Interview with Robert Jacobsen

Curator of Asian Art

1. While this object is Chinese, it has a Middle Eastern look to it. Why is that?

This beautiful, large, impressive 14th century plate is exactly the thing that the Middle Eastern Sultans were keenly interested in importing into their region from China. Now, the piece itself is not Chinese in taste. It's larger than the average Chinese would have used in the domestic setting.

2. So, the Chinese were looking at objects from the Middle East and creating porcelains that they thought they could sell there?

(1) Designs such as this peacock were made to suit foreign tastes.

Yes. The foliate rim here may be based on imported silver that the Chinese would have been aware of coming from the Middle East. The densely packed designs, the heavy use of blue, the dense orchestration of flower patterns, even the peacock is a motif that is not that standard or common to Chinese thinking at this period.(1) In fact, blue and white porcelain begins as an export item.

3. The Chinese are so well known for blue and white porcelain. When did they start making it for themselves?

It wasn't particularly popular at all amongst the Chinese during this 14th century period. Eventually it does become that and it almost takes over a type of decorative ceramic production for the next 500 years. But at this stage, this would be seen as a foreign kind of object to most Chinese.

4. What kinds of forms and patterns did they eventually develop?

(2) This Yüan Dynasty pear-shaped vase (ping) follows established Chinese forms.

In time, we begin to see the Chinese kind of adjust and take this interest in under-glazed blue and white. But the shapes they choose are the shapes we've seen already from the preceding Sung Dynasty—for instance this type of vase, a very elegant object in a shape that precedes the Yüan period and is more sedate in its form.(2)

5. Wouldn't the export market have been interested in this kind of object?

The decoration is something that the Middle Easterners wouldn't have understood. It's a Chinese dragon that's been painted, as we can see here, wrapping virtually entirely around this vase—a kind of spiny quill-like dragon. So the decoration here is something the Chinese, by now, are accustomed to seeing. The phoenix and the dragon are of course standard symbols for the court, for China itself, for the throne, for the Forbidden City. So this would have been something, done in blue and white, that would have been far more in keeping with Chinese taste and Chinese usage.

6. Back to the export plate, how was it made, technically?

This plate was mold-made. The floral impressions here and the barbed rim were all created in a mold process, which meant that further pressings could be made and this plate could be replicated in a kind of mass-manufacturing approach.

The painting, of course, is done by hand. It's done against the clear white porcelain and then it's sealed, in effect, under a clear glaze, bonding the design to the vessel itself in a very, very durable manner. That's a technical breakthrough, an innovation that they weren't able to really effectively achieve yet in the Middle East, which makes this thing so rare and such a great object for export.

7. What are those few little orange spots?

(3) Orange spots occur where the glaze did not completely cover the vessel.

A close inspection will reveal that there seem to be some orange areas kind of peeking through the white.(3) That's in fact where the glaze has not completely covered the surface of the vessel. If we don't have this seal coat on it, it will turn orange in the firing process.