The OCS is delighted to announce a guided viewing of Enchanting Expeditions: Chinese Trade Porcelains across the Globe with Dr Guanyu Wang, the Associate Curator (Antiquities) of the Art Museum, CUHK. We are also honored to have on this tour the renowned collector, Anthony Cheung, who participated in this exhibition.
The exhibition is divided into six zones, showcasing more than 400 pieces (sets) of trade porcelains and related objects. With textual records and historical images, the exhibition aims to reconstruct the design, manufacture, transport, and sale processes of Chinese export porcelains, and the functions and influences of porcelains in overseas markets. It also invites visitors to travel back in time and see how Ming and Qing porcelains profoundly impacted the porcelain industry of the world.
The six exhibition zones, devised by the curator Dr Wang, showcase the material culture of the maritime trade and provide a useful reference for a wide-range of wares that were destined for different lands and designed for a multiplicity of purposes. The exhibition starts with the “Encountering Oriental Wonders” zone, telling the story of European explorers sailing to the Orient. Chinese trade porcelains produced in the most outstanding centres such as Jingdezhen in Jiangxi, Yixing in Jiangsu, as well as Zhangzhou and Dehua in Fujian are featured in the “Thriving Country of China” zone to show economic diversification and specification prior to the arrival of the Europeans in Ming China. The “Braving the Ocean Waves” zone displays porcelains from seven shipwrecks which were remained in the ocean for centuries until they were discovered and salvaged. Opening the “time-capsule”, the displays reveal the primary porcelain types traded to different overseas markets at different periods of history.
Dr Wang graduated from Peking University, majoring in Field Archaeology and Ceramics Archaeology at School of Archaeology and Museology, and got her Ph.D. at the Department of Fine Arts, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She participated in archaeological works at Qin mausoleum site and Ding Kiln site, which were awarded respectively as the top ten archaeological discoveries of China in 2006 and 2009. Dr Wang is currently focusing on the research of the production, trade and consumption of Chinese porcelains during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the interactions of material civilization between the East and West in the early globalization. She curated the exhibition “Refilling the Interregnum: Newly Discovered Imperial Porcelains from Zhengtong, Jingtai and Tianshun Reigns (1436-1464) of the Ming Dynasty” in 2018, which was the first show held abroad for the 2014 archaeological discovery at the Jingdezhen Imperial Porcelain Factory site.
Schedule:
9:00 am – Registration at the Central Post Office
9:15 am – Shuttle to the Art Museum Chinese University Hong Kong
10:00-11:00 am – Guided viewing of Enchanting Expeditions: Chinese Trade Porcelains across the Globe
12:15 pm – Shuttle to Hyatt Regency Hotel Sha Tin (Lunch at shared cost)
2:00 pm – Shuttle back to Central Post Office
Tour & transportation – Members $375 *
Tour & transportation – Non Members $425 *
Tour only – Members $150 **
Tour only – Non Members $200 **
* Includes CUHK campus visitors authorization and round-trip transportation: Central PO – Museum – Hyatt – Central PO
** Visitors who enter the campus and the museum by themselves are required to register identity information with the security guard.