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for elite families. The era is identified by the appearance of these tricolor (sancai ɧ੹)

glazes. Contrasted with the pottery of the Tang period, the Song period saw the rise of

porcelain’s classical era, where simplicity, elegance, and solemn forms of daily life

dominated production types, including lotus leaf shaped warming bowls, monochrome

glazes, and incised decoration. In south China, the Song and Yuan periods (960-1368 AD)

were also the days during which Jingdezhen kilns began to produce porcelain bodies of

ever increasing thinness and purity of whiteness, with a white-bluish tinted glaze of high

consistency for the Mongol court. The Ming period (1350-1644 AD) is known as the era

of “new ornamentation.” It is represented by two large gallery rooms, boasting the

emergence of the world famous underglaze blue porcelains that became fashionable in

Europe – the “blue-and-white.” Compelled by the competitive commercialized society of

the late Ming, ornamentation and technique reached dazzling heights, embodied in multi-

colored designs (wucai), competing color glaze decoration (doucai), and of course, blue-

and-white (qinghua). As one enters gallery 209, the wares of Kangxi, Yongzheng, and

Qianlong stand in technical virtuosity, adopting cloisonné techniques to apply painted

enamels (falang) on a porcelain base. An exemplary piece would be a Qianlong vase that

has a rotating interior, combining techniques of geometrical and ornamental precision to

produce dual layered, openwork visual illusions.

At this point, one’s eyes literally glaze over at the sight of such myriad forms and

styles of glaze decoration and porcelain objects. As one of the writers of the Chinese-

language audio guides for the collection, I am well aware of the larger narrative with

which ceramic history and glaze development is associated – that of Chinese culture and

civilization. The narrative is certainly developmental but it is Chinese nonetheless. Eras