The Sir Percival David Foundation has donated 1,700 pieces of Chinese ceramics worth £1 billion (€1.2 billion) to the British Museum. The donation comes from the collection of Percival David (1892-1964), a British businessman and collector with a passion for traditional Chinese art. Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum, described this collection as “incomparable private collection”. The collection has been on loan since 2009 in the London museum.
Pair of vases from the Percival David collection.
© The Trustees of the British Museum
The collection of Chinese ceramics was established in 1952 by Percival David. It was exhibited in a University of London building at 53 Gordon Square until 2007 under the management of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, before being exhibited at the British Museum. The collection includes remarkable pieces such as the very famous blue David vases with applied elephant head handles (1351) and Ru objects intended for the court of the Northern Song dynasty, made around 1086. The collection includes objects ranging from the 3rd century AD to the 20th century. Chinese ceramics were made for the imperial court, the Chinese domestic market or for foreign trade.
Percival David was born at the end of the last century into a wealthy banking family based in Bombay (India) before moving to London in 1913. His collection comes from the numerous business trips he made to East Asia. East. He created his foundation in 1952 to house his collection.
With this donation, the British Museum now owns 10,000 Chinese ceramics, making it one of the most important collections of Chinese ceramics in the world, outside of Chinese-speaking countries. The pieces will soon be loaned to the Shanghai Museum (China) and the Metropolitan Museum in New York as part of a partnership with the British Museum.
