Customer Reviews

Chinese Porcelain: Art, Elegance, and Appreciation (Art of China) (Arts of China)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Kelun Chen has provided a wonderful essay and overview on Chinese ceramics in this rather tiny volume. The best thing about the book how it demonstrates ways to think about China and its porcelain products from antiquity through the end of the Qing (Ching) Dynasty in 1911. One learns to think of porcelain secondarily in terms of period, but primarily in terms of kiln sites, clay, glaze and color. This is much the opposite of the beginner's or American antiquarian's (my own) typical tendency. The brief 80-page text is rich with details and insights, many of which are sparsley but adequately illustrated in the accompanying photographs in color and black & white. A book such as this must be evaluated (and "starred") in terms of what it intends to be: in this case a thoughtful overview in limited space, not a reference text. There are no indices of markings or summary observations, and the photographs occur with widely varying proximity to the related text, which fails to indicate the illustration under discussion. It takes only modest effort to find them. But the book still delivers an intelligent and thoughtful discussion that a person can go back to and refer to over time, while studying more advanced, ambitious and comprehensive works. A real bargain, and not necessarily a beginner's book. It will stay in my library on ceramics. For a tiny volume, it is really a five star work, and rated at four here only because of the limitations of space provided by the publication series.

A very interesting book. Only drawback for me was that I was hoping to get greater information on actual marks of chinese pottery.

A beautiful and informative book for the library of the connoiseur of Chinese Porcelain.