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.