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* 3 Eva Stroeber

Quiet Elegance The brush washer in the collection of the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden

One of the most spectacular objects in the collection of the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden is a small round dish referred to by an inner circle of Princessehof colleagues as our ‘Ru pindabakje’. The small dish has a diameter of only 13 centimeters and a grey-blue glaze with a lavender tone, finely cracked. The sides of the vessel are slightly rounded and thinly potted, particularly around the rim. The base is fully glazed and has three tiny spur

Quiet E le g ance marks. The dish is not decorated (figs. 1 and 2). This small and modest object would therefore not look spectacular to most museum visitors. If spotted in a flea market, a maximum of 20 Euro would probably be offered to the owner; it would have no chance of being displayed in a ‘popular exhibition’, which has to attract tens of thousands of visitors, because it definitely does not look like a ‘wow object’ so much loved by museum public relations departments.

So what is the story behind this modest piece, which is in fact one of the most important, rare and valuable objects in the collection; the only piece of not only at the Princessehof, but in any museum of the Netherlands? The small dish has been published several times1 and is usually on display, but it might be of interest here to tell its story in the context of new research.

Provenance

The small dish was given to the museum in 1981 by Johanna Margrieta Hendriena (Joop) Coulingh (1902-1998), from Zutphen. It was part of a collection of circa 100 objects, including Chinese export ceramics, Korean, Vietnamese and Thai ceramics, donated in memory of her late husband dr. ing. H.R.A. Muller (who died around 1980). Muller had worked in the field of agricultural engineering and had been based on Java in the Dutch East Indies. While living there, he had developed a passion for ceramics; he collected Chinese export ceramics and wrote a book on Javanese terracotta from the period in East Java (13th-15th century), the last Hindu- Buddhist culture in Javanese history.2

The small Ru dish does not actually fit into the collector’s usual taste. It seems that he acquired it while on leave in the Netherlands around 1950 from the dealers Aalderink in Amsterdam for a rather low price. Did he know what he had acquired? Did the dealer know what he had sold to Dr. Muller?

Appreciation for Ru ware in

Every culture has its specific aesthetic ‘icons’. For , it was and still is the famed Ru-ware (Ru yao in Chinese), which was already highly 4

Fig. 2 appreciated by Chinese collectors and connoisseurs during the Southern Side-view of the (1127-1279). brush washer. Ru ware was produced specifically for the imperial court at the end of the (960-1125). The first reference to imperial Ru ware is a record by Jing (1091-1153) in his Xuande fengshi Gaoli tujing (Illustrated Record of the Xuande Envoy to Koryo), from the year 1123. Xu was a diplomat and a member of a Chinese delegation to the court of the Korean Koryo-dynasty (918-1392). During the Koryo period, beautiful were made by Korean potters and used by the elite at court and in Buddhist monasteries. Xu Jing compared the wares of Koryo to “the new wares from Ru prefecture”. Ru wares, according to Xu Jing, had replaced Ding wares at the Chinese court.3

A more explicit record for the use of Ru ware at the Chinese court can be found in the Tanzhai biheng (Notes for the Tranquil Study) by , an author from the early Southern Song period: “In this dynasty, the white wares from being flawed by unglazed mouth rims, the court deemed it unfit for use, and orders have been handed down for green wares to be fired at Ru prefecture”.4 Ding wares were made in kilns in the northern province of in a variety of shapes and qualities. The finest were selected for use at court. However, all these wares were fired upside down and therefore the rim often had to be