KINDLY INVITED 

To the guest lecture

Persia and China on the Blue and White Road

by Yuka Kadoi, PhD
Institute of Art History, University of Vienna

Wednesday 23 October at 16:30 in the Blue room of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana.

It is widely known that brilliantly blue-painted white porcelain was imported from China to the Persian world of West Asia (modern-day Iran and West Central Asia) since the early fourteenth century.While it gained a certain popularity as a collectable and displayable item across the Islamic world, was Chinese blue-and-white porcelain trading in one direction only (i.e. from China to Persia) or in both directions (i.e. between China and Persia)? If it was travelling in both directions, how did Persian potters respond to the beauty of porcelain, a cultural product that was unable to produce in West Asia due to the lack of material? In this illustrated lecture, I would like
to revisit the issue of cultural transfer along the blue and white road by looking at key phases of ceramic production as well as artistic creativity and mercantile rivalry between Persia and China.

Yuka Kadoi, PhD (University of Edinburgh, 2005), is a historian of Islamic and Asian art, currently running an FWF-sponsored project on the history and historiography of Persian art in the early 20th century at the Institute of Art History, University of Vienna. With dual cultural and educational background in Asia and Europe, as well as internationally-driven professional experience, she specializes in the global exchange of objects, images and ideas, particularly the artistic relationship between the Islamic world of West Asia and the non-Islamic world of East Asia during the medieval period. She has published one monograph base on her doctoral dissertation, Islamic Chinoiserie: The Art of Mongol Iran (2009), and has edited five books and one academic journal. Besides, she has curated several exhibitions in the past, recently The Blue Road: Mastercrafts from Persia at the Liang Yi Museum, Hong Kong (2018).

The lecture will be held in English language.