1、1A Country Defined by “China”WALKING into al-most any museumin China,you willdefinitely see porcelain on dis-play,which is a section of greatimportance for exhibition.InChinese cultural history,porce-lain,with its seamless textureand solid character,is a uniqueand important representative ofChinas s
2、ocial constituents,life,technology and art.This cul-ture is preserved and recordedin American and Europeanmuseums thanks to their keeninterest in maintaining porce-lain collections,a large portionof which originated in China.Important China porcelaincollections are held by suchdiverse bastions of cu
3、lture asthe Metropolitan Museum ofArt in NewYork,the AsianArt Museum of San Francisco,the British Museum,MuseeGuimet,Tokyo National Muse-um,Topkapi Palace in Istanbul,and Iran Ardebil Mosque. Porcelain was a practicaland indispensable inventionfor the Chinese for thousandsof years; however the craft
4、soon yielded pure works of art.The myriad shapes of Chineseporcelain ware are usuallydecorated with typical Chi-nese icons.The dragon,totemof China,is a common pat-tern,but as a representative ofroyalty,the dragon image wasused sparingly and 2carefully.The number of claws on thetablewares decorative
5、 dragondisclosed the rank of the mas-ter of the house.Three or fourclaws represented aristocratsand princes,while a five-clawdragon was reserved for theuse of the emperor.Calligraphyand traditional ink and washpaintings are the art forms mostadmired in China,and theircontents too became importantemb
6、ellishments to porcelainobjects.Chinese ceramics arebroadly reflective of Chineseculture,encompassing manyaspects of Chinese civiliza-tion and appealing broadly topeoples sense of beauty. Pottery and clay vesselswere not developed exclu-sively in China.AncientEgypt,Greece,Pre-ColumbianAmerica and In
7、dia are alsowell known for their earthen-ware.European and Americancountries also produced highquality porcelain after the18th century.But undoubt-edly China has remained anose ahead of the pack for thesupreme quality and exquisitedesigns of its porcelain.Chinais not only known for porce-lain,as Vir
8、ginia L.Bower of theUniversity of the Arts,Phila-delphia,writes in her introduc-tion to Chinese Ceramics,butno other country is as closelyconnected with the artisticproduction of porcelain asChina.In fact,in English chinarefers only to high-temperatureburned white-body porcelain. 3Chinese Ceramics w
9、ill per-fectly meet the demands of thecurious.This lavishly illustratedvolume reviews the develop-ment of Chinese porcelain overthousands of years.The processof making a piece of china isilluminated,and glimpses aregiven of the earliest potteryknown to the world,unearthedin Hunan Province.By intro-d
10、ucing representative works,the book reviews each stage ofChinese ceramics ranging fromthe Paleolithic era to the endof the Qing dynasty in 1911, including the impressive andconstantly running key kilns,ceramic types,forms,decora-tions,techniques and evenappraisal skills.Just like Chi-nese sill,Chine
11、se porcelainhas been exported to worldmarkets via sea lanes that werelater referred to as the “CeramicRoad.“ When did Europeansand Americans come intocontact with Chinese porce-lain,how did they master thetechnique and how were theyinfluenced by this ancientcraft? These questions areanswered in grat
12、ifying detail inthe book. If you think long essays areboring,you can divert yourattention to the exquisite pic-tures.Some 700 photographsof Chinese ceramic works,thebest examples of their period,constitute a roadmap to thedevelopment of ceramics.Theselection is made up of themost prized objects from
13、 themost valuable collections of theworlds most renowned muse-4ums.The authors themselves arethe most outstanding porcelainscholars,and these Chinese,American and Japanese experlshave worked assiduously tounite these treasures in a book,with layers of information tosuit many kinds of readers. Chines
14、e Ceramics is a jointpublication by Foreign Lan-guages Press and Yale Univer-sity Press in both Chinese andEnglish.Ceramics is but a sliceof Chinese culture,a compan-ion to calligraphy,painting andsculpture.Other tides by theForeign Languages Press andYale University Press includeThree Thousand Year
15、s of Chi-nese Painting,Chinese Sculp-ture,and Chinese Cafligraphy,which are part of the seriesThe Culture and Civilization ofChina.A new addition to theline,a book on Chinese silkart,is due to be released soon.All these books are drafted byworld-renowned experts andpublished in Chinese and Eng-lish.Three Thousand Years ofChinese Painting and ChineseCalligraphy won Ihe Associa-tion of American PublishersAward for Excellence in Hu-manities.The series was alsogranted Open Fields Awardsby the Truce Foundation of theU.S.A.
