Early Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain: The Mingzhitang Collection of Sir Joseph Hotung

Author: Regina Krahl

Publisher: CA Book Publishing

USD $231.00

The Mingzhitang Collection of Sir Joseph Hotung is one of the finest collections in the world to capture the essence of early Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. With 20 outstanding examples, it concentrates on the first hundred years of China’s blue-and-white production, in the late Yuan (1271–1368) and early Ming (1368–1644) dynasties—a period that was never surpassed in artistic ingenuity and material quality. The charisma and the energy of the masterly paintings on porcelain created in the Yuan dynasty at the kilns of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province, which made this genre so influential and universally admired, are represented with 12 exceptional examples, most of them unique. They demonstrate the powerful blue-and-white style developed under Mongol rule, when the artisans appear to have been working with few restraints.

The book is lavishly illustrated and contains a general introduction on early Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, an extensive description, documentation and discussion of each piece, and a bibliography.

Cloth-bound hardcover with wrapper, 172 pages, colour, 26 cm x 33 cm, English, published in 2023

ISBN: 9789887608943

 

Description

The collection equally documents the much more refined and sophisticated early Ming style of the Yongle (1403–24) and Xuande (1426–35) reigns, when production was closely controlled by an imperial court with exceptionally high standards. Here, the collection illustrates two stylistic strands that existed side by side: porcelains decorated completely in Chinese taste and vessels in the shapes and patterns of Islamic metalwork from countries in close diplomatic contact with the Chinese court. The wares of this period defined imperial porcelain styles until the end of China’s last dynasty.

Regina Krahl is an independent researcher of Chinese works of art, whose many publications include the three-volume catalogue raisonné Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, edited by John Ayers (1986), and the four-volume catalogue Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection (1994–2010).

 

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Book Review of Early Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain in Arts of Asia

 

AUTUMN 2023   |   MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

SIR JOSEPH HOTUNG (1930–2021) belonged to a prominent Hong Kong dynasty, being the grandson of Sir Robert Hotung (1862–1956), the businessman and philanthropist. Sir Joseph followed the same path, becoming a successful businessman and a philanthropist, who supported human rights, health, education and the arts. He was also a collector of Chinese jades and other early works of art, as well as Western works in various media, including Impressionist paintings. In 1994, he was inspired by a Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) blue and white jar being sold by Sotheby’s Hong Kong, and from that time started to collect early blue and white wares. His criterion was one of feeling, for a piece had to resonate with him before he would consider purchase. This catalogue discusses pieces that were once on display in Sir Joseph’s London study, for London had become his home. The collection is named Mingzhitang (明致堂), or Hall of Enlightenment, after a quotation by Zhuge Liang (181–234), a famous Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220) scholar….

 

By Rose Kerr

 

Click here to access Arts of Asia‘s Autumn 2023 issue for the full article.