Suchergebnisse

Cover; Contents; Illustrations; Note on Terminology; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. The Porcelain City; 2. The Secrets of Porcelain; 3. The Creation of Porcelain; 4. The Culture of Porcelain in China; 5. The Creation of Blue-and-White Porcelain; 6. The Primacy of Chinese Porcelain; 7. The Triumph of Chinese Porcelain; 8. The Decline and Fall of Chinese Porcelain; Epilogue; Notes; References; Index; Images

Illuminating one thousand years of history, The Pilgrim Art explores the remarkable cultural influence of Chinese porcelain around the globe. Cobalt ore was shipped from Persia to China in the fourteenth century, where it was used to decorate porcelain for Muslims in Southeast Asia, India, Persia, and Iraq. Spanish galleons delivered porcelain to Peru and Mexico while aristocrats in Europe ordered tableware from Canton. The book tells the fascinating story of how porcelain became a vehicle for the transmission and assimilation of artistic symbols, themes, and designs across vast distances-from Japan and Java to Egypt and England. It not only illustrates how porcelain influenced local artistic traditions but also shows how it became deeply intertwined with religion, economics, politics and social identity. Bringing together many strands of history in an engaging narrative studded with fascinating vignettes, this is a history of cross-cultural exchagne focused on an exceptional commodity that illuminates the emergence of what is arguably the first genuinely global culture.

In considering both color vision and color values, this essay brings together natural history and human history. After describing the character and evolution of color vision, it examines positive and negative attitudes toward color in leading cultures of Eurasia. It goes on to discuss color perspectives in those cultures, an examination that discloses a Eurasian pattern: while rejecting color in significant respects, Japan also developed a sophisticated perception of it; China periodically followed the West Asian lead on color; and West Asia represented the radiant center of the Eurasian spectrum. Rejecting West Asia's high valuation of color, classical Greece and Rome thereby established a European tradition that eventually was overwhelmed during the early modern period as a consequence of pigments and colorful commodities being imported from around the world. This foreshadowed the modern experience of rich color, a consequence of science and technology making universally available an extraordinary array of saturated hues. Such access to color distinguishes the contemporary world from all past societies.

In 1421:The Year China Discovered America, Gavin Menzies claims that several Chinese fleets sailed around the world, charting sea coasts, founding colonies, and creating a global maritime empire. Moreover, he argues that these Chinese exploits shaped European map making, thereby inspiring Portuguese overseas discoveries and the rise of the West. The author's attempt to rewrite world history, however, is based on a hodgepodge of circular reasoning, bizarre speculation, distorted sources, and slapdash research. In reality, the voyages described did not take place, Chinese exploration did not influence European cartography, and there is no evidence of the Chinese fleets in the Americas.

In 1669, after twenty-four years of devastating war, Venice surrendered the island of Crete to the Ottoman Turks. As a Venetian commander described it, Crete was "the most beautiful crown to adorn the head of the Most Serene Republic" (p. 4). It was a grievous loss for Venice, which did not resign itself to the loss of its beautiful crown for another fifty years, until the end of the last Ottoman–Venetian war in 1718. The period of early Ottoman rule between 1669 and 1718 is the subject of Molly Greene's excellent study. Her emphasis throughout is on multiple identities, mixed narratives, hybrid solutions, cross-cutting allegiances, and historical continuity. Along with historians such as Leslie Pierce and Jane Hathaway, she rejects the model of Ottoman decline, styling it a "meat-grinder" (p. 20) of a thesis that focuses on a weak sultanate and ignores both the complexity and vitality of Ottoman imperial governance. She also rejects the notion that the transition from Venetian to Ottoman control in Crete marked a sharp dividing line, an event that helped wring the ambiguity out of the Mediterranean world (p. 5).

For more than a millennium Chinese porcelain was the most universally admired and
most widely imitated product in the world. It conveyed Chinese culture across vast distances,
penetrated societies in manifold ways, and reshaped ceramic traditions throughout
the Afro-Eurasian ecumene. As the principal material vehicle for the assimilation
and transmission of artistic themes and designs, porcelain provides the first and most
extensive material evidence for sustained cultural encounter on a worldwide scale, perhaps
even for intimations of truly global culture.

Shortly before Vasco da Gama returned to Lisbon in September 1499 from his great voyage to India, a Florentine merchant in the Portuguese capital reported troubling rumors that 'certain vessels of white Christians' had visited the port of Calicut on the Malabar coast only a couple of generations previously. If true, this would mean that some other European power had beaten Portugal in its long search for a maritime route to the Indies. After speculating that the mysterious mariners were Germans (although 'it seems to me that we should have some notice about them') or Russians ('if they have a port there'), the merchant concluded that 'on the arrival of the captain [da Gama] we may learn who these people are.'