Song Dynasty Ceramics

Song Dynasty Ceramics highlights over 118 objects from the V&A's magnificent collection to discuss China's great age of ceramic production (960-1279). Ceramics from this era have always been prized by both Asian and Western collectors for their purity of form and glaze, and their inventiveness of decoration. This long-awaited survey is illustrated with many of the very finest examples of Song ware in the Western world. Song Dynasty ceramics have been collected in China since the thirteenth century, and are still avidly collected throughout the world today. By the early twentieth century many new examples had come to light and continued to do so, as ancient tombs were excavated in the course of large construction projects, and new kiln sites were discovered, yielding pieces of great richness and diversity.The V&A's collection of Song Dynasty ceramics ranges from rare and precious items to many interesting study pieces. In the last twenty years new research in China has led to a great expansion in knowledge about this fascinating era. Rose Kerr has travelled to China annually and has brought together in this book the fruits of this new research, much of it now published in the West for the first time. She uses it to provide context for the remarkable pieces illustrated here, and to bring the subject up-to-date for an English-speaking audience. The wealth and variety of the V&A's collection is brought definitively and authoritatively to life in a way that throws light on the material culture of the Song Dynasty as a whole, and the changing perspectives upon it over the past century.