Oriental blue-and-white porcelain has its own rich history of shipwrecks and lost cargoes that hint at the fascination of the West for these products. Last year in the Princessehof in Leeuwarden the exhibition ‘Sunken Treasures’ was held that showed ceramics, porcelain and other objects found on board of different ship-wrecks. One was the Tang ship which travelled through the Middle-East to China around the year 830 AD.
There, once arrived, the crew loaded the ship up with porcelain and stoneware. They filled the ship with some of the most lovely pots, bowls, mirrors; and saucers. Once at sea, the captain decided to make a detour, but then struck a reef. The ship, her crew, and her cargo all sank to the bottom of the Java sea, where they were left undisturbed until 1998.
This lecture will tell the history of blue-and-white porcelain in general and the trade in export porcelain, including accounts of salvaging operations that recovered cargoes that have greatly enhanced the understanding of blue-and-white porcelain and its wider commercial impact.
Professor Marie Conte-Helm is a long-established Arts Society Lecturer. She studied Asian art and was Director General of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation from 1999-2011 and has held senior academic posts at various UK universities. She is widely published and has lectured throughout the UK and abroad. She was awarded an OBE in the 2011 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to UK-Japan educational and cultural relations and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette by the Government of Japan in 2019.
To register for the online lecture go to https://theartssociety.org/the-hague Please note that you have to register before Monday the 11th of January. The lecture starts at 20.00 pm. Fee (non-members): € 13,-. A membership (8 lectures and other activities) is € 65,- per year and € 120,- for a couple.
