The Oriental Ceramic Society

SUMMER PROGRAMME 2010

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After a busy summer with our very successful The World in Monochromes exhibition and seminar, we began our autumn programme with a most enjoyable evening at the new ceramics galleries at the Victoria & Albert Museum in October. This was followed in November by a lecture by Professor Li Jian’ An on underwater archaeology in China and new findings on Fujian ceramics, and in December Professor Peter Lam gave an important lecture on dating Qianlong Imperial ware. Michel Lee spoke in January on the the image of the Westerner in Shekwan (Shiwan) ceramics, and this was followed by the annual Bonhams/OCS lecture on Japanese Meiji porcelain. In February Clarence Eng spoke on architectural ceramics and problems of context, and in March we were delighted to welcome Professor Jenny So from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who gave the annual Woolf Jade lecture on Chinese jades of the 12th to 17th centuries. The Society is most grateful to Jonathan Woolf and the Woolf Charitable Trust for generously sponsoring the lecture and for allowing our members to view his very important collection of Imperial jades.

Since January 2010, all past volumes of the Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society have been available to view on the Society’s website, www.ocs-london.com. Later this year all our Newsletters and some of our other publications will also be added. Instructions on how to use the new online facility are given in our 2010 Newsletter no. 18, sent with this Programme.

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SUBSCRIPTION RENEWAL

Subscriptions for the year 2010/11 are now due. Enclosed with this Programme you will find a Subscription Renewal Form and Invoice. Please check that all your details on the form are correct and advise any changes or missing information. Please return the form with your subscription payment. It is important that our database contains up-to-date information for all our members, in order to ensure that contact between us is efficient. This information is protected under the terms of the Data Protection Act. If you pay by Banker’s Order, there is no need to do anything unless any of your details need updating, in which case please mark the changes on the form and return it to us by post or send an Email.

It saves us a good deal of time and cost if members pay their subscriptions promptly and we are most grateful to those members who do so. Only fully paid up members receive information from us, including the Transactions.

Payment can be made by banker’s order, credit card or cheque. We accept sterling and US$ cheques, and cheques drawn on Euro accounts (but not Euro cheques). If you wish to pay by credit card, please write your card number and expiry date on the Subscription Renewal Form. If you have an old standing order paying Ł45 instead of Ł55 per year, please send us a cheque for the balance and write to your bank to update the amount due. Thank you.

The Society is rationalising its holdings of back copies of the Transactions. If members are interested in purchasing any of these please let us know, and we can send you details of the volumes that are still available. We also have catalogues from previous exhibitions for sale.

The Society’s programme for Summer 2010 is outlined below, but for future programmes we would be delighted to hear from members who know of any new research that could provide interesting lectures, or if members have specific topics that they would be interested in having addressed in future lectures.

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SUMMER PROGRAMME OF LECTURES

All lectures will be held at 6:00 p.m. at the Society of Antiquaries of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BE, unless otherwise noted*

Tuesday 11th May
Shelagh Vainker
“Owning ceramics in the Northern Song dynasty: thoughts on who and how”

The high status of Northern Song ceramics is largely retrospective: during the dynasty itself, huge quantities were produced but few were collected or written about. How, then, do we understand how they were regarded, or what social functions they may have served? How were they used, and how were they experienced? This lecture will look at ceramics in various Northern Song contexts, and particularly at tombs, in order to establish firstly who owned or used which types of ceramics, and then to consider what significance the pieces might have held for different individuals. The importance of place of burial of particular wares will also be explored.

Shelagh Vainker is Curator of Chinese Art at the Ashmolean in Oxford, and University Lecturer in Chinese Art. She was previously curator of Chinese ceramics at the British Museum. In addition to catalogues and related articles on the Ashmolean’s collection of modern Chinese paintings, she has worked extensively on the Northern Song period, publishing on ceramics particularly and also on Northern Song silk, silver, lacquer and gold. Shelagh has been President of the Oriental Ceramic Society since June 2009.

Wednesday 16th June
AGM and lecture
Venue: The Society of Antiquaries
Time: 5:30 p.m.

Please do come and support your Society at our AGM, when you will hear all about our activities and achievements during the past year. The AGM will be followed at 6:00 p.m. by a lecture given by Beth McKillop, Keeper of the Department of Asia and Director of Collections at the V&A Museum, entitled:-

“Korean ceramics in the international nexus: the V&A's new ceramics galleries”

The V&A collection of Korean ceramics has been extensively displayed across the new galleries that opened in 2009-10. As the museum prepares for the first temporary exhibition of ceramics from Asia - 'Tradition Transformed', curated by Professor Cho Chung Hyun - in the new temporary exhibition gallery next year, this lecture will reflect on changes to the exhibition and display of the V&A's historic and contemporary Korean ceramics, resulting from the cross-cultural approach adopted in the new galleries.

Beth McKillop is Director of Collections and Keeper of the Department of Asia at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She is interested in the cultural connections between China and Korea, with ceramics and print culture as her two main areas of research. Until 2004 she was a curator in the Asian Collections of the British Library, where she contributed to the 2003 exhibition 'Chinese Printmaking Today'. For the V&A's new Ceramics Galleries, she has curated displays of Korean ceramics of all periods. Her publications include Korean Art and Design (1992), North Korean Culture and Society (2004) and the Korean sections of The Oxford Companion to the Book (2010).

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception, to which all members are invited. There will be a charge of Ł10.00 per head for the reception; please complete the booking form at the end of this Programme and mail to us with your payment. Guests are welcome.

Please note change of date for our October lecture, which will now be held on Tuesday 5th October and not Tuesday 12th.

Tuesday 5th October
Louise Allison Cort and Leedom Lefferts
“Pots and how they are made in Mainland Southeast Asia”

The potters at work today in villages in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and southern Yunnan province, PRC, make either earthenware or stoneware vessels for local and regional markets. These two basic types of ceramics still play important roles in local food preparation and storage and in religious rituals. Our field research among these communities, which began in 1989, has looked at how methods of pottery production cut across modern political borders to reveal more fundamental links among language and cultural groups and to hint at patterns of migration and interaction. We will introduce some of the memorable potters we have met and share video clips and images of how pots are made.

Louise Allison Cort is Curator for Ceramics, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Her most recent publication is Ceramics in Mainland Southeast Asia, http://SEAsianCeramics.asia.si.edu. Leedom Lefferts is Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, Drew University, and Research Associate, Anthropology Department, Smithsonian Institution. He is author of many publications on aspects of development, textiles, ceramics and Buddhism in Northeast Thailand, including “The Bun Phra Wet Painted Scrolls of Northeastern Thailand,” in the Journal of the Walters Art Museum 64/65 (2009).

Tuesday 9th November
Luisa Mengoni and Rose Kerr on "Chinese Export Ceramics in the Victoria & Albert Museum"

Tuesday 7th December
Rosemary Scott on “Porcelains from the Reign of Perpetual Happiness”

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Visit to Northampton Museum and Art Gallery and Kelmarsh Hall
Wednesday 23 June, 2010

The museum has an extensive collection of Oriental (mainly Chinese) porcelain as well as a large collection of Dutch and English Delft ware. Only a small proportion of the collection is on show and the curator has agreed to show us the reserve collection. The stores are not large and the party must be limited to 20 members. One party of 10 members will be admitted to the store while the second party can view the main galleries. The art gallery also has an interesting collection of early paintings and the museum also has, of course, the national shoe collection! The Oriental porcelain was given by two separate local collectors in the early 20th century and comprises mainly export ware from the sixteenth to the eighteen century. As well as blue and white and enamelled wares there is also some Yixing and Blanc de Chine. The Delft wares are particularly interesting since many are direct copies of Oriental specimens.
There is a multi storey car park very close to the museum and it is proposed that we meet at the museum at 10:45hrs. Northampton is very close to the M1 junctions 15 and 15A (from the south) and 16 (from the north).

After the museum visit we will visit Kelmarsh Hall, a fine Palladian mansion, situated about 20 minutes by road from Northampton. We can have lunch at the hall prior to our visit. The hall was built in the early 1730s and was given new life in the 1920s when Nancy Lancaster, nee Tree, re-furnished it in what we now recognise as the English country house look. She introduced many fine furnishings and also exuberant Chinese wallpaper into one of the rooms. Nancy Lancaster also exercised her talents in the garden and employed Geoffrey Jellicoe to design the formal terrace. Kelmarsh also holds some of the highly important English furniture from Croome Court in Worcestershire, which is currently being restored by the National Trust, and I have arranged for us to see these furnishings. The 6th Earl of Coventry built Croome Court and ‘Capability’ Brown was responsible for the landscape garden.

If you would like to join this visit, please complete the form at the end of this programme (including your lunch order) and return it to Phillip Allen. Since he will be driving from Bedford, he would be happy to collect up to four members who are prepared to come to Bedford by train.

Lunch menu

Option 1:
Jacket potato with cheese or coleslaw or Tuna mayonnaise or Vegetable quiche with salad: Ł6.00

Option 2:
Salmon and Prawn mornay
Chicken, ham and leek Canneloni Ł8.00

Option 3:
Bowl of homemade soup and selection of sandwiches Ł6.99

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THE OCS DISCUSSION AND HANDLING GROUP

The OCS Discussion and Handling Group enjoy regular meetings at which members of the Society bring along items which they have collected for discussion. Each of these meetings is devoted to a particular topic and, although the Society has an especial interest in ceramics, other subjects are also included.

On 2nd March, a group of OCS members spent a most interesting afternoon at Christie’s art store in Vauxhall, where we viewed a selection of ivories held by the Sir Victor Sassoon Chinese Ivories Trust and learned of the history of the collection. We were most grateful to Phillip Allen for making arrangements for this handling session of such beautiful items of ivory.

Bonhams have once again kindly offered to host the second meeting on 11th May, which will be on the subject of Shipwreck Ceramics, and will take place in their lecture theatre at 101 New Bond Street, starting at 3:00 p.m. Shipwreck ceramics (and indeed other objects) made for export that have emerged from the deep, are of enormous value to all of us who are interested in Oriental studies. The type of vessels and their watery locations also tell us much about how the export trade was organised.

The invention and improvement of diving equipment during the past hundred years has seen more and more wrecks being located and investigated and the major auction houses are now often involved in the sale of many of the items that have been found. Many members have acquired these ceramics and this is an opportunity for us to look at these as a whole. Please bring any items that show evidence of having emerged from the sea as well as those that have labels showing that they are from wrecks such as Vung Tau, Ca Mau, the Diana and Hatcher wrecks.
If you intend to participate in the 11th May meeting, please complete the booking form at the end of this Programme and mail it to Phillip Allen as soon as convenient.

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OF INTEREST TO MEMBERS

Ceramics on Show: Public and Private Displays, a conference, will be held at the Victoria & Albert Museum on 24th and 25th September, 2010. Following the opening of the new ceramics galleries at the V&A, this conference will explore the ways in which ceramic objects have been displayed by private individuals, collectors, architects, retailers, galleries and museums. The conference will bring together academics and curators, critics and artists to examine both contemporary and historic practice. Four specific themes will be addressed:-

• The presentation and interpretation of ceramics by museums
• Ceramics and display in retail and domestic environments
• Ceramics and architecture
• Issues of display in contemporary ceramic art

Ceramics of Asia – the second short course for 2010 on Ceramics of Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies will run from 1st to 4th June, 2010. Course fee: Ł540. For details, contact Dr. Heather Elgood on 020 7898 4451 or Email to asianart@soas.ac.uk. www.soas.ac.uk.

Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts & Cultures
64 The Close, Norwich, NR1 4DH. Tel: 01603 624349.
Email: sisjac@sainsbury-institute.org. Web site: www.sainsbury-institute.org.
Admission free, advance booking recommended. Lectures start at 6:00 p.m.
Thursday Lecture Series
June 17th
Unearthed: Ceramic Figures from Prehistoric Japan and the Balkans
Dr. Simon Kaner, Assistant Director, Sainsbury Institute
Venue: Hostry, Norwich Cathedral, Norwich NR1 4EH

Islamic Art Circle at SOAS
All lectures begin at 7:00 pm in the Khalili Lecture Theatre (Main School Lecture Theatre), Philips Building, SOAS, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H OXG. For further information contact Rosalind Wade Haddon on 01608 730769 or email to rosalindhaddon@aol.com.
12th May
Ottoman Art between Asia and Europe
Mr. Tim Stanley, Senior Curator, Middle East Department, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
9th June
The Uses of Landscape in Medieval Persian Painting
Professor Robert Hillenbrand, Professor Emeritus, History of Art, Edinburgh University

New Publication
Indian Textiles in the East: from Southeast Asia to Japan, by John Guy, has recently been re-issued in paperback (formerly published as Woven Cargoes). The book gives an account of the vast Asian trade in Indian textiles to Southeast and East Asia. Alongside a wealth of illustrations, the author examines the history of the cloth-for-spices trade, focusing on the 17th and 18th centuries when the 1000 year-old-trade was at its peak. John Guy is Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and was formerly Senior Curator of the Asian Department at the V&A Museum. Published by Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978 0 500 288290.

EXHIBITIONS AND MUSEUMS

THE BRITISH MUSEUM
Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG. Tel: +44 (0)207 323 8181. www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk.
The Sir Joseph Hotung Centre for Ceramic Studies housing the Sir Percival David Collection of Chinese ceramics: Room 95
The Joseph E Hotung gallery of Oriental Antiquities from China, India, South Asia and Southeast Asia: Room 33.
Arts of Korea: The Korea Foundation Gallery, Room 67.
7000 Years of Chinese Jade from the Collection of Sir Joseph Hotung: The Selwyn and Ellie Alleyne Gallery, Room 33B.
The John Addis Islamic Gallery: Room 34
The Printed Image in China from 8th to 21st Centuries, 6th May to 5th September 2010, presents the fantastic range of Chinese prints in the British Museum collection for the first time. Rooms 90 & 91.

VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM
Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL. 0207 942 2000. www.vam.ac.uk
The new ceramics galleries are now open.
Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art and Design
TT Tsui Gallery of Chinese Art
The Samsung Gallery of Korean Art
Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art

ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM
Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PH. Tel: +44 (0)1865 278000. Fax: +44 (0)1865 278018
eastern.art@ashmus.ox.ac.uk www.ashmolean.org
Open Tuesday – Sunday and Bank Holidays, 10.00 – 6.00. Closed 24-26 December and 1 January
The Ashmolean Museum re-opened to the public on 7 November 2009 following a Ł61M, four-year redevelopment. The 39 new galleries include Japan 1600-1850; Japan from 1850; China to AD 800; China from AD 800; The Khoan and Michael Sullivan Gallery of Chinese Painting, currently showing The Past in the Present: script and archaism in modern Chinese painting; Art of the Islamic Middle East; India to AD 600; India from AD 800; Mughal India; Asian Crossroads; West meets East as well as galleries devoted to textiles, money, reading and writing and other cross-cultural themes that include Asian material. From 26 September until New Year 2011, there will be a small exhibition of Japanese prints from the Ashmolean's own collection in the Eastern Art Paintings and Prints Gallery - Japanese Ghosts and Demons.

THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, CAMBRIDGE
Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RB. Tel: 01223 332900. Closed Mondays.
The Oriental Gallery of Chinese and Japanese Art and the Gompertz Gallery of Korean Art.
Netsuke: Japanese Art in Miniature, until 30 May.
Gifts of the Ebb Tide: Japan and the Sea in Ukiyo-e Prints, from 18 May to 15 August.

BRIGHTON AND HOVE MUSEUMS
4-5 Pavilion Buildings, Brighton BN1 1EE. Tel: 01273 292763

THE MUSEUM OF EAST ASIAN ART, BATH
12 Bennett Street Bath, BA1 2QJ: Tel. 01225 464640. Email: info@meaa.org.uk. Web: www.meaa.org.uk.
Due to popular demand, highlights of the exhibition Cutting Edge: Untraditional Papercuts by Three Contemporary Chinese Artists has been extended to 29th August, 2010. This exhibition showcases papercuts which move away from the traditional two-dimensional style by layering a series of painted papercuts, one on top of another, to create a sense of depth. In association with ArtChinese, the Museum will host a new exhibition from 1st May to 29th August, entitled Animal Kingdom: Paintings by Li Fuyuan. Mr. Li uses brush painting techniques with stunning effects and his paintings are full of bold, contrasting colours and are sure to delight.
2010 FAIRS

Art Antiques London, a new fair arranged by Haughton International Fairs, will take place from 9th – 16th June in a purpose-built marquee in Kensington Gardens, opposite the Royal Albert Hall. This will incorporate the International Ceramics Fair and Seminar. For details go to www.haughton.com or email to info@haughton.com or telephone +44 (0) 20 7389 6555. Complimentary tickets available for OCS members.

The Antiques Dealers Fair Limited is holding the following fine art and antiques fairs in 2010:-
17–19 September: Stapleford Park, near Melton Mowbray, Leics. www.staplefordparkfair.com
8–10 October: Esher Hall, Sandown Park Racecourse, Esher, Surrey. www.esherhallfair.com
5–7 November: Tankersley Manor, Barnsley, South Yorkshire. www.tankersleymanorfair.com
The Antiques Dealers Fair Limited. Tickets and enquiries: +44 (0)1797 252030. www.adfl.co.uk.

Penman Fairs are pleased to send OCS members complimentary tickets to their antiques fairs to be held on the following dates in 2010:-
3-6 June: West London Art & Antiques Fair, Kensington Town Hall.
25-27 June: Towcester Antiques Fair, Towcester Racecourse, Northants.
10-12 September: Petersfield Antiques Fair, Hants.
22-26 September: Chelsea Antiques Fair, Chelsea Old Town Hall, Kings Road, London.
21-24 October: Chester Antiques & Fine Art Show, Chester Racecourse.
Enquiries: www.penman-fairs.co.uk, Email info@penman-fairs.co.uk or telephone 01825 744074.

Full details of the summer/autumn sales are given in our Newsletter No. 18, 2010.

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