Page 37 - For the Love of Porcelain

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Porcelain plate Woodblock print showing
depicting antiquities, antiquities (guwan tu),
surrounded by a band Suzhou, ca.1644 - 1753,
with four dragons, h. 29 cm, w. 29.5 cm,
China, 1700 - 24, British Museum,
h. 4 cm, d. 26.8 cm, inv. no. 1928,0323,0.31
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, © Trustees of the British
inv. no. AK-RBK- Museum, Creative
15800-B Commons license

of Chinese, Japanese, and later Indian art, covers Yixing earthenwares, export ceramics seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, not Of course figures 1 and 2 depict very
and helped make Asian art accessible to a made for the Thai market and exported least at the highest level of the imperial different kinds of collections of objects.
wider audience. He was especially interested from Thailand, Chinese paintings and court, as ‘Pictures of Ancient Playthings’ The handscroll (fig. 2) presents the objects
in the philosophies that lay behind Asian woodcuts, printed materials, carvings, ivory, (guwan tu) testifies (fig. 2). Made during the in their individual spaces, so they can each
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art. John Hatcher entitled his biography of bronzes and other metalwares, textiles, and reign of the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1722– be considered separately, while the objects in
him Laurence Binyon: Poet, Scholar of East a collection of extraordinary individual 35), this famous handscroll depicts nearly the woodcut (fig. 1) form a composition of
and West. While there are striking similarities items that could not be categorised. 7 The 250 objects in the collection of the imperial antiquities. Compositions of antiquities were
between Laurence Binyon and Eva Ströber catalogue is testimony to Ströber’s wide court. The scroll is numbered 6, and a similar a popular decorative theme in various media,
— both curators of Asian art, both keen to range of interests. In curatorial terms, none scroll in the Victoria and Albert Museum, including porcelain. The plate in figure 3 has
highlight the relevance of the philosophies of the items on display in this print (fig. 1) numbered ‘8 xia’ (‘bottom’), suggest that a depiction of a range of objects, including
that shaped the art, and both superbly able at would pose a challenge for her, and they these scrolls may once have formed part of vases, peacock-feathers, a stringed musical
communicating their knowledge about Asia might all in their own ways delight her. Not a pictorial catalogue of the entire imperial instrument, books, scrolls, and censers, as
to the general public — Ströber would not only does she know about the various types collection of objects. The items, depicted in well as a reclining dragon on a pillow and
likely have accepted a title so generic as to of porcelain depicted here, but also about great detail, using the techniques of shading a bird on a stand. The composition of the
become meaningless, ‘Flower arrangement, the bronzes and paintings, and the good luck and perspective that Jesuit painters had objects in the print and in the lower section
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etc.’, for this print. symbolism of these objects, such as the tall introduced to the imperial court, include a on this plate were adapted to fit the specific
While Ströber spent many years in vase with the character shou on it, the ding variety of materials from the Neolithic up space they are in, as we see for example in
Leeuwarden caring for the Princessehof’s with the lion-dog, the pomegranate flower to 1728, when the scroll was painted. The the print, in the rounding of the peacock
wonderful collection of ceramics, she was in the vase, and the Buddha’s hand citrus throne depicted at the end of the scroll feathers that echo the shape of the plate, and
by no means ‘only’ a ceramics scholar. fruit in the foreground. suggests the presence of the Yongzheng the placement of the two ceramic objects in
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The catalogue she wrote for the Herzog emperor and his personal interest in the the six- and eight o’clock positions (if we
Anton Ulrich Museum in 2002, entitled The print depicts a collection of antiquities. individual objects. imagine the base of the plate as a clock face)
Ostasiatika, to name but one example, Antiquities were a popular theme in the to fill the circular shape of the composition.

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