenon by looking closely at the porcelain decoration that illustrates their particular form of reception. Throughout, we will consider the impact and consequences of the representation of British cultural and social identity through foreign goods and the implications for studies of object movement and object design histories.