From Rehe, China to Staffordshire, England; The Voyage of a Chinese Image

Title: From Rehe, China to Staffordshire, England; The Voyage of a Chinese Image 

Lecturer:  Ron Fuchs, Senior Curator, Reeves Museum of Ceramics, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA

Description:  The “India Temple” pattern made by John and William Ridgway of Staffordshire depicts a temple at the Chinese imperial summer palace, Bishu Shanzhuang, or the Mountain Estate for Escaping the Heat. Reflecting the globalized world of the eighteenth century, the design is based on an illustration in The Emperor of China’s Palace at Pekin, published in London in 1753. It copied an engraving done in 1714 by the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ripa, who introduced Western-style copper-plate printing to China. It was based on a woodblock print by the Chinese engravers Zhu Gui and Mei Yufeng, who copied a preparatory drawing or painting done by the court painter Shen Yu around 1712. 

Speaker bio: Ron Fuchs is the Senior Curator of the Reeves Museum of Ceramics at Washington and Lee University, where he has worked for the last 13 years.He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary and the Winterthur Program in Early American Material Culture at the University of Delaware. He worked at Winterthur for ten years prior to moving to the Reeves. He is past president and chair of the American Ceramic Circle, and a member of the TCC.