ABSTRACT
Three monumental Chinese hard-paste porcelain vases sit in a display case at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. These particular examples of late seventeenth-century Chinese porcelain became famous when they were smashed into hundreds of pieces by a museum visitor in 2006, an incident that served to link the Fitzwilliam Museum with ceramics in the imagination of the UK press and the collective memory of the British public. Ultimately the story was one of skill and indefatigable conservation; despite their near total destruction, after hundreds of hours of painstaking work the vases were returned to their former glory. Without consulting the museum label, onlookers might not know the incident had ever happened – except for the enduring popularity of the story in the press and museum shop (Figure 8.1).
