A Planetary History of Porcelain: Energy, Ecology, and Material Literacy in Early Modern China

This project proposes to rewrite the history of porcelain production from a planetary perspective. Titled PlanetArt, the project focuses on the energy regime of Jingdezhen porcelain manufacture in southeast China, where billions of porcelains were produced for global consumers from ca. 1300 to 1900. Porcelain, a human-made material of chemistry, technology, and art, demands energy to produce, releases pollutants and generates waste in production, and remains roughly intact in soil or under water for millennia. As massive production consumed enormous amounts of energy and generated multiple environmental disturbances (e.g. deforestation, air pollution), how did the manufacture continue to thrive over six centuries without causing severe ecological collapse in the region? How did regional inhabitants, transregional (e.g. merchants, porters) and transcultural actants (e.g. non-Han Chinese travellers, Jesuit missionaries) perceive and tackle ecological problems? This project hypothesises that the impact of energy consumption in porcelain production did not diminish but actually enhanced ecological resilience in the Jingdezhen region. The resilience is theorised in the correlation between energy, ecology, and material literacy (i.e. environmental knowledge, technical expertise, and skilled practice in processing materials). Toward the end of the long duration, Jingdezhen porcelain indeed lost its dominant position in global competition, viewed conventionally as a decline of Jingdezhen factories vis-a-vis Euro-American industrial enterprises. PlanetArt proposes a fresh look at the commercial decline as ecological resilience, a form of survival and renewal in favour of ecosystems over anthropogenic infrastructure. Departing from human-centred perspectives, the project aims to tell a story of art informed by geophysical science, to realise the potential of energy as historical method, and to empower museum professionals to effectively communicate ecocritical awareness.