Ancient Chinese Ceramics in London

Yue stoneware spittoon
gray-green glaze
Tang Dynasty (9th century)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum

"My dear friend Dji-gu,
The future is an abyss. I think I wrote that on the note I placed at the contact point for you three days ago (I hope it reached you so that you will not be worrying about my safe arrival). The things I have seen here are so completely different from everything to which you and I are accustomed, that I do not know where to start. Here – actually I shouldn't say 'here', I should say 'now', but this 'now' is so unimaginably foreign that I find it difficult to believe that this is the same place where you are living, even if separated by the space of a thousand years. A thousand years. Now I realize that there is a stretch of time which the human mind cannot encompass. Of course you can start counting, one, two, three . . . until you reach a thousand, and try to imagine that with each number a year passes, generations come and go, emperors, even whole dynasties change, the stars pursue their courses . . . but I tell you, a thousand years is more than mere elapsed time: a thousand years is such a colossal mountain of time that even the boldest imagination cannot spread its wings and fly over it."

The novel Briefe in die chinesische Vergangenheit was published by Herbert Rosendorfer in Munich in 1983. It was translated into English as Letters Back to Ancient China by Mike Mitchell and published in London by Dedalus in 1997. I first read this translation in San Francisco in 2003. It came back to my appreciative memory recently while I stared at photographs from the Percival David collection of Chinese ceramics at the British Museum. These prompted me to open the novel again, to see if the light-hearted quirkiness of the time-travel plot had retained its effectiveness – a Chinese scholar-official of the Song Dynasty uses the invention of a "mathematical time-leap" to deposit himself in 1980s Germany. Rosendorfer's novel is made up of the letters this cultivated Chinese gentleman sends (via an unspecified "contact point") back to his friend and colleague in the remote past. The concept is commonplace, but the book succeeds because of its style, which (like any effective writing) blithely surpasses its own gimmicks.  

Ding stoneware bottle
incised lotus scroll, transparent glaze
Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum

Ding porcelain bowl
transparent glaze
Tang Dynasty (9th century)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum

Ding porcelain basin
incised lotus scroll, copper rim
Northern Song Dynasty (1086-1127)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum

Ding porcelain dish
multi-lobed flower-shaped rim
Northern Song Dynasty (12th century)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum

Ding stoneware bowl
incised interior, copper rim
Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum

Longquan stoneware bowl
celadon glaze
Southern Song Dynasty (12th century)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum

Longquan stoneware dish
lobed rim, celadon glaze
Southern Song Dynasty (12th-13th century)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum

Longquan porcelain incense-burner
archaic bronze form, celadon glaze
Southern Song Dynasty (12th-13th century)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum

Longquan porcelain bowl
conical shape, celadon glaze
Southern Song Dynasty (12th-13th century)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum

Ru stoneware brush-washer
celadon glaze
Northern Song Dynasty (1086-1127)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum

Longquan stoneware bowl
lobed rim, celadon glaze
Southern Song Dynasty (13th century)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum

Longquan stoneware bowl
carved lotus leaves, celadon glaze
Southern Song Dynasty (13th century)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum

Yue stoneware bowl-fragment
inscribed with date, gray-green glaze
Northern Song Dynasty (dated 978)
Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum