Vietnam created the most sophisticated ceramics in Southeast Asia.
Though they borrowed from China, Vietnamese potters explored their own
indigenous tastes and developed their own production techniques. Blessed
with the smooth gray-white clays of the Red River Valley, they created
pieces that are amazingly light and thin-walled, with skillfully
painted, incised, and carved decoration. Two particularly popular
decorative themes were dragons (from whom the Vietnamese believed they
were descended) and lotuses (considered archetypal symbols of Buddhist
purity, because the flower emerges unsullied from the mud).
Through a series of judicious purchases that began in the 1970s, the
Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, has created an extraordinary
collection of Vietnamese ceramic art. Essays by three noted experts
introduce the collection.