Vietnamese potters combined their own native genius with elements derived from neighboring cultures, including Cambodia, Champa, India, and especially China. Yet their decorative motifs, glaze types, production methods, and perhaps even attitudes toward potting differed distinctly from those of China. Using the excellent clay of the Red River valley--smooth, homogeneous, gray-white--they created the most sophisticated ceramic tradition of Southeast Asia. The most definitive study on Vietnamese ceramics to date, this volume is the collaborative effort of experts from around the world, including Vietnam, Japan, England, France, and the United States. They discuss the history and development of Vietnamese ceramics, kiln sites discovered in Vietnam, and technical questions. John Guy (Victoria & Albert Museum, London) contributes essays on Vietnamese ceramics and cultural identity, and Vietnamese Ceramics in international trade. John Stevenson (Seattle Art Museum) explains the historical context and examines the ivory-glazed wares of the Ly and Tran dynasties. Louise Cort (Smithsonian Institution) analyzes Vietnamese ceramics in Japanese contexts, while Regina Krahl (British Museum) shares her expertise on Vietnamese blue-and-white and polychrome traditions. Asako Morimoto (Fukuoka Museum) describes the kilns of northern Vietnam. The book contains additional essays by Philippe Truong of the Louvre, Trian Nguyen of UC Berkeley, and Peter Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Lastly, Nguyen Dinh Chien of the Hanoi Historical Museum and John Guy address chronological issues and list dated and datable ancient Vietnamese ceramics.--Amazon.com.

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.

Vietnam created the most sophisticated ceramics in Southeast Asia. Though they borrowed from China, Vietnamese potters explored their own indigenous tastes and developed their own production techniques. Blessed with the smooth gray-white clays of the Red River Valley, they created pieces that are amazingly light and thin-walled, with skillfully painted, incised, and carved decoration. Two particularly popular decorative themes were dragons (from whom the Vietnamese believed they were descended) and lotuses (considered archetypal symbols of Buddhist purity, because the flower emerges unsullied from the mud). Through a series of judicious purchases that began in the 1970s, the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, has created an extraordinary collection of Vietnamese ceramic art. Essays by three noted experts introduce the collection. John Stevenson, co-author of Vietnamese Ceramics: A Separate Tradition, describes the evolution of Vietnamese ceramics and the contexts in which they were produced, and analyzes their aesthetic attraction. The Museum's senior curator, Donald A. Wood, explains the rich symbolism of decorative motifs found on Vietnamese ceramics. Independent scholar Philippe Truong, of Paris and Saigon, assesses the current state of the field.

"The focus of conflict from the colonial era to the cold war, Vietnam at long last is emerging as a global force in trade and culture. Likewise its ceramics tradition, a fusion of eclectic influences and unique forms and forces, is exciting the imagination and delighting the senses of a widening circle of collectors and connoisseurs. The Elephant and the Lotus explores this vital tradition by highlighting over two hundred objects in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Ranging from earthy and practical stoneware produced two millennia ago under Chinese dominion, to the spectacularly decorated ewers, bowls, and limepots created at the pinnacle of Vietnamese civilization a thousand years later, the wares presented here reflect the natural wonders of Vietnam and the ingenuity of its ceramists. With an introduction by John Stevenson that places ceramics at the intersection of artistic expression and national identity, and extensive presentations by renowned authority Philippe Truong, this is both the first complete publication of a remarkable collection and an indispensable introduction to a rapidly growing field in the Asian decorative arts."--Jacket.

Southeast Asia has sometimes been portrayed as a static place. In the ninth to fourteenth centuries, however, the region experienced extensive trade, bitter wars, kingdoms rising and falling, ethnic groups on the move, the construction of impressive monuments and debate about profound religious issues. Readers of this volume will learn much of how people lived in Southeast Asia five hundred to one thousand years ago; the region today cannot be comprehended without reference to the seminal developments of that period.

A vivid, accessible portrait of contemporary Vietnam through texts and complementary photographs that dispute the stereotypic images we have of this dynamic and diverse country.