‘Porcelain Through the Ages’: Exhibiting China at 25 Park Lane (1934)
Sir Joseph Hotung Memorial Lecture Series
Speaker: Professor Stacey Pierson
In the spring of 1934, Sir Philip Sassoon hosted an exhibition titled ‘Porcelain Through the Ages’ at his London home at 25 Park Lane. Featuring over 500 European, English and Chinese porcelains arranged across four grand living spaces, the exhibition was one of a series mounted in aid of the Royal Northern Hospital. The lenders were an illustrious group, including H. M. The Queen, Sassoon himself and his cousin Sir Percival David, along with several members of the OCS such as Oscar Raphael, Charles Russell and George Eumorfopoulos. The exhibition was very successful and widely publicized at the time but has been overlooked in histories of Chinese ceramics collecting and exhibitions.
In fact, as this talk will demonstrate, Porcelain Through the Ages was a pivotal event in the provenance and display history of a number of familiar Chinese ceramics such as the David Vases and the Lennard Cup. Focusing on the Chinese ceramic exhibits, a reconstruction of the contents of the show illuminates a moment in the lives of objects but also the collecting lives of several OCS members. It situates them, and Percival David, in the elite art world of the pre-war 1930s that encompassed Chinese ceramics to a much greater extent than has previously been recognized.
Members do not need to book to attend this lecture.
5:30 pm – AGM
6:15 pm – Lecture begins
Image: Silver-gilt mounted porcelain bowl and silver gilt cover known as the Lennard Cup. Incised lotus scrolls on exterior, interior of white hare in reserve against landscape in underglaze cobalt blue. Ming dynasty, mid-16th century, mounts with London hallmark for 1569. Copyright SOAS All rights reserved
Speaker
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Professor Stacey PiersonProfessor of the History of Chinese CeramicsProfessor of the History of Chinese Ceramics at SOAS, University of London. In addition to teaching and supervising research students in the School of Arts, she is the former President of the Oriental Ceramic Society (London) and is series editor for the Routledge title Histories of Material Culture and Collecting, 1550-1950. Previously, from 1995 – 2007, she was Curator of the Percival David Foundation of Chinese art, also at the University of London, which housed the world-renowned David collection of Chinese ceramics. She has published widely on aspects of Chinese ceramics, Percival David and the history of collecting and exhibitions, including Collectors, Collections and Museums: the Field of Chinese Ceramics in Britain: 1560-1960 (2007), Chinese Ceramics: a Design History (2009), From Object to Concept: Global Consumption and the Transformation of Ming Porcelain (2013), Private Collecting, Exhibitions and the Shaping of Art History in London: the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1866-1950 (2017) and the edited volume Visual, Material and Textual Cultures of Food and Drink in China, 200 BCE – 1900 CE, Colloquies on Art and Archaeology in Asia, no. 25 (2022). She has just completed a biography of Percival David that will be published by The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press in December 2026.
