Tim Stanley Senior Curator of the Islamic Middle East Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London recently presented a lecture at VCUQ titled 'Chinese Art - Islamic Art: Tracing Patterns of Exchange in the Decorative Arts.'
Tim Stanley is Senior Curator of the Islamic Middle East Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (V&A), one of the most significant in the world comprising more than 10,000 objects. He led the curatorial development of the new Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, which opened in July 2006. In 2004-2006, Tim Stanley curated the exhibition Palace and Mosque: Islamic Art from the Victoria and Albert Museum, that toured the US and Japan and was accompanied by a catalog for which he was the principal author. Currently Tim Stanley is working on the contribution of his department to the new Ceramics Galleries at the V&A, which will open in 2009.
Dr. Jochen Sokoly VCUQ Gallery Director and Assistant Professor in Art History noted "We are really pleased to welcome Tim Stanley to VCUQ. He has been instrumental in establishing the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum and is currently embarking on further projects to establish Islamic Art as an important subject at that museum."
During the Islamic period the impact of Chinese material culture on that of South-west Asia and North Africa was very great. The trade in goods and ideas was not all in one direction, but China set the standard in the decorative arts to an unparalleled degree: it was the "artistic other" by which the Islamic world judged its own efforts.
The main means by which Chinese artistic ideas were transmitted westwards was the transfer of goods from one region to the other. The most important type of goods traded were textiles, but the type that survives in the greatest quantity are ceramics. These offer us a model of cultural exchange. Chinese high-fired wares were imported for sale to the richest groups in society. This created demand for comparable goods from less wealthy consumers. As a result, pastiches of the Chinese wares began to be made locally. Once the initial investment in local production had been made, a process of diversification and innovation occurred that created a range of wares that fulfilled the same function as the pastiches but fitted Islamic aesthetic norms in a more direct way.
