Page 9 - Zhangzhou Or Swatow The Collection of Zhangzhou Ware at the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden, Netherlands

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John Pope - A Distinguished Visitor at the Princessehof

It was “on a sunny afternoon” in June 1950 when John Alexander Pope (1906–1982), former director of the
Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., found himself “ringing the bell in the charming 17th-century facade on
a quiet street in Leeuwarden, in Holland’s north-western province of Friesland” (Pope 1951). Nanne Ottema,
by then director of the Princessehof Museum, opened the door to his distinguished guest and together they
visited the collections.

Entrance of the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden
Pope published a report of his visit and in doing so introduced the American public to the Chinese porcelain at
the Princessehof Museum. He was very impressed and remarked that the American museums themselves own
comprehensive representations of Chinese ceramics in examples of superb quality and condition. But these
“masterpieces” are just one part of Chinese ceramic history. What the American museums do not have is the
“immense variety of provincial and export wares which began to leave China in Yuan (1279–1368) and early
Ming times and swelled to a veritable flood in the 16th century” (ibid). Pope was particularly impressed by the
collection of “Swatow” wares, which “strike the American visitor as most unusual. No comparison need be
made between these and the imperial pieces, or even many of the less perfect types in our museums, they are
an altogether different thing” (ibid.).

Ref.: Pope 1951

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