Archaelogical Sites and Cities / Principal Kilns

Autonomous Regions

Provinces Municipalitoes

Special Administrative Regions

Archaeological Sites and Cities (5000 BCE – 220 CE)

Hangzhou

Erlitou

Anyang

Guanghan (Sanxindui)

Zhengzhou

Houma

Chang’an

Luoyang

Xian

Changsha Present Main Cities

Beijing

Tianjin

Shenyang

Shanghai

Hong Kong

Guangzhou (Canton) Principal Kilns (10 th – 13t h Centuries)

Xingzhou, Hebei Province (xing ware)

Quyang, Hebei Province (ding ware)

Cizhou, Hebei Province

Yaozhou, Shaanxi Province

Kaifeng, Henan Province (Northern guan ware)

Yuxian, Henan Province (jun ware)

Baofeng, Henan Province (ru ware)

Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, (qingbai ware)

Jizhou, Jiangxi Province

Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province (Souther n guan and ge ware)

Longquan, Zhejiang Province

Dehua, Fujian Province

Xinjiang Tibet

Chinese miniatures are autonomous, threedimensional, man-made objects, of a ‘handy’ size – that is, no larger than ten centimetres –which are a deliberately reduced version of the same object in actual size. So, something very different from what in the West is understood by miniatures: painted or drawn illustrations in old, mostly religious, manuscripts or small portraits.

What makes these Chinese miniatures, of which the oldest copies of jade are more than 7,000 years old, so special? First, in the long run they were made of almost every material you can think of, such as bronze, ivory and gold, but also of more ordinary materials, like ceramics and wood. Second, they could portray almost everything, such as gods, people, animals, buildings, vehicles, utensils and so forth. Third, they give us a glimpse into the lives of very ordinary people, and these miniatures, above all, made it possible to portray all kinds of intimate, even erotic, and humorous subjects that do not occur in official visual arts or literature. And finally, the phenomenon of miniatures is still virtually unknown, even in present-day China, as is evident from the fact that there is hardly any literature on this subject. That is all the more remarkable when one realises how much has been written about the much younger Japanese netsuke.

It may all sound very logical and simple now, but what was needed to find out?

On the trail of a new phenomenon

In June 2008, as director of the European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC) in ’s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, I gave a lecture about this centre in Fuping, in the Chinese province of Shaanxi, at the invitation of the International Ceramic Art Museum there. On that occasion, I also visited the Yaozhou Ceramics Kiln Museum in Huangpu,

Tongchuan City. During the viewing of the permanent exhibition of ceramics, I noticed three strikingly small figures, quite similar to the miniature official shown here (FIG. 1). The objects were arranged together in a separate showcase. They struck me because such figurines are usually exhibited together with larger ones and therefore attract less attention. A sign stated that these were figurines representing an official, a monk and a girl. All three, made from green glazed (celadon) stoneware, were attributed to the Yaozhou pottery centre and dated to the Northern Song period (960–1127).1 It was not stated what the function of these figurines was at the time, or what significance they had.

At that moment, I didn’t think about it any further. Yet in the years that followed, I became increasingly aware of the existence of such small objects. I also noticed the great diversity in what they depict. This raised the suspicion that it could be a specific category of objects, namely miniatures, in Mandarin Chinese zaoqi zonguo de suoying

The question as to which properties define this category and what the functions of these miniatures were arose again in the spring of 2013 at the reopening of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. In the new Asian pavilion, art objects from China, Japan, Indonesia, India, Vietnam and Thailand are displayed. The majority of them belong to the extensive collection of the Royal Asian Art Society in the Netherlands, founded in 1918, which was given on permanent loan to the museum. At the time, an important part of the semi-permanent exhibition in this pavilion was a group of ten gilt-bronze miniatures, exhibited in a separate wall showcase (FIG. 3). This showed the earliest development of Chinese, especially Buddhist, sculpture and acted as a prelude to what is presented as the highlight of the collection: the monumental Guanyin sculpture, dated c. 110 0–1200, of polychromed and gilt wood (FIG. 2 ). This new confrontation with the phenomenon of early Chinese miniatures further aroused my interest and led me to devote a scientific study to the subject.

Research questions

At the heart of the research was the question: what is a miniature, or, to put it differently, how can the term ‘miniature’ be defined? To answer this key question properly, it was necessary to ask other, more specific, questions like: what was the function of early Chinese miniatures, which materials and techniques were used, how were production and sales organised, which representations occur and what do they mean? Just as relevant were questions such as: how did the practice of collecting develop, and are similarities to be found between miniatures in China and abroad? All these questions are answered in the following chapters.

State of science

Virtually no scientific research had been done into early Chinese miniatures.2 However, a few small steps in that direction had been taken in the past. Two articles from the 1950s refer to ‘Chinese miniatures’ but mainly in the sense of small objects that lend themselves well to the creation of a collection. At the time, there had as yet been no definition of the term ‘miniature’.3

In her article on Chinese miniatures in bronze, Lady Ingram suggests the possibility that these are toys for children or models for craftsmen, or that they were made because the craftsmen simply enjoyed making them.4 After describing about twenty bronze miniatures, she concludes her story with an explanation of why these miniatures are so popular with collectors: they are representative of the shapes and the quality of Chinese bronzes throughout the centuries and do not occupy much space.5

The London-based art dealer Edgar Bluett, who specialised in Eastern art, illustrates this ‘collectability’ with his article on the collection of the married couple F. Brodie Lodge. Among other things, he describes the contents of a wall cupboard: around one hundred Chinese antiques from the fourth to the eighteenth centuries, consisting of miniatures of earthenware, porcelain and bronze.6 He does not discuss the function of these miniatures. A closer examination of the accompanying, not very sharp, black-and-white photo of this wall cabinet shows that, of the ninety-eight ceramic objects arranged therein, about twenty