Kakiemon elephants

A History of the World in 100 Objects

BBC

History

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2010

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

The history of humanity as told through one hundred objects from the British Museum in London is this week exploring the world at the time of European discovery - between 1450 and 1600. Today Neil MacGregor is with a pair of white elephants, the size of small dogs. They come from Japan, are made of fine porcelain and take Neil on a journey that connects Japan to Korea and China and to a growing trade network in Western Europe. How did the great skill of porcelain production spread across the Far East? Why elephants? And how did these objects become so desirable to the European elite? He discovers the specific technique of this porcelain style (and traces it to a Japanese potter called Kakiemon) and follows other examples of this same pottery to an English country house. Miranda Rock describes the Kakiemon collection at Burghley House, the present day Kakiemon potter discusses his work and the Korean porcelain expert Gina Ha-Gorian explains how the detailed technology for porcelain production spread. Producer: Anthony Denselow

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects from BBC Radio 4.
0:10.0	They were owned by monarchs of Southeast Asia. The Buddha's mother dreamed of
0:18.8	one before giving birth to him. For a large part of the world, white elephants have always been signs of power
0:25.6	and portent. They were also a mixed blessing. As a gift from a king, they couldn't honourably
0:31.1	be put to work, and so they were horribly
0:33.4	expensive to keep and in modern English a white elephant is simply a useless
0:38.2	extravagance.
0:41.2	We've got two almost white elephants in the British Museum. They too are from Asia,
0:48.9	they're perfectly useless and they were very expensive. They would have cost tens of thousands of pounds in today's terms,
0:55.6	but they are exceedingly jolly to look at. And they tell an unexpected story of the
1:02.0	triangular power struggles between China, Japan and Korea in the 17th century
1:07.0	and of the birth of the modern multinational trading company.
1:11.0	People hadn't really seen things like this before, certainly from the Far East.
1:15.0	It was something new and exciting and probably very modern.
1:18.0	Although they're trying to be European, perhaps in taste, you don't ever do is that Japanese style.
1:26.0	A history of the world in a hundred objects. two kakimmon porcelain elephants made in Japan during the second half of the 17th century.
1:57.0	The objects this week are from the 16th and 17 centuries
2:02.0	when Europeans set sail around the world and much of the
2:05.1	rest of the world first discovered Europe. Our porcelain elephants were shipped into
2:10.2	Europe from Japan sometime between 1660 and 1700.
2:14.7	Elephants were of course a rare sight in a European drawing room then, but so,
2:19.7	until recently, was porcelain.
	...

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