Preface

Founding President of SEACS E-Museum

In Nov 2009, the Southeast Asian Ceramics Society (SEACS) marked its 40th anniversary with the launch of an exhibition entitled New Light on Old Pottery and a book of the same name. The exhibition was well received by many students, scholars and visiting dignitaries. Its run was extended for another three months and finally ended on Oct 2010. Sales of the book have been well received both locally and internationally.  

Those who had visited the exhibition were certainly made aware of the growing significance of Southeast Asian ceramics in understanding the collective cultures of the region.  It inspired the society at exploring and finally embarking upon an idea of perpetuating the exhibition through a virtual medium, and hence the introduction of this e-museum.The e-museum preserves the exhibition's content for the benefit of those who could not get the chance to see it before. It also allows the opportunity for new contents to be added as our knowledge of the subject increases. Once on-line, it reaches out to scholars and enthusiasts on an international scale.

Our hope for this e-museum is to continue instilling interest to a growing generation of people who should find that old ceramics and potteries are an intimate and fascinating study.

Foreword by John Miksic

Head of the Archaeology Unit, Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, ISEAS

By the 10th century AD, Southeast Asians began to make glazed stoneware pottery. The first to master this technique were the Khmer, at the dawn of the glorious Angkor period. They were followed by the Thai, the Vietnamese, the Cham, and the Burmese.

Since 1969 the Southeast Asian Ceramic Society under William Willetts has played a fundamental role in stimulating research and publication on this topic. The Society’s publication, New Light on Old Pottery, in 2009 summarized four decades of research on this topic.

The next step forward in the Society’s endeavour to expand awareness of this blend of unique technology and art is this E-Museum. Through this medium, it is hoped that many more people will be able to appreciate the creations of craftspeople (since ancient times, many Southeast Asian potters have been female) who have worked in the medium of clay. Information about this source of knowledge and aesthetic enjoyment is still relatively inaccessible to most non-experts.

The E-Museum will make available many more images of Southeast Asian ceramics than can be published in conventional printed form. We hope that as a result, more people will come to appreciate this important facet of Southeast Asian culture.