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Title: From Stoke-on-Trent to Tehran: Wedgwood at the Court of Fath 'Ali Shah

Speaker: Fuchsia Hart

In 1810, the British East India Company (EIC) gave two large Wedgwood dining services to Fath ‘Ali Shah, then ruler of Iran. The services, one in the Japan pattern and the other in the Peony pattern, reportedly amounted to more than 600 pieces and cost the vast sum of £1300. These pieces, created through dialogue between the EIC envoy in Tehran and Fath ‘Ali Shah’s ambassador in London, were hybrid objects, melding British designs with ceramic forms more common in Iran. This talk will tell the story behind this lavish gift, exploring how the order was commissioned, drawing on documents still held in the Wedgwood archives.

Dr Fuchsia Hart has been the Sarikhani Curator for the Iranian Collections at the V&A since 2022. She holds a PhD in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford. Her thesis explored the shrine patronage of Fath 'Ali Shah Qajar (r.1797-1834) in Iran and Iraq. Currently, her other research and curatorial projects explore the wider courtly arts under Fath 'Ali Shah, embroidery traditions in Uzbekistan, and the collecting of lustre-glazed tiles from Iran in the UK.

Speaker: Heeryoon Shin, Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture, Bard College

Description: Nineteenth-century India, blue-and-white transferware from Staffordshire found a new life as affixed ornamentation in palace interiors. Set into walls in original form, or broken into flat, rectilinear pieces to meticulously cover walls, niches, and balconies, British transferware plates and their luminous blue-and-white surface effectively framed gods and kings and created a multisensory experience of space. Taking the two late nineteenth-century sites of Juna Mahal in Dungarpur and Junagadh Fort in Bikaner as points of departure, she explores how the design and materiality of British transferware as well as their display acquired new meaning and purpose in Indian palace spaces. Evoking the tradition of tiled ornamentation and the display of ceramics in the chini khana (“China room”) in India, while also referencing European porcelain rooms, the transferware-covered walls reveal the complex cultural negotiations and material and political aspirations of nineteenth-century India. By examining the Indian reuse of British transferware, this talk complicates the conventional narrative of West looking East and highlights the nonlinear and multidirectional flows of ceramic culture.

Speaker: Heeryoon Shin, Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture, Bard College. Heeryoon Shin is Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Bard College, New York. Her current project explores architectural revival, mobility, and cross-cultural exchange in early colonial India through the lens of temple architecture in the pilgrimage city of Banaras. She is also developing a second project on the global circulation of blue and white ceramics and their interaction with local production and use in South Asia.

Speaker: Bradley Brooks, Curator, Bayou Bend Collection Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Description: Ima Hogg (1882-1975), daughter of James Stephen Hogg, the first native-born governor of Texas, lived for a time in the Texas governor's mansion in Austin. The experience helped shape her appreciation for both antiques and history. In the early 1920s, she began to collect American antiques, including glass, ceramics, and furniture. Later in the decade, she embarked on the construction of Bayou Bend in Houston, which would be her home until the 1960s. As her collection grew, Miss Hogg resolved that she would establish a museum. She made gifts of her home and collection to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Bayou Bend opened to the public in 1966. This presentation explores Miss Hogg's interest in transfer-printed ceramics, with emphasis on the Texian Campaigne pattern.

Speaker: Pat Halfpenny, Curator Emerita, Ceramics & Glass, Winterthur Museum

Description: Pat’s presentation discussed the scenes of Philadelphia found on printed pottery and the Staffordshire manufacturers who produced them. While the focus was on the dark blue prints of the 1820s, there were references to later Romantic Staffordshire with Philadelphia themes, concluding with a brief look at polychrome printed pieces.