Chinese Pottery and Porcelain: From Prehistory to the Present - Hardcover

Vainker, Shelagh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080761260X ISBN 13: 9780807612606

Publisher: George Braziller, 1991

Synopsis

A comprehensive survey of the development of ceramics from the Neolithic period to the present day. Assessing the roles pottery has played in each dynasty throughout the history of China, Vainker (curator, Dept. of Oriental Antiquities, British Museum) also discusses its enormous impact on the ceramic industries of the rest of the world, where Chinese porcelain has been admired and collected for centuries. With 100 color and 98 b&w illustrations. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

The art of Chinese ceramics encompasses prehistoric clay figurines of pregnant women, bronze ritualistic bells, exotic earthenware figures of merchants in the Central Asian silk trade, Ming writing-boxes bearing Arabic inscriptions, Taoist shrines adorned with lacquer and gilding, and pagoda tiles molded with monster masks. It's an art as richly varied as Chinese civilization itself, as this resplendently illustrated survey makes abundantly clear. Vainker, a curator at the British Museum, draws on the museum's vast collection of Chinese stoneware, porcelain and religious sculpture in her absorbing narrative. Proceeding from the riotous gaiety of Tang "three-color wares" (A.D. 618-906) to the classical equilibrium of 12th-century Song pottery to a modern, softly glowing "eggshell" porcelain vase, Vainker vibrantly charts "a continued transformation of the contemporary into the collectable."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: George Braziller
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 080761260X
• ISBN 13: 9780807612606
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240