Ceramics Of Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia is known to many as a region teeming with tourist destinations, economic opportunities and ex-colonies, but a lesser known facet is its colourful and myriad cultures in which ceramics form an integral part of the social fabric. Focusing primarily on the Classical Period (800-1500 CE), this book views ancient Southeast Asian culture through the lens of ceramic production and trade, influenced but not completely overshadowed by its powerful neighbour, China. In this landmark publication, noted archaeologist and scholar John N. Miksic constructs a vivid picture of the development of Southeast Asia's unique ceramics. Along with three contributing authors - Pamela M. Watkins, Dawn F. Rooney and Michael Flecker - he summarizes the fruits of their research over the last forty years, beginning in Singapore with the founding of the Southeast Asian Ceramic Society in 1969. The result is a comprehensive and insightful overview of the technology, aesthetics and organization, both economic and political, of seemingly diverse territories in pre-colonial Southeast Asia. It is essential reading for all those with an interest in the economic history of the region, and also for anyone who seeks a better understanding of the brilliant but too often underestimated material culture of Southeast Asia.

This new edition of Roxanna Brown's pioneering study has been extensively updated to reflect new developments and discoveries including a large number of new color and black-and-white photographs, line drawings, and maps. Like its predecessor, it covers in depth Vietnamese ceramics, Go-Sank kilns, Khmer wares, Sukhothai and Sawankhalok kilns, Northern and other Thai kilns, and Burmese ceramics.

This volume offers a baseline of information on what is known of earthenware across Southeast Asia and aims to provide new understandings of subjects including the origins of the prehistoric tripod vessels of the Malayan Peninsula and the role of earthenware from a kiln site in southern Thailand.

Glazed ceramics, through their physical resilience and social relevance, have become a persistent indicator of cultural contact in Southeast Asia for over a millennium of the region's history. This lavishly illustrated historical survey includes introductions to technical and stylistic aspects of the ceramic traditions of China, Vietnam, and Thailand, over two hundred illustrations of stoneware and porcelain ceramics, and an extensive biography.

Shipwrecks discovered throughout Southeast Asia and the precious cargoes they contain represent

This book provides an introduction to the glazed ceramic traditions of South-East Asia. The ceramic wares of Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam are discussed, including the evolution of forms and glazes and related kiln technology.

Over the last three hundred years traditional folk pottery in Southeast Asia has changed very little. Simple and practical earthenware pottery has been produced by small family groups using the traditional hand techniques passed down over several generations. This book offers a broad survey of the ceramic craftspeople of Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar(Burma). The work, life, and history of individuals and their communities is portrayed in a rich and fascinating tale that combines color photographs of potters at work and text that describes a potter's life a small, rural villages. Not only a beautifully illustrated and useful reference book for potters, the book also provides documentation of the traditional craftsmanship and a way of life that appears about to disappear with the current generation of potters. In a region eager to embrace change and readily absorb Western influence, the use of traditional pots is rapidly declining and creating these wonderful ceramic pots is considered of little value by potters' children who have little interest in learning the craft as they become Westernized. The book is a final opportunity to read about cultural insights into the life and work of rural craftsmen and is essential reading not only for working potters, but for anyone with an interest in the anthropology and sociology of Southeast Asia.

Ceramics of Seduction: Glazed wares from Southeast Asia, provides an opportunity to see and learn about the broad range of wares, mainly glazed, produced in kilns located in five countries of present day Southeast Asia; Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Laos. Each country developed a fascinating ceramics tradition that reflects the creativity of their people and the skills of the anonymous potters. To appreciate their beauty one should keep in mind the main characteristics of these wares: simplicity of form, earthly qualities of the clay and glaze, and restrained decoration. Ceramics of Seduction illustrates some 280 pieces from the Francisco Capelo collection, assembled in the last 15 years and by whom a short foreword is included. This book is enriched greatly by an insightful essay by Dawn E. Rooney, an eminent art historian of Southeast Asia. AUTHOR: Dawn F. Rooney, PhD, is an independent scholar and an art historian specialising in Southeast Asia. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society in London, an advisor to the Society for Asian Art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and co-chairperson of the James H.W. Thompson Foundation Advisory Board, Bangkok, and the Thailand representative for the International Map Collectors' Society. She was awarded a Scholar in Residence at The Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy in 2002. She was appointed to the Board of Directors for the Center for Khmer Studies (CKS) in January 2009. She is the author of nine books on the art and culture of Southeast Asia. Her latest book, Ancient Sukhothai, Thailand's Cultural Heritage was published by River Books in 2008. Dawn F. Rooney is an American who resides in Bangkok, Thailand. 311 colour illustrations