Details

Subject(s)

• Storage jars—Asia—History [Browse]
• Asia—Antiquities [Browse]
• Pottery, Asian [Browse]

Editor

• Grasskamp, Anna [Browse]
• Gerritsen, Anne [Browse]

Series

Material culture of art and design. [More in this series]

Summary note

"The term 'jar' refers to any man-made shape with the capacity to enclose something. Few objects are as universal and multi-functional as a jar -- and this book shows that jars are part of human experience throughout time and space, regardless of whether they contain food or drink, matter or a void, life-giving medicine or the ashes of the deceased. As ubiquitous as such containers, storage vessels and urns might be, Transformative Jars addresses a scholarly absence by bringing together an interdisciplinary team of scholars to offer non-archaeological perspectives. The contributors to this volume understand jars not only as household utensils or evidence of human civilizations, but also as artefacts in their own right. Asian jars are culturally and aesthetically defined crafted goods and as objects charged with spiritual meanings and ritual significance. Transformative Jars situates Asian jars in a global context and focus on relationships between the filling, emptying and re-filling of jars with a variety of contents through time and throughout space in relation to the charging and re-charging of these objects with different sets of meanings. Detailed analysis of a broad range of objects shows jars to be transcultural containers that mediate between content and environment, exterior worlds and interior enclosures, local and global, this-worldly and other-worldly realms. By looking at jars as things in the hands of makers, users and collectors, this book presents these objects as agents of change in cultures of craftsmanship and consumption"-- Provided by publisher.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

• Transformative Jars: An Introduction / Anna Grasskamp and Anne Gerritsen
• Part 1. Transformative Matters: Ceramic Vessels, Chemistry and Socio-Economic Change. 1. Dreams of Transformation: A 14th-century Flask from Cizhou / Anne Gerritsen ; 2. Jars that Cheered: Alcohol and Stoneware Containers in Java before 1500 / Jiří Jákl
• Part 2. Transformative Spaces: Ceramic Vessels and Asian Locations. 3. Siamese Jars and their Significance in Southeast-Asian Trade from the 14th to the 18th Century / Atthasit Sukkham ; 4. Weaving Networks: Production and Exchange of Ceramic Jars in South China and Vietnam from the 14th to the 16th Century / Wong Wai-yee Sharon
• Part 3. Transcultural Enclosures: Containers and their Contents in Global Context. 5. For Oil, Date Syrup and the Tomb of a Chinese Queen: The Reciprocal Trade in Chinese and West Asian Jars in the Late Tang/Early Abbasid Periods / Eva Ströber ; 6. Translocation and Transformation: The Lives of Chinese Fishbowls in the Early Modern Period / Wen-ting Wu
• Part 4. Transformative Containers: Individual Jars and Modes of Agency. 7. The Jars Have Ears: Circulation and Proliferation of Chinese Prototype Container Jars and their Offspring in Asia / Louise Cort ; 8. Dragons in Flux: A Changing Relationship between People and Jars in the Kelabit Highlands, Borneo, from the 19th to the 21st century / Borbala Nyiri ; 9. Jar Interventions: Ceramic Containers as Disobedient Objects in Contemporary Asian Art / Sooyoung Leam and Anna Grasskamp
• Concluding Thoughts on Transformative Jars: Asian Ceramic Vessels as Transcultural Enclosures / Anne Gerritsen and Anna Grasskamp
• Index.

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Other title(s)

Asian ceramic vessels as transcultural enclosures

ISBN

• 1350277436 ((hardcover))
• 9781350277434 ((hardcover))

OCLC

1304814232

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