British Museum and V&A Ceramics

Today we went to the British Museum as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum.  I always enjoy my time in these two museums as they are truly incredible and are free of charge for entry.  I find it amazing that London offers such amazing experiences and artifacts of history to the public for free.  In the British Museum, we looked at a variety of artifacts from the Chinese exhibit. The exhibit itself shows a wide variety of artifacts from historical China, including Buddhist statues as well as porcelain figurines, however, a few cases in the early parts of the wing displayed some prehistoric artifacts.  Among these included stone tools and weapons, handled axes, pottery, and wax seals. The exhibit then showed the evolution through time and depicted copper and bronze tools.  
Next, we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum.  It was a warm day, and the museum was packed. However we scarcely found anyone on the top floor, but the heat had set in.  On this floor sits a vast collection of pottery and ceramics dating from Before Christ to the present. This was the most amount of ceramics that I had ever seen.  The detail work on these pieces of art was beyond anything I could even comprehend. The fact that human beings could craft such things of incredible beauty boggled my mind.  For instance, Chinese porcelain was widely shown throughout the exhibition, and rightfully so. It was interesting to see such iconic ceramic up close, as I had never seen proper Chinese porcelain before as it is so highly coveted and China holds its cards close.  It was funny so see how Europeans (especially the British) attempted to copy Chinese porcelain, trying many times but ultimately not achieving the rich white color that the Chinese perfected ages ago. The British are always just a little off white. The exhibition continued on for rooms and rooms.  At one point I was so inundated with formal ceramics, and glassware that I forgot that I was in a museum and thought I was in Marie Antoinette’s kitchen. (see pictures)

Comments

  1. Dr. Amy KowalJuly 26, 2019 at 8:57 AM

    Your pictures aren't displaying Aidan.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownAugust 1, 2019 at 4:00 PM

    I laughed out loud at your quote, "the British are always just a little off white." Beautifully written post!

    ReplyDelete

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