PORCELAIN
THE JOURNEY AND TRANSFORMATION FROM EAST TO WEST
As a part of the DEA2510 course History of Design Futures, the assignment was to write a research paper that identifies and compares an example of a design exchange or ‘borrowing’ across two distinct cultures. Addressing a typology, a decorative or symbolic vocabulary, mode of technology or construction, or other moments of transfer, the research paper intends to make specific claims for how and why the process of contact and transfer functioned. My research project explores how East Asian porcelain has been valued, appropriated, and reproduced by Europeans and how this affected the production and aesthetics of porcelain over time. I further investigated how the function of porcelain differed between East Asia and Europe to reflect cultural beliefs and practices, and how this changed over time to today’s use of porcelain, especially in modern and contemporary art.
timeline: nov - dec 2019
programs: adobe indesign, adobe photoshop
prompt to identify, research, and synthesize an example of a design exchange between two different cultures through a visual essay.