Black & White Ceramics from 10th-14th Century China

WASHINGTON, D.C.-From the 10th through the 14th centuries, Chinese potters significantly expanded the ceramic repertoire by perfecting a clay body of pristine whiteness and developing a luscious black glaze, leading to the production of innovative, visually striking vessels, dishes, boxes and tomb ceramics. This exhibition presents examples of the most acclaimed “black and white” ceramics of the period. The range of glaze colors on view includes “blacks” that shade to brown, and silvery tones and “whites” that range from ivory to pale blue. Objects from diverse kilns demonstrate the inaccuracy of a longstanding assumption that the major kilns of this period produced a single “signature” ware. They show instead how dynamic exchanges involving imitation and rivalry between nearby and distant kilns in north and south China, as well across the lines of different crafts, affected production. The exhibition remains open indefinitely.

Works on view illustrate the responses of 10th -to 14th-century potters to the market demand for new styles of ceramics. Heightened social competition led potters to make affordable ceramics that resembled luxury vessels of more expensive materials such as jade, lacquer and silver. A novel method of tea preparation resulting in a frothy white-foamed beverage stimulated potters at the Jian kilns in south China to create a new form of dark-glazed bowl that showed the tea to advantage. A stunning Jian ware bowl on view bears a sumptuous glaze patterned by “oil spots”—unplanned effects of the iron-laden glaze. The success of Jian ware prompted fierce competition from other kilns, including those in Jizhou, where potters experimented with dark-on-dark decoration and also produced a mottled tortoiseshell effect.

Many factors, including local raw materials (such as the different types of clay found in north and south China), fuels and firing procedures, affected the color of the finished wares on view in the exhibition. Potters at the northern kilns making Ding ware had access to deposits of white clay containing kaolin, the basic ingredient of porcelain clay, which they used to make prized white ceramic wares that became an affordable and practical alternative to silver vessels. Ding vessels were embellished with carved or molded designs and covered with an ivory tinted glaze. Ding ware potters also produced some black wares, evoking dark lacquer vessels.

Rival potters at kilns making Cizhou ware developed everyday ceramics featuring bold designs and robust forms that came to be imitated elsewhere. Cizhou ware offered a range of choices in decoration based on either white or black slip (a thin solution of clay applied beneath the clear glaze), striking combinations of both or a dark iron-rich pigment applied over a dark glaze. Some of the most striking decoration used a technique known as “sgraffito,” in which the surface layer of glaze or slip was cut away to create designs by exposing a ground of contrasting color. A rare ceramic Cizhou pillow on view bears the exact date of its production (1063) and a different pattern on each face.

Cizhou potters sometimes kneaded together black and white clays, creating the marble effect seen in the 13th-to 14th-century incense burner on view. A black Cizhou bowl with a white-slipped rim simulating a band of thin silver foil shows how Cizhou potters imitated silver objects.

Potters in the southern town of Jingdezhen competed with the elite northern Ding wares by mixing locally available materials to create a new type of compound clay that proved ideal for making white wares. When glazed, Jingdezhen wares took on a glassy, bluish-white color that was compared to “icy jade.” Jingdezhen porcelains became so popular both domestically and abroad that by the 14th century the south had overtaken the north as the major source of white wares for the world.

Exhibit Celebrates Artistic Exchanges Between China, Iraq

Washington -- The "information highway" may be a relatively new term sprung from the development of modern technology and the Internet, but the concept has been around for a long, long time.

China and Iraq created one in the ninth century, for example.

During this time, seafaring traders from both countries shared with their countrymen the best that both countries had to offer in ceramics and art. The fabulous results of this cultural exchange are now on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington.

The exhibition, Iraq and China: Ceramics, Trade and Innovation, focuses on the revolutionary and enduring changes that took place in Iraqi ceramics in response to a wave of luxury Chinese goods imported by Arab and Persian merchants.

The ideas shared between the countries eventually changed the character of Chinese ceramics -- 14th-century experiments with cobalt blue from the Islamic world gave birth to Yuan and Ming blue-and-white porcelain, which in turn inspired European ceramics, including Dutch Delft, Danish Royal Copenhagen Porcelain faience and English blue-and-white wares.

The Sackler exhibition, which is on view until April 24, 2005, displays some 60 ceramic and glass objects, including early Iraqi blue-and-white lusterware plates, bowls, jars and tiles from the Freer Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Khalili Collection (London), the Museum fur Islamische Kunst (Berlin) and other public and private collections.

According to Massumeh Farhad, the curator of Islamic Art at the Freer Gallery of Art/Arthur M. Sackler Gallery for the Smithsonian Institution, organizers began planning the "Iraq and China" exhibition in 2000 and finally completed it after years of studying, selecting, and conserving objects; negotiating loan agreements; arranging for transportation; writing the catalogue, labels and other didactics; and designing the exhibition and graphics.

At a special viewing for the press, Julian Raby, director for the Freer and Sackler galleries, emphasized the richness and innovativeness of Iraqi culture during the Abbasid Empire. Even after the 10th century, when the Abbasid Empire began to disintegrate politically, this creativity made itself felt in other parts of the world as Iraqi potters migrated to Egypt, Iran, Syria and Islamic Spain.

Also on hand for the press viewing was Rend Al-Rahin, the outgoing Iraqi ambassador to the United States and one of the founders of the Iraq Foundation, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization working for democracy and human rights in Iraq. Al-Rahin said the exhibit serves to remind people of what is of "enduring and intrinsic value."

"We must look past the transient," she said, and remember that Iraq was the "cradle of civilization."

"Iraq was home to a brilliant civilization," Al-Rahin said, "a true world center" that enjoyed an "age of discovery" 600 years before Europe.

Jessica Hallett, guest curator of the exhibition, is writing a scholarly volume about the Iraq-China ceramic artistic exchanges for the Freer Gallery that will be published this spring. She said it was the discovery of new trade routes via the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea that encouraged an age of great discovery. Muslim merchants imported Chinese ceramics that were admired in Iraq for their strength and shiny white surfaces.

In an attempt to duplicate Chinese porcelain, Iraqi potters covered their yellow clay vessels with a "tin glaze" that became opaque after firing. They also decorated their wares in designs in cobalt blue and developed "luster" mixtures of copper and silver oxides that produced iridescent metallic effects. The techniques for lusterware eventually reached Renaissance Italy and gave rise to the 16th-century "Maiolica" tradition, which in turn inspired Portuguese and French faience and 19th-century English Minton Majolica wares.

For more information on the exhibit "Iraq and China: Ceramics, Trade, and Innovation," see: http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/IraqandChina.htm

The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the neighboring Freer Gallery of Art together form the national museum of Asian art for the United States. In addition to thousands of precious works of art, the galleries house the largest Asian art research library in the United States.

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Iraq and China: Ceramics, Trade, and Innovation

This exhibition focuses on revolutionary and enduring changes that took place in Iraqi ceramics during the 9th century as the humble character of Islamic pottery responded to a wave of luxury Chinese goods, imported by Arab and Persian merchants. During this period, Iraq became a center for Islamic ceramic production as new technologies transformed common earthenware into a vehicle for complex multi-colored designs. Chinese ceramics were admired in Iraq for their shiny white surfaces and hard body. As neither the essential raw materials nor the appropriate firing technology were locally available, Islamic potters therefore created their own versions by covering finely potted yellow clay hemispherical bowls with a glaze that turned opaque after firing, creating ceramics that were described as "pearl cups like the moon." This technique offered the potters an ideal canvas for bold decorative designs, first in cobalt blue and then with "luster"; mixtures of copper and silver that were painted onto the glaze then fixed in a second firing.

Following the gradual disintegration of the Abbasid Empire after the 10th century, migrating Iraqi potters transmitted these techniques to Egypt and Iran from whence they traveled to Europe, giving rise to the great "Majolica" tradition in medieval Spain and Renaissance Italy. In China, 14th-century experiments with cobalt blue from the Islamic world led to Yuan and Ming blue-and-white.

"Reflection," a 50-foot-long boat excavated from a harbor in Japan and resting on broken fragments of porcelain deities from Dehua, China by the celebrated contemporary Chinese artist Cai Guo Qiang, complements the exhibition.

Iraq & China: Ceramics, Trade, and Innovation is supported in part by the Barakat Foundation with indirect support from the U.S. Department of State through the Council of American Overseas Research Centers.

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