In conversation with Tomoko Fujiwara (Kyushu Ceramic Museum, Arita, Saga Prefecture, Japan), Dr Hiroko Nishida (Nezu Museum, Tokyo, Japan), Koji Ohashi (Kyushu Ceramic Museum, Arita, Saga Prefecture, Japan), Karolin Randhahn (Digital Transformation, Dresden State Art Collections, Germany), Dr Miki Sakuraba (Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan), and Cora Würmell (Porzellansammlung, Dresden State Art Collections, Germany)

What makes a decade-long international collaboration succeed? Is it shared vision, mutual trust, or simply the will to keep talking across time zones? From 2014 to 2024, museums and scholars from around the world came together as part of “The Dresden Porcelain Project” to research the surviving East Asian porcelain collection of Augustus the Strong (1670–1733), which is now housed in the Dresden porcelain collection. Over 8,000 Chinese and Japanese pieces were re-examined and re-interpreted through comparisons of archival inventories and global dialogue between experts. 

This has resulted in an open-access multilingual digital platform that has greatly improved access to and understanding of 17th- and 18th-century East Asian ceramics, and has enabled new connections between curators, historians, and ceramic specialists.  

This Museum Mutuals session reunites partners from the Kyushu Ceramic Museum in Arita, Saga Prefecture, Nezu Museum in Tokyo, and Dresden State Art Collections to share and reflect on their experiences of working together over a period of ten years. During that time they have secured funding, contextualised objects, and developed a digital platform proving that, like porcelain itself, carefully crafted partnerships can be intricate and enduring. 

Speakers

Tomoko Fujiwara was born in 1967. She studied art history at Keio University and Musashino Art University, where she earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree respectively. From 1994 to 2009, she served as curatorial staff of the Kyushu Ceramic Museum. From 2009 to 2013, she worked at the Cultural Property Division of the Saga Prefectural Government. In 2013, she returned to the museum, where she continues to serve as curator today.

Dr Hiroko Nishida is an art historian specialising in Asian ceramics, and is currently advisor at the Nezu Museum in Tokyo. Formerly she was the Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the same institution. Born in Tokyo, she studied in the Faculty of Letters at Keio University and then at the University of Oxford where she obtained a D.Phil. in Asian ceramics. After working for the Tokyo National Museum, Nishida additionally studied in the Netherlands, the UK, and South Korea. Her recent publications include ”The trade activities of sixteenth century Christian daimyo Otomo Sorin” in “Picturing commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550-1800” (Amsterdam University Press).

Koji Ohashi was born in Yokohama in 1948 and completed his graduate studies at Aoyama Gakuin University on archaeological methods for the study of ceramics. Joining the Saga Prefectural Kyushu Ceramic Museum as a curator in 1980, he researched kiln sites and ceramics excavated from sites throughout Japan, using ceramic sherds to narrate the technology, design, and history of Hizen ceramics of the Edo period. He became director of the museum in 2006, retired in 2008, and is now emeritus advisor. He has written numerous articles and books. His texts are widely cited.

Karolin Randhahn is research associate at the department of Digital Transformation at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD). Over the last decade, she supported the conception and implementation of the Porzellansammlung’s (SKD) award-winning digital platform, the “Royal Dresden Porcelain Collection.” In parallel, she also led the associated project focusing on “Digitizing and Researching the Meissen Porcelain Collection of Augustus the Strong and Augustus III.” Her background is in East Asian Art History, with a focus on porcelain and Japanese lacquer, which she also taught at Heidelberg University.

Dr Miki Sakuraba specialises in the Japanese Arita porcelain found in European royal and aristocratic collections from the 17th and 18th centuries. Her research particularly emphasises the role of porcelain cabinets and involves extensive archive research on the VOC (Dutch East India Company) porcelain trade. Her primary research findings are detailed in her doctoral dissertation from Gakushuin University (Tokyo), which was subsequently published as “Western Courts and Japanese Export Porcelain: Cultural Creation through East-West Trade” (Geikashoin, 2014). She is a lecturer at Musashino Art University and a former researcher at institutions including the National Museum of Japanese History. Dr Sakuraba's work has been recognised with several honours, including the Hortatory Award at the 11th Fujio Koyama Memorial Awards and the Japan Ceramics Division Excellence Award in the "Tosetsu" 60th Anniversary Commemorative Essay competition.

Cora Würmell is Curator of the East Asian ceramic holdings at the Porzellansammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD). She has been the project leader of the “Dresden Porcelain Project”, where she coordinated the study, research and digital publication of “The Royal Dresden Porcelain Collection” by a team of more than 35 international senior and junior experts from Europe, China, Japan, Taiwan and the US. She has presented the collection and project at conferences in Europe and across East Asia.