Meet the Council
Members of the Council meet several times a year to decide our programme of lectures and plan the Society’s work.
President
I am delighted to welcome you to the website of the Oriental Ceramic Society.
We are a thriving, active society based in London with a busy programme of talks and cultural activities focusing on East Asian arts, particularly ceramics. The OCS provides a unique forum for anyone with an interest in Asian arts to meet regularly with fellow enthusiasts, collectors, scholars, curators and auction house specialists in a convivial and relaxed environment.
Members of the Society meet ten times a year, mostly in the Society of Antiquaries in Burlington House on Piccadilly, where we offer monthly lectures by academics, museum curators and independent scholars on new research topics – ranging from Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Islamic ceramics, to bronzes, jades, artworks in glass and paintings. The Society organizes specialist-led handling sessions for members at museums and auction houses in the UK and our national and international tours to cultural and historic sites with Asian art interest also remain extremely popular with members. Our long-established journal Transactions continues to provide members with the latest research in the field, supplemented by the annual Newsletters. These are also available online to members, along with access to past lectures and details of future events.
The Society celebrated its centenary in 2021, marking a hundred years since its inception by twelve members to ‘widen appreciation and to acquire knowledge of Eastern Ceramic Art’. Today the Society has grown to over 1000 members and has global links with other fellow organizations, but its original core values remain equally valid and undiminished.
I look forward very much to meeting you during the coming year.
Sarah Wong
President
Bio
Sarah Wong is a Director of Eskenazi Limited with a particular interest in Buddhist sculpture and Yuan dynasty ceramics. Sarah has been a member of the OCS Council since 2017. She was responsible, with the support of the Council, for organizing the OCS Centenary exhibition in 2021: Collectors, Curators, Connoisseurs: A Century of the Oriental Ceramic Society 1921 – 2021 and co-author of the exhibition catalogue.
Beth Gardiner
Honorary Secretary
Bio
David Canty
Honorary Treasurer
Bio
Chartered Accountant and a due diligence consultant in asset management. His collecting interests include early Chinese and Korean ceramics and other works of art.
Ian Gaunt
Assistant Honorary Secretary
Bio
Ian Gaunt is a lawyer, international arbitrator collector of early Chinese ceramics. He was a member of the Council of the OCS from 2021 to 2024 and is currently OCS Assistant Honorary Secretary.
Jessica Harrison-Hall
Representative from the British Museum
Bio
Jessica Harrison-Hall is Keeper of Asia and Curator of the Sir Percival David Collection at the British Museum. She specialises in Ming and Qing material and visual culture.
Xiaoxin Li
Representative from the Victoria & Albert Museum
Bio
Dr. Xiaoxin Li serves as the curator of Chinese collections at the V&A, overseeing a diverse array of decorative art and design objects spanning from the Neolithic era to contemporary times. Her expertise and research interests cover Chinese ceramics, lacquerware, furniture, export art, 19th-century material culture, as well as modern and contemporary craft and design. A recipient of the Art Fund New Collecting Award, Xiaoxin is currently working on a project focused on the acquisition, display, and publication of Chinese contemporary studio craft.
Rosemary Scott
Editor of TOCS
Bio
Former curator of the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art and head of Museums Department, SOAS, University of London, and international academic director of Christie’s Asian Art departments. Areas of academic interest include Chinese ceramics, lacquer, and early textiles.
Teresa Canepa
Co-editor of the OCS Newsletter
Bio
Teresa Canepa is an independent researcher, specializing in Chinese and Japanese export art of the 16th and 17th centuries, and co-editor of the OCS Newsletter.
Katharine Butler
Bio
Katharine Butler is an entrepreneur as well as a collector and researcher in Chinese porcelain. She has an MA in History of Art from Edinburgh University. From 1992 – 2017, she founded, ran and then sold companies in the consumer goods sector in the Czech Republic. She is co-author of Leaping the Dragon
Gate: The Sir Michael Butler Collection of Seventeenth-Century Chinese Porcelain, (2021). She has lectured widely and has published articles in Arts of Asia, TOCS and recently the Journal of the Society of International Ceramic Studies of which she is a founder member. From 2025 she has been working on a new start-up providing AI services to the world of art and culture as well
as co-supervising a PhD student at Cranfield University working on a forensic research project into 17th and 18th century Chinese porcelain.
Dr. Ivy Yi Yan Chan
Bio
Dr Ivy Yi Yan Chan is an art historian specialising in Chinese art, collecting histories and art market studies. She is a Lecturer on the MA in Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, a Co-Convenor of the Arts of China module for
the SOAS-Alphawood Asian Art Programme at SOAS and a Curatorial Consultant at the Museum of East Asian Art. Between 2010-2020, Ivy worked in the Chinese Art Department at Christie’s, holding positions including
Associate Director, Specialist and Head of Sale. She has also worked for White Cube, Eskenazi Ltd., and the Hong Kong Palace Museum, and regularly guest lectures for the V&A Academy. Her PhD on Hong Kong collecting histories was awarded by SOAS in 2021. She is an author, translator, and editor of numerous publications related to Chinese art and culture.
Dr. Melanie Gibson
Bio
Dr. Melanie Gibson is Editor of the Art History Series at GINGKO and lectures on the history of the ceramics of the Islamic world. She is a trustee of The Friends of Leighton House, and her current research is on The Arab Hall at Leighton House.
Dr. Helen Glaister
Bio
Dr Helen Glaister is an art historian specialising in Chinese Ceramics and Decorative Arts. In addition to her current role as Course Director of the Arts of Asia Programme at the V&A, Helen lectures on Chinese art and has authored numerous publications, with a particular interest in the fields of the history of collectors and collecting, Qing ceramics and Chinese export art.
Henry Howard-Sneyd
Bio
Chairman of Asian art, Europe and Americas at Sotheby’s and auctioneer globally, Henry particularly admires and collects Song ceramics.
David Priestley
Bio
David Priestley was educated at Winchester College and New College,
Oxford, where he read Chinese Studies, including the study of Chinese ceramics under Mary Tregear — with whom he handled his first piece of Song ceramic. He began his career in 1984 as a specialist in the Chinese Department at Sotheby’s London, and from 1987 travelled regularly to Hong
Kong to catalogue the twice-yearly series of Chinese ceramics sales there, eventually becoming a Director of Sotheby’s Hong Kong. In 1994 he co
founded Priestley & Ferraro, Chinese Art, with Benedicta Ferraro, a gallery with a particular focus on Song ceramics. The gallery exhibited regularly at major international art fairs, and David served on the vetting committees of many of them. Following the closure of the gallery in April 2026, he now runs his own business, David Priestley Ltd Chinese Art
Emile de Bruijn
Bio
Emile de Bruijn studied Japanese at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and museology at Essex University, UK. He worked for the auctioneers Sotheby’s in London and is currently employed by the UK charity the National Trust as Assistant National Curator Decorative Art. Emile has developed a research interest in the reception history of East Asian material culture in Europe, particularly in Britain. In 2017 he was one of the organisers of an international conference on the subject of Chinese wallpaper, in a partnership between the National Trust, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. His publications include Chinese Wallpaper in Britain and Ireland (2017) and Borrowed Landscapes: China and Japan in the Historic Houses and Gardens of Britain and Ireland (2023).
James Lin
Bio
Dr. James C. S. Lin is responsible for the Asian art collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum. He obtained a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Chinese Art History at the University of Oxford and then worked as a research assistant in the Ashmolean Museum between 2000 and 2002. He was employed as a special assistant at the British Museum, helping to set up the Selwyn and Ellie Alleyne Gallery of Chinese Jade between June and November 2002. He then returned to Oxford as the first Christensen Fellow in Chinese Painting, at the Khoan and Michael Sullivan Chinese painting gallery at the Ashmolean Museum. In September 2004, he was appointed as the Assistant Keeper of Applied Arts at the Fitzwilliam Museum. He is now Senior curator of Chinese art.
Brian M. Salzberg
Bio
Brian M. Salzberg is Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience and of Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. He developed optical methods for studying electrical activity in cells, including voltage sensitive dyes and molecular indicators of rapid changes in intracellular calcium concentration. He applied these techniques to the study of nervous systems. Salzberg received his Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard and was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Optical Society of America. He sits on the Trustees Committee for Asian Art of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and he is a collector of Pre-Ming Chinese ceramics.