Ker-Qing! How sky-high prices for Chinese porcelain hurt museums
British Museum curator reflects on the enduring appeal of porcelain from China, and the difficulty of adding to its collections with auction buyers paying so much for rare items
Wander around the Chinese porcelain section of any museum and you'll most likely only notice the aesthetics of the pieces, from the familiar blue and white pattern of a curvaceous Ming vase to the intricate images etched on a delicate Qing dynasty bowl. Not Jessica Harrison-Hall. What she sees goes deeper than the superficial, noticing instead a rich cultural timeline that can reveal a broader story about China's history from trade routes, its social hierarchy and relationships with the wider world.
"You can chart Chinese social history from the Neolithic to the present through ceramic production, distribution and consumption," says Harrison-Hall, who curates the Chinese ceramics collections at the British Museum.
"While we think of porcelain and ceramics as being incredibly fragile, which, of course, it is, it is also very resilient, so when we get shards of porcelain that have survived over time we can use it as a way to teach people about Chinese social history from the origins of China right through to now," says Harrison-Hall, who has a special interest in the material culture of later Chinese history, particularly the Song to Qing dynasties (960-1911).
British-born Harrison-Hall, who has published many books on Chinese ceramics, is also fascinated by the Ming period (1368-1644), a time of great growth in China when emperors and their palaces benefited from the skilled workmanship that created paintings, furniture, costumes, ceramics and jewellery. Even in modern China, the Ming dynasty is still considered a "golden age" of Chinese culture, she says.
"The Ming dynasty was famous in the West for its blue and white porcelain that was made in the imperial factories at Jingdezhen," says Harrison-Hall.
"But even today the fascination with that period continues, and no better symbol of this is the Ming vase. It's become such an iconic symbol and it goes back to the original importation of these blue and white wares and the impact they would have had at the time. You have to imagine the European dining scene with drab lead-glazed earthenware of beige and green - although as you go up the social chain you would see pewter, silver and gold. But there was no shiny white porcelain for dining before the arrival of Chinese imports in the 16th to 18th centuries."