Palace Museum Culture Lecture Series (Part III): Precious Jades from the Western Regions: Analysing and Appreciating the Diversity of Islamic Jades in the Qing Imperial Collection

EVENT DESCRIPTION

The Hong Kong Palace Museum (HKPM) will present Part III of the Palace Museum Culture Lecture Series from March to May 2022. At these free public talks, leading experts on Palace Museum culture from Hong Kong, Beijing, and Taipei will share new research that brings to life the distinctive charm of the culture of the Forbidden City.

Organised by the HKPM, Parts I and II of the Lecture Series were held last year and received an overwhelming response. The three upcoming talks in Part III will examine respectively the development of European cannon technology in the reign of the Kangxi Emperor, Chinese export ceramics from the Palace Museum collection, and the Qing imperial collection of Islamic jades. Participants will be invited to explore cultural exchanges between China and the world.

Precious Jades from the Western Regions: Analysing and Appreciating the Diversity of Islamic Jades in the Qing Imperial Collection:

Ms Teng Shu-p’ing, former Chief Curator, Department of Antiquities, Palace Museum, Taipei, will explore the reasons why a large number of jades from the Islamic world travelled to China and entered the Qing imperial collection in the second half of the eighteenth century. Ms Teng explains the functions of these jades, and uses their artistic traits as a basis to identify four regional styles, including those of jades from the Mughal Empire in North India and the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. In addition, she will use poems composed by the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736–1795) and engraved on these jades to analyse the emperor’s aesthetics and the myths he conjured up about some of these jades.

Mandarin with simultaneous interpretation in Cantonese; subtitles not available