The term 'jar' refers to any man-made shape with the capacity to enclose something. Few objects are as universal and multi-functional as a jar - regardless of whether they contain food or drink, matter or a void, life-giving medicine or the ashes of the deceased. As ubiquitous as they may seem, such containers, storage vessels and urns are, as this book demonstrates, highly significant cultural and historical artefacts that mediate between content and environment, exterior worlds and interior enclosures, local and global, this-worldly and otherworldly realms. The contributors to this volume understand jars not only as household utensils or evidence of human civilizations, but also as artefacts in their own right. Asian jars are culturally and aesthetically defined crafted goods and as objects charged with spiritual meanings and ritual significance. Transformative Jars situates Asian jars in a global context and focuses on relationships between the filling, emptying and re-filling of jars with a variety of contents and meanings through time and throughout space. Transformative Jars brings together an interdisciplinary team of scholars with backgrounds in curating, art history and anthropology to offer perspectives that go beyond archaeological approaches with detailed analyses of a broad range of objects. By looking at jars as things in the hands of makers, users and collectors, this book presents these objects as agents of change in cultures of craftsmanship and consumption.

List of ContributorsList of IllustrationsTransformative Jars: An Introduction Anna Grasskamp, University of St Andrews, UK; Anne Gerritsen, University of Warwick, UK, and Leiden University, NetherlandsPart I. Transformative Matters: Ceramic Vessels, Chemistry and Socio-Economic Change Chapter 1. Dreams of Transformation: A 14th-century Flask from Cizhou Anne Gerritsen, University of Warwick and Leiden UniversityChapter 2. Jars that Cheered: Alcohol and Stoneware Containers in Java before 1500 Jiri Jakl, University of HeidelbergPart II. Transformative Spaces: Ceramic Vessels and Asian Locations Chapter 3. Siamese Jars and their Significance in Southeast-Asian Trade from the 14th to the 18th CenturyAtthasit Sukkham, Bangkok UniversityChapter 4. Weaving Networks: Production and Exchange of Ceramic Jars in South China and Vietnam from the 14th to the 16th CenturyWong Wai-yee Sharon, Chinese University of Hong KongPart III. Transcultural Enclosures: Containers and their Contents in Global Context Chapter 5. For Oil, Date Syrup and the Tomb of a Chinese Queen: The Reciprocal Trade in Chinese and West Asian Jars in the Late Tang/Early Abbasid PeriodsEva Ströber, Curator Emerita, National Museum of Ceramics Princessehof Leeuwarden Chapter 6. Translocation and Transformation: The Lives of Chinese Fishbowls in the Early Modern Period Wen-ting Wu, National Taiwan UniversityPart IV. Transformative Containers: Individual Jars and Modes of AgencyChapter 7. The Jars Have Ears: Circulation and Proliferation of Chinese Prototype Container Jars and their Offspring in Asia Louise Cort, Curator Emerita for Ceramics, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian InstitutionChapter 8. Dragons in Flux: A Changing Relationship between People and Jars in the Kelabit Highlands, Borneo, from the 19th to the 21st centuryBorbala Nyiri, independent scholarChapter 9. Jar Interventions: Ceramic Containers as Disobedient Objects in Contemporary Asian Art Sooyoung Leam, The Courtauld Institute of Art, UK; Anna Grasskamp, University of St Andrews, UKChapter 10. Concluding Thoughts on Transformative Jars: Asian Ceramic Vessels as Transcultural Enclosures Anna Grasskamp, University of St Andrews, UK; Anne Gerritsen, University of Warwick, UK, and Leiden University, NetherlandsIndex