Our January event focused on the world’s earliest blue-and-white porcelain: its significance, global distribution and remaining questions. Our speaker, Dr. Li Baoping, is based in London, newly returned from Jingdezhen, and joined our ZOOM meeting from his base in the UK.
This talk used a number of illustrations to present an overview of the blue-and-white porcelain of the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), including their cultural significance, distribution in China and far to Egypt, and remaining key questions. He also discussed why the influential view–that earliest blue-and-white porcelain (as we commonly known) originated in the Song (960-1279) instead of the Yuan dynasty–and how it cannot be true in view of new archaeological discoveries of ceramic shards, and information from historical texts such as the dedicatory inscriptions of 1351 CE written on the famous ‘David Vases’ displayed at the British Museum. The aim of research is to piece together the fragments of history and promote a better understanding and collaboration of producers, merchants and consumers in all human societies.
Our speaker obtained his BA and MA degrees from Peking University, and his PhD from the University of Queensland, Brisbane. Dr. Li specializes in Chinese ceramics and their global distribution. His research involves collaboration with curators, scholars, artists, collectors and archaeologists across China and the world. Between 2014-2017 he was also a council member of the Oriental Ceramic Society, a worldwide organization based in London. His publications include contributions to major exhibition catalogues by the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, and the Complete Collection of Ceramic Art Unearthed in China (Beijing: Science Press, 16 volumes, 2008) as an Acting Editor-in-Chief. He also edited and approved the Chinese translations for two ceramic books of the British Museum, one The British Museum Chinese Ceramics: Highlights of the Sir Percival David Foundation (by Regina Krahl and Jessica Harrison-Hall, Beijing: Cultural Relics Press, 2013), the other Catalogue of Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum (by Jessica Harrison-Hall, Beijing: Palace Museum Press, 2014).
Additionally, he is Research Associate, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, and Distinguished Professor, School of Archaeology and Museology, Shanxi University (Taiyuan). His former appointments include Honorary Senior Research Associate, Institute of Archaeology, University College London; Senior International Researcher, Director, Sotheby’s; and Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow based at University of Sydney. He has also worked as a Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the Bulletin of Chinese Ceramic Art and Archaeology, a journal by the Peking University, and edits, proofreads, or translates books for institutions including the Asian Civilisations Museum Singapore (Chinese edition for The Tang Shipwreck: Art and Exchange in the 9th Century, 2017), and the forthcoming Chinese University of Hong Kong Art Museum (Enchanting Expeditions: Chinese Porcelains across the Globe, bilingual exhibition catalogue, 2024).