The Temasek Wreck ceramics cargo: Yuan blue-and-white porcelain, celadon and other ceramics found in Singapore waters
June 2025
A maritime archaeological excavation recently carried out in stages over a four-year period resulted in the recovery of approximately 3.5 tonnes of ceramic shards, along with several intact or nearly...
Radiant grandeur: Gold and silver decoration on ceramics in the Song and Yuan dynasties
December 2025
Gold and silver decoration on early Chinese ceramics has long been a mysterious chapter in the study of ancient Chinese ceramics given the challenge imposed by mere scarcity of such examples, material...
Timur’s blue-and-white: Yuan and Ming porcelain in Central Asia
December 2025
While Chinese porcelain was widely exported by sea from the ninth century onward, its presence in Central Asia remains rare. Archaeological finds from Samarkand and Herat - primarily high-quality Yuan...
Form and function of blue-and-white porcelain: Insights from Safavid miniatures and the National Museum of Iran ceramics
December 2025
With the expansion of commercial relations between Iran and China during the Safavid period, the use of blue-and-white porcelain became highly popular in Iran. Moreover, certain earlier examples of...
Transformations: Porcelain and European dining in the 17th and 18th centuries
June 2025
Due to its plasticity and many other outstanding properties, porcelain is today one of the most widely used materials, and porcelain products are ubiquitous, while one of the most long-standing and...
The production of Chinese porcelain for overseas markets and the role of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) between 1602 and 1655
June 2026
At the start of the 17th century, porcelain was a scarce trade commodity in Europe but became very much in demand. In order to understand the growth of this trade commodity, the question rises: what...
Understanding European style Chinese export porcelain through the Ionides Collection: New discoveries and future research
June 2025
Once described as ‘the most comprehensive collection of its kind ever made’, the Ionides Collection of European style Chinese export porcelain remained largely unknown until recent research revealed...
Global ambitions in 17th century Britain: Trade, colonization and Chinese porcelain
June 2025
In the first decade of the 17th century, the English crown had its sights set in two directions: eastward towards trade with Asia and westward towards colonization. To compete in the European global...
Maritime trade and Chinese porcelain from the Ming to early Qing dynasties. A study of blue-and-white shards from eleven Portuguese shipwreck sites off the South African coast: Part I (1506–1593, the Hongzhi to Wanli periods)
June 2026
This paper contributes to a broader understanding of the dating and classification of blue-and-white Chinese porcelain produced during the Hongzhi (1488–1505), Jiajing (1522–1566) and Wanli (1573–1620)...
The Yuan Lacuna: The ‘David’ vases and UK collectors of early Chinese blue-and-white porcelain in the early 20th century
June 2025
In 1929, R. L. Hobson (1872–1941), Keeper of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, was the first to publish and formally acknowledge the significance of the pair of Yuan blue-and-white temple...
‘Chinamania’ in Britain: The Blue-and-White Revival of 1860–1900
June 2026
From the 1860’s, Chinese blue-and-white porcelain enjoyed a renaissance in Britain. Promoted by the artists James McNeil Whistler (1834–1903) and Dante Gabrielle Rosetti (1828–1882), the craze for ‘old...
Sir Michael Butler and the rise of High Transitional porcelain
June 2025
This article discusses a few examples of porcelains of extraordinarily high-quality produced during the reign of Emperor Chongzhen (1628–44), the last ruler of the Ming dynasty. They were made at private...
Understanding Chinese export ceramics through Western paintings and prints
June 2025
Scholars have long turned to traditional sources when researching Chinese export porcelain: The porcelain itself, extant historic collections, archaeological evidence, and primary documents. Occasionally...
17th-century Chinese blue-and-white porcelain found in Dutch colonial North America
June 2026
Jamestown, Virginia, founded in 1607, was the first permanent English settlement in North America, where extensive excavations have shown that blue-and-white Ming dynasty Chinese porcelain was among...
Beyond the zisha teapot: Iron-rich clay and slab-building technique in the Yixing Chuanxindiao liquid-boiling vessels
June 2026
Zisha teapots, the unglazed stoneware vessels produced in Yixing, Jiangsu, China, have long been celebrated for their zisha clay and slab-building techniques. Existing scholarship has predominantly...
Other markets: 19th century Jingdezhen porcelain made for Japan and Thailand
June 2025
With its singular focus on blue-and-white, the collection formed by Rodney Frelinghuysen over almost five decades ventures beyond the classic categories of Chinese export porcelain to explore wares...
Creating a database of dated Chinese porcelain from 1550 to 1750
June 2025
From the vast quantities of Chinese porcelain produced between 1550 to 1750, a very limited number are inscribed with dates which provide the vital building blocks for establishing a chronology. This...
Hizen porcelain exported to Americas
December 2025
At the end of the 16th century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded the Korean Peninsula and brought many Korean potters back to Japan. Initially, they produced stoneware, but in the early 17th century, they...
Artists painting in cobalt blue. Yuan porcelain from the collection of Sir Joseph Hotung
June 2025
The small but exceptional collection of early Chinese blue-and-white porcelains assembled by the renowned collector and patron Sir Joseph Hotung 何鸿卿爵士 (1930–2021), has recently been donated to the British...
A rare Qing dynasty Kangxi porcelain vase covered with black lacquer and inlaid with mother-of-pearl motifs
December 2025
The Oranienbaum Palace's collection of Chinese porcelain in Russia includes more than three hundred items. A significant part of them belongs to the historical collection, formed before 1917. These...
Yixing stoneware customised for the West: An analysis of a rare Yixing zisha stoneware mustard pot in the Anders Collection, The Netherlands
December 2025
Yixing stoneware is an intricate material culture originating from the Yixing area in Jiangsu province, southeast China. Thanks to its unique clay resources and specialised shaping techniques, Yixing...
The sanitary narrative: Constructing public value through materiality and female agency in Doulton’s Lambeth faience panels at St. Thomas’s Hospital, London (ca. 1900)
June 2026
This paper investigates the cultural and industrial paradigm of the "Sanitary Narrative" through a critical analysis of Doulton’s Lambeth faience panel murals for the children's wards at St. Thomas’s...
Chinese porcelain from the collection of Queen Elisabeth Farnese Queen of Spain (r. 1714–1746)
December 2025
Chinese porcelain epitomizes the scientific and technological achievements of Chinese civilization, remaining unrivalled in refinement until much of Europe mastered porcelain production in the mid-eighteenth...
Chinese ceramics in Lisbon — The Medeiros e Almeida Museum in context
December 2025
António de Medeiros e Almeida (1895–1986), a prominent Portuguese entrepreneur and philanthropist, devoted much of his life to assembling an outstanding collection of decorative arts, today preserved...
The discovery of a pair of early Ming dynasty blue-and-white candlesticks of the Yongle period inspired by Islamic metal prototypes
December 2025
Until five years ago, there were less than a dozen recorded examples of Yongle (1403–1424) and Xuande (1426–1435) faceted candlesticks in public and private collections. The odds that a pair would exist...