Song Blue and White Porcelain on the Silk Road

摘要

Adam Kessler's book on blue-and-white porcelain of the pre-Ming (1368-1644) period is a serious and provocative work. It is clearly a study with many years of research behind it, and it is a study that all scholars of Chinese porcelain, and some in the Chinese art field, especially art that has come to our attention through excavation sites, will have to reckon with. It is a book with a bold thesis that is argued through a long and detailed text and copious notes. The thesis is invoked by the title and clearly stated in the first paragraphs of the introduction: imperial blue-and-white porcelain, long associated with the Yuan dynasty and specifically the kiln site at Jingdezhen, may date to the pre-Yuan period. In north China this could be the Jin dynasty (1115-1234) and in the south it could be the Southern Song (1127-1279), but from a time and place before Mongol rule of China that began in the 1260s and ended in 1368. Much of the evidence for re-dating thirteenth- and fourteenth-century ceramics comes from excavation sites.