For the Love of Broken Porcelain
In 1960, while planting a rose garden on the grounds of a 600-year-old palace in Delhi, members of the Horticulture Branch of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) dug up a large hoard of broken blue-and-white dishes and bowls. These ceramics were thought to be Mughal porcelains. While this was duly noted in a brief entry in the ASI’s journal, Indian Archaeology 1961–1962: A Review, the discovery was regarded at the time as unimportant. The porcelain was put into storage, and the exact location of its discovery was forgotten. However, the collection was and remains the world’s largest collection of Yuan dynasty (1260–1368) blue-and-white porcelain.
This type of ceramic ware is one of the most artistically and commercially important types of Chinese porcelain. While some examples of underglaze blue decoration on ceramics are known from the Tang dynasty (618–907), it was during the rule of the Mongols during the Yuan dynasty that cobalt was imported to China from Persia and used to decorate porcelain on a large scale with sophisticated designs. Sent abroad via the overland and maritime silk routes, Yuan blue-and-white was traded throughout Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and eastern Africa. It was an immediate success and helped make Jingdezhen, where it was made, the porcelain capital of the world. Often imitated, it was so technically innovative that the formula for blue-and-white porcelain was not publicly known for more than 350 years.
Despite its fame today, the very existence of Yuan blue-and-white wares was forgotten for almost 600 years. Even now, there are important lacunae in our knowledge regarding this type of porcelain. When Yuan blue-and-white is discussed, sources usually mention that it was developed chiefly for markets in the Middle East, based on the two best-known collections, one in the Topkapi Palace Museum, in Istanbul, and the other formerly at the Ardabil Shrine, now in the National Museum of Iran, in Tehran. The collection in Delhi is much less known. Reasons for this may be that it was not discussed in pioneering articles by the ceramics scholar John Alexander Pope, that it has not been exhibited until recently, and that its wares are broken. As a specialist in Chinese art at Bonhams once said, ‘No one cares about broken porcelain’.
Consisting of about 67 Yuan blue-and-white porcelains and a handful of celadons, the ASI’s collection in Delhi is roughly twice as large as those in Istanbul and Tehran, each of which number only in the mid-thirties. The Delhi collection includes 44 dishes and plates and 23 bowls; interestingly, there are no vases or jars, even though such forms of Yuan blue-and-white have been found elsewhere in India (for example, a jar from the Cummins Collection, now in the British Museum), the Middle East, Southeast Asia, China, and Japan. All but a few of the porcelains in the Delhi collection are of high quality, including some magnificent reverse-painted pieces and the finest collection of Yuan blue-and-white dishes depicting fish among water weeds. Though the collection is large, it is also too small to have served the needs of a sultan, leading us to wonder where the rest of the wares might be.
Another important thing about the Delhi collection is that it was found in its original location. When the imperial collections in Istanbul and Tehran were formed, the Yuan blue-and-white porcelains in them were already over 200 years old; how and from where they were obtained is unknown. The Delhi collection was found buried on the grounds of the fortress (kotla) of the sultan Feroz Shah Tughlaq, who ruled much of India from 1351 to 1388. Whether he was the first owner of the porcelains, we do not know; the wares may have arrived in India during the reign of his predecessor, Muhammad bin Tughlaq (r. 1325–51). At some point during Feroz Shah’s reign, the Delhi porcelain was purposely broken and buried on the palace grounds, for reasons unknown. The Feroz Shah Kotla was sacked, along with the rest of Delhi, by Timur in 1398. The porcelain lay there, broken, buried, and forgotten, for almost 600 years.
To give readers an idea of how the Delhi porcelain collection has inspired scholars and collectors since its rediscovery, we present three accounts of personal experiences. The first is from Ellen S. Smart, who came to Delhi in the early 1970s to conduct research on the porcelain. Smart wrote an important and influential article on the collection and was the first to identify its blue-and-white porcelain as Yuan (Smart, 1975–77). Through her efforts, it became known that the vast majority of the Delhi porcelain was Yuan blue-and-white, it was quantified, and photos were published. Yet, despite her great progress, the Delhi collection again fell into obscurity for more than thirty years. In 2010, when John Carswell went to Delhi to work on a catalogue of the collection, in cooperation with B. R. Mani and Sarjun Prasad of the ASI, Aprajita Sharma appeared on the scene. She, too, had a great impact on the fate of the collection, and she offers the second contribution. The third account is by Steven P. Gaskin, president of the Asian Art Society of New England, who first encountered the Delhi porcelain in 2010 and worked for many years to restore and exhibit the collection internationally.
Steven P. Gaskin is President of the Asian Art Society of New England.
This article first featured in our September/ October 2021 print issue, pp 54-56. To read more, purchase the full issue here.
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