David China Art Foundation and "Zhao Yuan Good Wine"

Exterior view of the British Museum in London, Uk. (Xinhua News Agency reporter Han Yan/photo)

One day in October this year, I went to the British Museum to revisit Room 95, the room of the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, which houses the highest level of Chinese porcelain in the world.

Percival David was a famous British businessman whose father was prominent in colonial India and founded the Bank of India. As an elegant brother, he was fascinated by oriental art from an early age, especially Chinese porcelain. Through self-study, he mastered the Chinese, and also had a good understanding of the history of China's Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties because of his study of porcelain, and was one of the earliest and most famous Chinese masters in the West.

His collection of more than 1,500 pieces spans the four dynasties of the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, and is the best collection of Chinese porcelain in the world after the National Palace in Taipei. After World War II, he donated all of these collections to SOAS, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; his friends also donated more than 200 pieces of Ming and Qing porcelain, expanding the collection to more than 1,700 pieces. Although many of his collections are indeed looted from the chaos of war, Percival David also has a true love for porcelain. He has done a lot of research on these collections, referred to countless Chinese classics, and even translated many ancient texts in this regard, and he has also written many research articles, which are very influential in the academic community and have become a world-class authority in the study of Chinese porcelain.

When I first arrived in London more than twenty years ago, I actually went to see this collection a few times. At that time, the entire collection was still in a small building owned by the Institute of Asian and African Studies (SOAS). My friend Daniel, who was in graduate school at SOAS at the time, told me that I had such a special little museum. The first time he took me on a tour, I remembered it vividly: the inconspicuous front door, which was a small foyer, and you had to store all your school bags before you could go upstairs. The very narrow four-story Victorian house, with its three floors in chronological order of dynasties, displays these treasures. Each floor is small, the facilities are simple, the glass cabinets are nothing special, and it feels like it can be easily broken. The pots, cups and dishes are very crowded and stacked on the glass shelves, and there is no integration of curatorial art, and even the lighting is not easy to beat, it is like the kind of private hoarding habits. We were the only tourists at the time, and it is estimated that unless we are in the industry, no one usually knows about this place. Dan said to me: I have a favorite collection here for you to see. He pointed to a white basin - the jade-like bottom of the basin was written with these four words: "Zhao Yuan good wine." We smiled at each other, and David was quite humorous.

By 2007, the David Foundation for Chinese Art was in financial crisis, so they lent the entire porcelain collection to the British Museum for a long time, resulting in the new and brilliant Room 95, which is tailor-made for these exhibits.

Today's exhibition room is really different from the dilapidated small building of the former Institute of Asian and African Studies: the glass cabinets are uniform, and the lighting design highlights the beauty of these porcelains to the greatest extent. All the exhibits are on one floor, spacious and generous, clearly arranged, with detailed descriptions. People from all over the world who come to the British Museum have the opportunity to admire the best works of Chinese porcelain – and to put it bluntly, the best of the world's porcelain.

It cannot be denied that the great powers have had a history of plundering treasures and works of art in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Although these works of art are generally well protected and studied in the West, the museums of the world's major developed countries are full of national treasures of other countries, and whether and how to return them has always been the focus of debate. Centuries of Western colonization and war have led to a worldwide loss of art, and the issue of the recourse of these works of art is legally and politically unresolved, such as the famous Greek Elgin stone carvings, including the loss of countless Chinese national treasures.

At the government level, recourse is still difficult to resolve, and private recourse is even more chaotic. For example, the property of the Jews killed in World War II includes countless European masterpieces. If the owner of these works of art has descendants and there is a way to prove the ownership of the past, there is still a certain opportunity to recourse. But what if you can't prove your former ownership? Or is there simply no descendant at all? At this time, no matter how famous those works of art, in fact, could not continue to circulate in the world art market, and even museums did not dare to exhibit. As a result, many works that could not explain the origin of 1932 and 1945 and were suspected by the Nazis could only be hidden in the national treasury as historical scars, because no buyer would be willing to take over such "human blood steamed buns".

Withdrawing my thoughts and returning to Davide's collection, in this glittering pavilion, I can't help but miss the days when Hedan admired these porcelains in the old collection as a rare guest: first, I miss the leisure and simplicity of my student days, and second, at that time, the quiet and simple old building, empty, will give me the illusion that these beautiful porcelains belong to me at that moment... And later I searched for a long time, and I actually never found the "Zhao Yuan good wine".

(This article is only the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper)

Lu Qian