Enfilade

From the programme:

Pots, Prints, and Politics: Ceramics with an Agenda
The British Museum, London, 16 February 2018

Creamware Mug, Staffordhire, ca. 1803 (London: The British Museum).

Join British Museum curators from the Departments of Asia, Prints and Drawings, and Britain, Europe, and Prehistory in this one-day study day—held in conjunction with the exhibition Pots with Attitude: British Satire on Ceramics, 1760–1830—addressing historical and modern ceramics that have political and other messages, which have been inspired by prints and printmaking.

Since the introduction of paper and woodblock printing in China around AD 600, through to the invention of woodcuts printed on paper and the printing press in Germany in the 15th century, the print medium has been used around the world to disseminate ideas and knowledge. Ceramic artists across time and cultures have adapted these graphic sources as painted or transfer-printed images applied onto glazed or unglazed surfaces to express issues including piety, propaganda, self-promotion, gender, national, and regional identities.

This study day is open to all and will draw on the over 500,000 records catalogued by the Prints and Drawing department, which can be searched on the British Museum’s collection online. Stevenson Lecture Theatre, British Museum, Friday, 16 February 2018; £15 / £12.50 concessions. Book online here.

P R O G R A M M E

9:30  Registration

10:00  Session A
• Patricia Ferguson (Project Curator, Monument Trust, 18th-Century Prints and Ceramics, Britain, Europe and Prehistory, and Prints and Drawings), Introduction
• Yu-ping Luk (Curator: Chinese Paintings Prints and Central Asia, Asia), Woodblock Prints and Images on Ceramics in China: Some 14th- to 17th-Century Examples
• Dora Thornton (Curator: Renaissance Collection, Waddesdon Bequest, Britain, Europe and Prehistory), ‘Take Note’: Looking at Italian Renaissance Potters, Printmaking, and Politics through the Lens of the British Museum Collection

11:00  Coffee Break

11:30  Session B
• Eloise Donnelly (Collaborative Doctoral Award Student, Britain, Europe and Prehistory), Prints, Pots, and Protestantism: The Thomas Collection of German Stoneware
• Jessica Harrison-Hall (Curator: Chinese Ceramics, Percival David, Asia), Shameless Self-Promotion? European Eighteenth-Century Prints and Chinese Pots

12:30 Lunch — available for purchase in the Museum cafes

14:00  Session C
• Sheila O’Connell (Former Curator, British Prints, Prints and Drawings), Jefferyes Hamett O’Neale (fl.1750–1801): Pots and Prints
• Patricia Ferguson (Project Curator, Monument Trust), Spode and the French Invasion Scare: Profiteering or Propaganda?
• Antony Griffiths (Former Keeper, Department of Prints and Drawings), Thoughts on Prints and Pots: Beyond Politics

15:15  Coffee Break

15:45  Session D
• Mary Ginsberg (Research Fellow, Asia), Appropriated Heroes: Prints, Pots, and Politics in Revolutionary China
• Eleanor Hyun (Curator, Korean Collections, Asia), Circulating Images: North Korean Pots and Prints

16:30   Tour of Pots with Attitude: British Satire on Ceramics, 1760–1830, in Room 90a.