Enfilade

Published by Paul Holberton and distributed by The University of Chicago Press:

Becky MacGuire, with essays by William Sargent and Angela Howard, Four Centuries of Blue and White: The Frelinghuysen Collection of Chinese and Japanese Export Porcelain (London: Ad Ilissvm, 2023), 432 pages, ISBN: 978-1915401090, £90 / $110.

This beautifully illustrated book presents the Frelinghuysen Collection of Chinese and Japanese export porcelain. It is the first major publication to consider Chinese and Japanese blue and white together.

This extraordinary collection, assembled carefully over fifty years, features an exceptionally wide array of Asian blue and white porcelain—the most ubiquitous and influential of all ceramics. Ranging from Chinese pieces specially made for Portuguese traders in the sixteenth century to late nineteenth-century commissions for the Thai royal court, the collection also includes numerous Chinese classics from the era of the European trading companies and a notable selection of Japanese export porcelain. In its vast scope, it speaks of the diverse impulses and historical forces that propelled the trade in Asian porcelain and provides a lens to view the interaction of East and West from the early modern age to the dawn of the twentieth century. More than 300 pieces from the collection are illustrated and discussed in full and another 250 are illustrated in a compendium, all divided into thematic chapters that reflect the many ways Chinese and Japanese porcelain has been traded, collected, and used around the world.

Essays by William R. Sargent, former Curator of Asian Export Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, and noted armorial porcelain authority Angela Howard, precede the thirteen chapters, which include Faith, Identity, For the Table, To European Design, and Made in Japan. Great rarities are featured alongside small, amusing pieces and the many export porcelains made to elevate the practices of daily life.

With its strict adherence to blue and white porcelain, the collection intensifies our focus on forms, patterns, and designs, gathering together wares that are often considered only separately for study while also covering areas of little recent scholarship, such as the Thai market material. The specialized reader will find references to the latest research while the more general reader will appreciate a comprehensive overview of Asian export porcelain. There has not been a significant survey of either Chinese or Japanese blue and white since the 1990s, and they have never been considered together in a major publication.

Becky MacGuire is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the Study Centre for the Fine & Decorative Arts at the Victoria & Albert Museum. She was the longtime Asian export art specialist at international auction house Christie’s.