Welcome to SEACS:
Southeast Asian Ceramic Society
(SEACS)
What is the Southeast Asian Ceramic Society?
SEACS (the Southeast Asian Ceramic Society) was founded in 1969 in Singapore to widen appreciation and acquire knowledge of the ceramic art of China and countries adjacent to China, especially those of Southeast Asia.
To pursue this aim, members meet monthly in live or online sessions to hear talks by both local and international experts, to share information and to study and compare ‘pots’. An important benefit of membership is access to previously recorded lectures by leading global experts. However, many of this website’s features are free and available to all ceramic enthusiasts. For example:
Read our members’ collecting stories (with their lessons-learned for new collectors) in “Ceramic Stories”, found here. Introductory essays to the ceramics of Southeast Asia, written by academic experts and archaeologists, are accessible to all visitors to our site here.
And we have one of the most accessed, readable and referred-to summaries of early shipwrecks of the region that can be found on the internet today. Jump there from here.
Who we are and what we do…
We are a non-profit society, founded in 1969, whose members are interested in Southeast Asian ceramics. Members needn’t be collectors, just interested in the various roles ceramics play in history, trade and culture. We are open to all from beginners to academics to specialized collectors. The Society arranges monthly programmes held both live and/or on ZOOM with both local and international experts. The majority of our programmes are now recorded and available to members as a benefit of membership.
For local members, hands-on ‘handling sessions’ are held on a regular basis with experts to help members learn how to identify correctly the ceramics they may own or be considering for purchase. We also arrange an annual ceramics and book sale (featuring items de-accessioned from members’ collections) that includes many hard-to-find, out-of-print books on ceramics. Our online presence includes the digitisation of some of our publications. Field trips to both local and international destinations are regular member highlights.
The society and its early exhibitions “of the then-little-known ceramic tradition of Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam caused a stir amongst the oriental ceramic cognoscenti, … inspired a generation of younger scholars and stimulated the interest of government archaeological departments throughout Southeast Asia.” As a consequence, ceramic societies were to emerge in ensuing years in West Malaysia, Jakarta, Manila and Hong Kong, following the lead of the Singapore chapter. Browse the many resources open to all on our website.
Ceramic News
A History of Korean Ceramics
The long-awaited comprehensive book on the history of Korean ceramics! This beautiful, richly-illustrated by Beth McKillop and Jane Portal has just been published by Reaktion Books. In the words of Edmund de Waal, "This is the book on Korean ceramics we have been waiting for. It is engaging and it is magisterial. And I love it."
The 2025 William Willetts Lecture
This year's William Willetts Lecture will be held on Friday, 14 March in the Visitors' Room of the Singapore National Library (7:00-8:30 pm). Our speaker will be former SEACS President and founding director of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) and the Peranakan Museum (TPM), Dr. Kenson Kwok, who will be sharing with us the story of the Frank and Pamela Hickley Dehua Collection. Our speaker is [...]
“The Shipwreck Detective” – An article in the Nov. 11 issue of the New Yorker
The 11 November 2024 issue of The New Yorker magazine features an article on shipwreck "detectives" and how they search for sunken treasures. Many of the wrecks and salvagers will be known to SEACS members, and the focus on various shipwrecks ranging from fairly recent wrecks to lost Portuguese galleons is both entertaining as well as an introduction to how salvagers work--as often in archives as [...]
New Yixing Museum now open
The ceramic centre Yixing, famous for centuries for its highly-admired teapots, has opened a new ceramics museum on a former state-owned factory. Designed by the Japanese firm of Kengo Kuma and Associates, the new museum has been built in the form of a sleeping dragon. For more information....
Marine archaeologists may have found Vasco de Gama’s shipwreck
In a remarkable discovery, researchers might have found the vessel that took the famous Portuguese explorer on his last voyage into the Indian Ocean. The shipwreck lies close to Malindi in Kenya and has attracted the attention of many archaeologists. Although the ship was found in 2013, on a coral reef around 500 m off the coast of Kenya, it sank 500 years ago and could be Vasco da Gama’s ship, S [...]
Japanese Ceramics in Chinese Style
Kindred Spirits: 100 Japanese Ceramics in Chinese Style (the Shen Zhai Collection) is a lush new volume edited by Clare Pollard that features third-generation collector-dealer and SEACS member Patrick K M Kwok's latest passion: Chinese-inspired Japanese ceramics. Together with Pollard, Curator of Japanese Art of the Ashmolean Museum, and Rose Kerr, Fukunaga Ai, and Maezaki Shinya, they have produced an elegant collectors' tome with magnificent large photographs and texts that highlight each piece's features and history. For additional information including a link to the publisher's website to order a copy continue reading.