Jizhou and Jingdezhen during the Song-Yuan-Ming period as seen by a local historian

Speaker: Dr. Anne Gerritsen

Date: Thursday, 10 July 2008 @ 7pm

Venue: The Ixora Room, Peranakan Museum, Armenian Street

While we know a great deal about the global travels of individual pots and vases manufactured in famous kiln towns like Jingdezhen, we know hardly anything about the places where these beautiful objects were manufactured. We seem to take for granted that Jingdezhen’s wares transformed global tastes and modes of manufacture throughout Asia, the Middle-East and Europe, without questioning the impact of those global connections on the locality.

In this talk, Anne Gerritsen will briefly compare two sites of ceramics manufacture: Jizhou and Jingdezhen. Both are located in Jiangxi and both hosted centers of ceramic production. Also, the two sites were located on important river systems for the transport of their wares. But differences abound too: Jizhou’s kilns stopped producing wares by the end of the Song, and the place became far more famous for its scholars and academies; Jingdezhen boasted very few famous scholars, but became known the world over for its ceramics. This paper will sketch the history of both sites, highlighting their similarities and differences, aiming to provide some glimpses of the local socio-cultural context within which Jizhou and Jingdezhen wares were created.

About the speaker:

Dr Anne Gerritsen is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the SEA-China Interactions Cluster, Asia Research Institute, Singapore. Dr Gerritsen earned her PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 2001. Her MA and BA was in Chinese Languages and Cultures obtained from Leiden University, Netherlands. She is currently an Associate Professor at Warwick University, England teaching Chinese History and other History fields. Her areas of research interests include ceramics, Jingdezhen, global trade, local culture and her geographical area of focus is the Jiangxi province, coastal regions (trade connections with South-East Asia).

Venue sponsored by Peranakan Museum, Singapore