V&A in London: "Meeting of Asia & Europe"

[Mulboyne]

Tiered food box Wood covered in black lacquer with gold takamakie lacquer and gold and silver foil. Japan, 1600-1625
When the Portuguese first arrived in Japan they were perceived as almost supernatural beings and the bearers of good fortune. It became fashionable to decorate objects with images of these auspicious people. On this tiered foodbox they are represented with their characteristic features: big noses, hats, neck-ruffs and baggy trousers.

Exhibition site - Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800

Interesting exhibition running at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Highly recommended if you are in the city.

Time: A riveting exhibition recalls an earlier era when Europe and Asia fascinated and enriched each other
The exhibition, three years in the organizing, covers the artistic, decorative, commercial and technological interrelationships between Europe (mainly England, Holland and Portugal) and Asia (China, India and Japan) during that breathtakingly dynamic period. The show is a trove of magnificent scrolls, silks, lacquer ware, furniture, clocks, telescopes, maps, wood-block prints, engravings and porcelains from the world's most important private and public collections, including Beijing's Palace Museum.

[Mulboyne]

The prize for the most apt title in the show goes to an 18th century hanging scroll, A Meeting of Japan, China and the West. Three men of learning sit at a European table supported on a Chinese-style pedestal. The Chinese scholar, with a scroll and a scepter before him, keeps his distance from his Japanese and European counterparts, suggesting that he doesn't share their scientific views. The hanging scroll, probably by Shiba Kokan, the father of Western painting in Japan, shows above them three different ways by which Japanese, Chinese and European men extinguish a blazing fire.

[Charles]

On a vaguely related note, here's an ancient web page I wrote, must be almost 10 years old, with a pair of interesting byoubu representing the Japanese and European views of the world, just at the moment the two worlds collided (~1549).

http://member.newsguy.com/~sakusha/byoubu/byoubu.html

The server seems a bit slow tonight so be patient.

[Mulboyne]

Seems some items have been stolen...

Independent: Theft of medieval Chinese jewels from British Museum follows raid on V&A

Four weeks ago, the Victoria & Albert Museum lost nine jade cups and bowls worth £60,000. In the well-organised theft, on the afternoon of 4 October, thieves used instruments to break into a cabinet in its ceramic galleries. Three small cups and a bowl, two small ornamental plaques, one small ritual cylinder and two small animal figures, all made of dark, green-brown jade, were stolen. Most dated from between the 15th and 19th centuries but the cylinder was dated earlier than 1,000BC.