How did an Indian Buddhist shrine influence a Japanese pagoda? How are Italian pigs and cowry shells related to porcelain? Why did the ferocious warriors of Mongolia wear silk underwear? And how did wood block printing bring about a revolution in Japan and in European culture? These intriguing questions are investigated in Artifacts, a series that explores the origins and hidden connections among the art and artifacts of the great cultures and belief systems across Asia - on a journey through time and across continents from India to Thailand, China and Japan - to understand the impact of calligraphy, porcelain, architecture, metallurgy, wood block printing and silk on Asian history and on the history of the world in general.
Returning Series
Artifacts
January 1, 2000
January 1, 2000
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When pieces of Chinese porcelain were first seen in the West, they were so rare and exquisite that they very quickly became more valuable than gold. Why? Because Europeans really had no idea how porcelain was made, and the medieval Italian merchants who first brought porcelain to Europe couldn't believe it was man made. The only thing that they could compare it to was a cowry shell, because a cowry shell has that same exquisite smooth surface as a piece of porcelain. In Italian, a cowry shell is called a "Porcellino" - a little pig - because it kind of looks like a little suckling pig, hence our word 'porcelain'. The Europeans were immediately obsessed with the secret of porcelain manufacture, leading to all kinds of crazy theories: Some thought it was crushed eggshells; others thought it was a special fish paste, which they would leave to ripen in the earth for one hundred years. No wonder it would be centuries before Europeans would even begin to unravel the great mystery of porcelain. It took the Chinese themselves thousands of years to discover the secret of porcelain - the product of a search for perfection which began more than six millennia ago.
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