Background

The cloisonné enamel technique was most likely introduced into China during 
the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). Although the earliest Chinese cloisonné pieces bearing a reign mark were made during the Xuande period (1426–1436), the exhibition will include a few pieces that introduce a new attribution from the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties. This controversial attribution, recently documented by specialists and curators from the Palace Museum, Beijing, is a major contribution to Cloisonné scholarship.

Several factors, ranging from the unreliability of reign marks to a dearth of information about Chinese workshops, make it very difficult to date cloisonné works with accuracy. Therefore, three aspects of Chinese cloisonné production have been selected as guidelines for the exhibition — decoration, form, and intended function — since an object's decoration and form tend to indicate the purpose for which it was intended, whether it be ritual, decorative, or utilitarian. The motifs that occur most often are considered in all their various meanings within the context of the period during which the objects were produced. The exhibition attempts to answer such questions as how, why, and for whom these enamels were produced, and how attitudes toward this technique changed during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

In 1368, after the Chinese had reclaimed power from the Mongol "barbarians" and founded the Ming dynasty, Cao Zhao wrote Essential Criteria of Antiquities (Gegu yaolun), a guide for collectors of "antiquities" in which he made it clear that cloisonné enamels originating in the Frankish lands (Folan or Falan) were not suitable for study by members of the scholar class. Their gilded surfaces and brilliant colors put them at odds with the austere criteria of the scholars' aesthetic inherited from the Song dynasty (960–1279), which the Ming revived after the humiliation of the Mongol invasion. This classical Chinese aesthetic is exemplified by ink-wash paintings and by ceramics with sparse or no decoration in which form and surface enhance one another. According to Cao Zhao, cloisonné enamels were really appropriate only for the apartments of women.  Some scholars undoubtedly followed the guidelines of Cao Zhao; however, it is interesting that in the same period cloisonné pieces were being commissioned for the court.