Artist & Historian
Exchanges
This page is dedicated to global exchange in the sciences and in natural history wherever it happens.
I have collected information from across all time periods, but my work is largely related to the exchange of information that led to global mapping, geological understanding, and discoveries in natural history, as well as the knowledge and information exchanges in ceramics and the porcelain trade from the thirteenth century to the twentieth century.
Deshima
The Japanese became participants in the porcelain trade with Europe in the seventeenth century, having learned the technological processes from migrant Chinese potters. Much of the work was created specifically for the European Market, often based on designs commissioned and drawn by the traders themselves. The Europeans were an accepted trade partner, but the Japanese, under the Tokugawa shogunate, did not want to open their country to the outsiders they distrusted. They built an island for the traders near Nagasaki. They called this tiny island Dejima (or Deshima). This plate, in the collection at the Metropolitan Museum, depicts a Japanese artist's rendering of the site.
Ballast and Brilliance
Ceramics, apart from being highly desired objects, also served as containers for items such as spices and tea. Additionally, they acted as ballast on the tightly packed ships.
The blue and white porcelain style "kraak" ware that was exported to Europe from the fifteenth century forward, was named after the early Portuguese ships, or carracks, that carried them.
However, the quality of the pottery was always variable. The designs took years to complete, meaning that some of these wares were seen as outmoded before they arrived, and many pieces arrived damaged.
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By the late eighteenth century, European manufactories had begun to produce high quality hard-paste porcelain. Sèvres began its production of hard-paste porcelain in 1771, shortly after reduction firing techniques became known in France.
The processes enabled the kaolin to be fired to a pure white colour that was not possible with oxidation firing.
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I describe the development of European porcelain in my thesis, alongside a discussion of Antoine
Lavoisier's revolutionary oxygen-based chemistry.
The image here is of the eighteenth-century Dutch VOC ship Landskroon sailing into Deshima in 1766.
The Egyptian Expedition
Forming part of Napoléon's path to leadership in France, he sought to explore and conquer Egypt. In 1798, he led an expedition to an undisclosed destination. He took with him a number of scientists and savants, including many of Brongniart's mentors and colleagues. It was not until they reached Malta that many of the members learned for sure the goal of their travels. The engraver Vivant Denon made drawings of Egyptian cities, people, landscapes, and monuments. Under Brongniart's leadership at Sèvres, these drawings were used to create a dinner service commissioned for Josephine on the occasion of her divorce. By the time the complex service was complete, she refused to take delivery. Following Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the restored Bourbon monarchy gave the entire service to the Duke of Wellington in gratitude.
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I discuss the Egyptian Campaign in detail in
Alexandre Brongniart (1770-1847)
The porcelain service is now on display at
Wellington's former home,
Apsley House, in London.
Anitiquités Mexicaine
Guillaume Dupaix (1746-1818) took three voyages to Mexico in 1805, 1806, and 1807. He made countless drawings of the architecture, land, and people. The narrative of his travels were published posthumously in 1834 in three volumes, including descriptions of many examples of Mexican artworks as well as an Atlas of illustrations. Dupaix's accounts were some of the earliest explorations of Mexico by the French, and the first to consider the artwork and architecture of Mexico in a global context.
Brongniart referred to Dupaix's first-hand accounts in the Traité des Arts céramiques.
