Early Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain

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 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.

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.

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).