HOME DECOR

Think about grabbing a couple of bottles of France off the cabinets in a advantageous foods emporium, reading a recipe that referred to as for two tablespoons of Greece, or admiring a shiny new Germany parked on the street. It could seem ludicrous to synonymize wine, olive oil, or automobiles with the international locations of their origin, but there’s one export so strongly associated with its source that the country does indeed lend its name to the product. Porcelain ceramics, typically simply known as china, immediately conjure up notions of a Chinese aesthetic and artisanal custom, and nothing seems more quintessentially Chinese language than the blue and white patterns that embellish so many porcelain wares’ surfaces. Surprisingly, the origins of the blue and white aesthetic are usually not so endemic to China as one may assume, and an extraordinary pair of vases at the British Museum helps inform why.

So …