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Dr. Zucker: On May 13th in 1351 two vases
and an incense burner were dedicated to a
Daoist temple in China.
Dr. Harris: By a man who had these made
specifically for this purpose and had his name, date,
and the purpose of this dedication inscribed right
on the vases themselves.
These were an offering to this temple in honor
of a General who had recently been made a God.
Dr. Zucker: I love that we have all of this specific
information.
In our history, we so often have to guess the year
and here we have the exact day.
Dr. Harris: This is something rather familiar to us.
We still make dedications, we still make offerings.
Dr. Zucker: We've lost the incense burner,
but we do have the two vases
and now we're looking at them in the
British Museum in London.
Dr. Harris: Right, they're known as the
David Vases, after Sir Percival David
the collector who purchased them,
amassed this amazing collection of about 1500
Chinese ceramics and brought these two vases,
which belong together, back together again.
Dr. Harris: They're fairly tall
and they are an archetype of what we think of
Chinese ceramics in the west.
This is blue and white porcelain.
Dr. Harris: Porcelain is a very specific kind
of ceramic that's very lustrous.
Dr. Zucker: It's made from a very
pure kind of clay.
We get the word porcelain from the Venetian
explorer, Marco Polo who went to China
during this very period.
Apparently when he saw porcelain
and it's hard white surface, he thought it looked
like the inside of a seashell.
The word porcelain is very close to the Italian
word for a cowry shell.
Dr. Harris: The deed is 1351,
China was part of the vast Mongol Empire
that stretched from China in the east to what
we think of today as Eastern Europe.
Dr. Zucker: So often we use the word China
to refer, not to the country,
but to porcelain material.
That's because China produced an enormous
amount of porcelain for export.
What's interesting is that the Chinese produced
products for export with the local markets
that they were selling to in mind.
Dr. Harris: In fact, we think about this kind of
blue and white China as quintessentially Chinese,
but as it turns out history is always
a lot more complicated because at this point
China was actually part of the Mongol Empire,
also known as the Yuan Dynasty.
Porcelain is white, but the blue is from
a mineral called Cobalt from what is
present day Iran.
Dr. Zucker: The cobalt is painted on the
white porcelain, which is this very pure clay
and then the entire thing is covered with a
clear glaze which helps to give it this great
sense of luminosity.
Dr. Harris: Then it's fired at very high temperature
so it becomes like glass, unlike typical ceramics
or earthen ware.
Dr. Zucker: The Chinese had kilns that were
technologically far advanced of anything in
the west or even in the near east.
Dr. Harris: While we might think about this as
very Chinese this is actually the result of a
global Mongol Empire and the interaction of
China and Iran.
Dr. Zucker: In fact, some scholars think that the
blue and white motif itself was not only based
on the material from Iran,
but was based on the taste of the local markets
in Iran and that these pots were made for export.
Dr. Harris: Although in this case,
it was made for a temple in China.
Dr. Zucker: Near the principal production
center for porcelain.
Dr. Harris: So while we might think about
blue and white China as from the period of
the Ming dynasty, later than this,
these vases help us to date blue and white
porcelain to the period before the Ming dynasty
to the Yuan Dynasty.
Dr. Zucker: Let's take a look at
the vases themselves.
They're about two and a half feet tall
and they're covered with motif's that we think
of as typical for Chinese ceramics.
Most prominently on both vases,
right at the shoulder is a great dragon,
the serpentine form.
Dr. Harris: Then around the base we see a vine
and floral motif.
We see that again just above the dragon motif
and again at the very top.
Dr. Zucker: The neck of the vase is divided
into two parts.
The bottom part includes a phoenix
and then the top part leaves,
but interspersed between the leaves is
the inscription that helps us date this to the
Yuan Dynasty and specifically to May 13th.
The handles are elephants and although this is
ceramic the design seems to come from
bronze ware.
In a bronze vessel you'd normally have a ring
that hangs down from the handle.
You can see that there was probably a ring
here originally, it was attached to the elephants
trunk, you can see the break marks.
So, these are not in perfect condition,
although, they are in awfully good condition.
Dr. Harris: Considering that they date from 1351.
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