ABSTRACT
This book began with a twentieth-century collection of Chinese porcelain, the Ionides Collection, and over subsequent pages has reached across time and space, from the manufacturing centres and port cities of China to the commercial hubs of Southeast Asia and onward, to the dining rooms and salons of England. From its creation two centuries earlier, European style Chinese export porcelain was readily distinguished from other wares due to its design hybridity, serving as a visual and material record of intercultural exchanges between geographically remote but commercially connected nations. The end of the War heralded a new era, for the Ionides and their art collections in the public sphere. For a short period, the Ionides continued to collect and actively participated with the Chinese art world, as members of the Oriental Ceramic Society.
