By Transformative Jars: Asian Ceramic Vessels as Transcultural Enclosures (Material Culture of Art and Design)

The term ‘jar’ refers to any man-made shape with the capacity to enclose something. Few objects are as universal and multi-functional as a jar – and this book shows that jars are part of human experience throughout time and space, regardless of whether they contain food or drink, matter or a void, life-giving medicine or the ashes of the deceased. As ubiquitous as such containers, storage vessels and urns might be, Transformative Jars addresses a scholarly absence by bringing together an interdisciplinary team of scholars to offer non-archaeological perspectives. The contributors to this volume understand jars not only as household utensils or evidence of human civilizations, but also as artefacts in their own right. Asian jars are culturally and aesthetically defined crafted goods and as objects charged with spiritual meanings and ritual significance. Transformative Jars situates Asian jars in a global context and focus on relationships between the filling, emptying and re-filling of jars with a variety of contents through time and throughout space in relation to the charging and re-charging of these objects with different sets of meanings. Detailed analysis of a broad range of objects shows jars to be transcultural containers that mediate between content and environment, exterior worlds and interior enclosures, local and global, this-worldly and other-worldly realms. By looking at jars as things in the hands of makers, users and collectors, this book presents these objects as agents of change in cultures of craftsmanship and consumption.