TESTIMONIALS

In 1998, I was entrusted with the task of editing the English version of the Dictionary of Chinese Ceramics and I begged my friend, the late Sir Edward Heath, to arrange a trip to see Sir Michael’s collection. He and I clicked immediately and spent hours discussing his collection. At this meeting, when two famous Europhiles were present, discussions of the European Union were given secondary importance. Although this must have tested the patience of the former Prime Minister, he quietly sat through the sessions after lunch and then after tea. On the journey back, the legendarily grumpy old Ted remarked simply “I never knew there was so much to say about porcelain!”. From then on Sir Michael and I became great friends for the last fifteen years of his life.

Back in 1961 , when Michael bought his first piece, I was only 5 years old. During my lifetime, Sir Michael has single-handedly built the most significant collection of 17th-century Chinese porcelain. What’s more, he is the true pioneer who brought transitional ware to the world stage. The substantial collection, together with the story scenes, is drawing more and more attention of collectors, museum curators, and academics across several continents. The joint exhibition of the Butler Collection and the Shanghai collect ion held in Shanghai Museum in 2005 opened the eyes of the native Chinese people to
this forgotten treasure trove.

Over the many years he collected, Sir Michael became one of the foremost connoisseurs of this period, who was fully aware of the challenges it presented. He managed to acquire key pieces with a keen eye to historical importance, documentary value and educational potential; and at the same time he engaged a series of top scholars in the research of these wares. He thus truly furthered our knowledge about a previously obscure area of Chinese ceramics. Through his collection and the research that resulted from it, it has been possible to demonstrate production dates as well as stylistic and qualitative evolution. It is now no longer possible to discuss Chinese ceramics of the 17th century without reference to the Butler collection. The importance of the collection, which has no par among other private or public holdings in its focus and breadth, has been acknowledged through many international exhibitions, most importantly through the highly prestigious presentation at the Shanghai Museum, which made it internationally famous. The UK used to be on the forefront of Chinese ceramic research. A large number of private collections were formed here by collectors such as Sir Michael, for whom the objects’ value to research and education was more important than their financial worth. The OCS was formed in this climate of sharing knowledge and resources, and Sir Michael was one of its long-standing supporters. He generously lent to exhibitions and always welcomed and encouraged visits to the collection and discussions of its objects. Many valuable exchanges among scholars would not have been possible without his support.

No other collection specializes in this time period which is now considered significant because of the ButlerFamily Collection. Importantly, and unusually for a collector, Sir Michael encouraged scholarship by regularlyinviting interested parties, including myself and mystudents, to visit his museum as well as organising andparticipating in many exhibitions…. I personally learned a lot from Sir Michael when I visited the first timeand was forever grateful that he was willing to lend to one of my first exhibitions at the PDF.

Amongst all the collectors I have met, the late Sir Michael Butler impressed me most by his devotion, vision and scholarship.Traditional Chinese collectors have always been very classical. They would concentrate on pieces originated or commissioned by the Palace. So in ceramics they would focus on the so–called Classical wares of the Song or Ming and Qing imperial porcelain with reign marks of the emperors. And they would never cast their attention to non–official items for the domestic market nor massive export itemsfor overseas trades since the 16th century. Very much deviated from this Catholic taste, Sir Michael was an excellent exception. He had chosenthe transitional 17th century, a period when imperial patronage was lacking, and an area which most collector peers of his time sadly ignored. I know many of Sir Michael’s pieces were shown in Transitional Wares and Their Forerunners published by the HongKong Oriental Ceramic Society, but he went far beyond the scope of the exhibited items and depth in scholarship of this 1981 definitive exhibition and catalogue master–minded by the late Richard Kilburn, whom Sir Michael knew well. Indeed, the Butler Collection was beginning to take shape well before 1981. Sir Michael’s key objective was to concentrate on these interesting but very much neglected Chinese ceramics which spanned the great 17th–century Ming and Qing transition in social, political, historicaland cultural changes….Unlike other collectors…Sir Michael always welcomed curators, specialists, dealers, collectors and even students to visit his collection to discuss, analyse and comment on related issues. The collection is unrivalled as a study group, carefully collected and formed over many years of discerning selection andacquisition’

I am familiar … with very many of the world’s leading specialist collections of Chinese ceramics, past and present. Some are assembled by highly knowledgeable collectors devoted to a theme (for example David, Mottahedeh, S.C. Ko, the Zuellig brothers). Some are very ‘old chance assemblages’ whose academic importance is only appreciated long after their haphazard creation (Topkapi, Ardebil, Captain Forbes). And some were formed by rich men who enjoyed the ceramics and the thrill of acquisition, but were not really specialists (Eumorfopoulos, Franks, Hodroff).

The Butler Family Collection falls squarely into the first category. Assembled over four decades, the key objective was to focus very sharply on those interesting but unfashionable Chinese ceramics which spanned one of China’s great historical moments of social, economic and cultural transition …. Sir Michael was the second English collector to focus on a century of production which was very largely ignored by ceramic historians, especially by traditional Chinese ones. The first was Gerald Reitlinger, an English collector some 50 years earlier, whose collection (now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) lacks the academic focus of Sir Michael’s, and did not benefit from the discovery of documentary shipwreck cargoes, and the researches of a young generation of new young specialists like Ni Yibin in Shanghai….

In recent decades, almost all the new research about the great traditions of Chinese ceramics has taken place in China; at the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, at the Palace Museum, at the Shanghai Museum. It was therefore entirely logical that when the Shanghai Museum (the most academically progressive of all China’s ceramic museums) organized an exhibition unprecedented in China of ‘17th century Ceramics’, the Director asked Sir Michael to lend the major part of the display, to give the keynote speech and to co-author the catalogue. There is no other Collection on the planet which can illustrate with such clarity the vicissitudes
and re-emergence of a major Chinese industry, nor chart so fully the way in which ceramic designs, shapes and technology coped with enormous political and economic strains yet survived a major civil war to rise rapidly from the ashes of the destroyed ceramic city of Jingdezhen.

Some collections were sheltered by their owners from critical discussion by peers. Sir Michael always very actively encouraged the world’s leading curators, specialists and dealers to visit, analyse and comment on his pieces. Hence the Collection is unrivalled as a study group. It
not merely illustrates key decades in the evolution of Chinese ceramics. It even led to the discovery of in effect a completely unknown reign period, that of the Emperor Shunzhi (c.1644
–1662), and the understanding that during this crucial period there was far more ceramic continuity, and far less cataclysm, than any specialist had hitherto believed.