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  • Science and Civilisation in China. Volume 5, Part 12, Ceramic Technology
  • Erica Brindley (bio)
Rose Kerr and Nigel Wood, with additional contributions by Ts'ai Mei-fen and Zhang Fukang. Science and Civilisation in China. Volume 5, Part 12, Ceramic Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xlix, 918 pp. Hardcover £120, ISBN 052-183833-9.

Just short of one thousand pages, this monumental work on ceramics and ceramic technology constitutes the twelfth and newest part to volume 5 of the Science and Civilisation in China series.1 Rose Kerr and Nigel Wood, along with contributors Ts'ai Mei-fen and Zhang Fukang, have pieced together a dizzying array of topics spanning a four-thousand-year history. Such topics include the environmental and geographical factors that created clays and affected the production and quality of porcelain; compositional analyses of an exhaustive range of ceramic and porcelain types; the development of ceramic and porcelain technologies and industries in both northern and southern China; types of kilns and manufacturing methods; the intricacies of glazes, pigments, enamels, and gilding; and, finally, the broader influences of Chinese ceramics and ceramic technology on the rest of the world. This is an enormous achievement, one that is in keeping with Joseph Needham's underlying goals for the Science and Civilisation series.2

Given the huge range of issues addressed in the book, I will focus on the purposes best served by it, as well as its most successful areas of discussion. Like many of the other Science and Civilisation volumes, this one on ceramics provides a large quantity of data concerning specific ceramic objects, categories of objects, and technologies related to each. As a handbook or encyclopedic reference on a specialized topic, it will be of the utmost value to historians of science, technology, art, and the environment.

In addition to amassing as much information on ceramics as possible, Kerr and Wood also provide numerous, nontechnical tidbits relating to ceramics. For example, the reader learns that ceramics did not enjoy prestige status from the period after the Neolithic until the rise of Buddhism in China (pp. 14-16), that ceramic pipes and water tanks were used in palace complexes and burial sites in the late Bronze Age and early imperial periods (p. 108), that porcelain existed naturally in areas east of the Tai Hang mountains (p. 146), and much more. But because the volume focuses mainly on the technical details and compositional aspects of ceramic wares, these nontechnical topics are not pursued in any historical depth. Rather, such information appears as isolated fact, divested from questions that might lead to a more analytical or narrative history on the matter. One wonders whether the reader would not be better served by an article or monographic study that-to use the examples mentioned above as a point of departure-looked at the reasons why the status of ceramics changed over a given [End Page 171] period of time, the significance of ceramic materials in burial sites and palace complexes, or the changing values assigned to porcelain wares as compared to other types of ceramics during certain periods of history.

Viewed from a broader perspective, the sheer prevalence of these isolated facts actually serves an important function. The text provides a starting point from which one might pursue a plethora of topics in social, economic, cultural, political, and intellectual history. As such, it serves as a sourcebook for future research ideas. Topics not fully engaged in this volume but touched on through the mention of titillating facts include the social history of potters; the cultural history of teapots, Yue ware, or ritual vessels; and the economic history of clay production.

There are at least three outstanding features of this volume that help it move beyond the more limiting role of encyclopedic handbook and sourcebook on ceramics. First, the manner in which the authors take into account the distinct geological and technological cultures of the North and South helps contribute to an overall understanding of the real differences and cross-cultural interactions of these general regions throughout Chinese history. Second, the volume provides an in-depth account of the development of the porcelain industry at Jingdezhen that will be...

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