RUNDOWN:
6:30 pm            Registration
6:45 pm            Opening Remarks
6:50 pm            Talk
7:30 pm            Q&A
7:40 pm            Closing Remarks
7:45 pm            End

ASHK Member Ticket: HKD 60
Non-Member Ticket: HKD 80

Sir Percival David (1892-1964) created what many consider to be the finest collection of Chinese ceramics in the world. Housed in its own museum at the University of London for 55 years, the collection was a beacon for lovers of ceramics and Chinese art from all over the world. Such a famous collection of exceptional quality and provenance was a curator’s dream. The collector’s biography as recounted by his widow also painted a picture of a man with an exceptional eye who was also possessed of deep knowledge about China and its culture. It was a perfect combination of admirable collector and exceptional collection. A gentle probe into this life history in the course of research for a doctoral dissertation 25 years ago, however, led to a recently completed, sometimes arduous research journey that has resulted in a picture of a completely different man. In this talk we will meet the real Percival David who was born in Bombay into the Sassoon family, ran a global business empire, supported Jewish causes and refugee scholars, was trapped in Shanghai during WWII, suffered from a motor neurone disease and somehow devoted his spare time and energy to collecting, researching and promoting Chinese art.  

Professor Stacey Pierson is Professor of the History of Chinese Ceramics at SOAS, University of London. In addition to teaching and supervising research students in the School of Arts, she is the former President of the Oriental Ceramic Society (London) and is series editor for the Routledge title Histories of Material Culture and Collecting, 1550-1950. Previously, from 1995 – 2007, she was Curator of the Percival David Foundation of Chinese art, also at the University of London, which housed the world-renowned David collection of Chinese ceramics. She has published widely on aspects of Chinese ceramics, Percival David and the history of collecting and exhibitions, including Collectors, Collections and Museums: the Field of Chinese Ceramics in Britain: 1560-1960 (2007), Chinese Ceramics: a Design History (2009), From Object to Concept: Global Consumption and the Transformation of Ming Porcelain (2013), Private Collecting, Exhibitions and the Shaping of Art History in London: the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1866-1950 (2017) and the edited volume Visual, Material and Textual Cultures of Food and Drink in China, 200 BCE – 1900 CE, Colloquies on Art and Archaeology in Asia, no. 25 (2022). Her most recent research project focused on Dr Johnson’s Chinese teapot, which is on display in the British Museum.

Tina Pang (Moderator) is a Curator at M+, Hong Kong’s museum of visual culture, part of the West Kowloon Cultural District. She is part of the museum’s founding curatorial team with responsibility for public programmes, exhibitions and collections related to the visual culture of the city. In 2017, she curated the M+ Pavilion exhibition, Ambiguously Yours: Gender in Hong Kong Popular Culture. She also led the team behind one of the museum’s inaugural exhibitions, Hong Kong: Here and Beyond, and edited Hong Kong Visual Culture: The M+ Guide published by Thames and Hudson (2021). Her current projects include Canton Modern: Art and Visual Culture 1900s–1970s, co-curated with Alan Yeung, Associate Curator of Ink Art that will open at M+ in June 2025.

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The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers and participants and, unless expressly stated to the contrary, do not reflect the opinion, position or official policy of Asia Society Hong Kong, its members, or its committees. Asia Society Hong Kong does not endorse or approve and assumes no responsibility for the content of the information presented.