Silk Road to Clipper Ship: Trade, Changing Markets, and East Asian Ceramics

Kresge Art Museum at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
May 3 – August 1, 2008

This exhibition, organized by the University of Michigan Museum of Art and drawn from their renowned collection, covers over 1000 years of Chinese porcelains to illustrate the important role of foreign trade and changing domestic markets in stimulating Chinese potters- and their counterparts in Japan and Korea- to continually reinvent their repertoire of shapes and decorative techniques. The first part traces the exchange along the Silk Road between the Chinese Han (206 BCE–220 CE) dynasty and ancient Persia and the Mediterranean world between the second and tenth centuries. The second part features colored porcelains made for domestic use and foreign exchange during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911); and the final section focuses on the competition between kilns for imperial patronage and the Chinese influence on later Japanese and Korean ceramic traditions.