Qing Imperial Glassware with Andrew Lee King Fun at the Min Chiu Society

Despite the fact that glass had made its first appearance in China around the Zhou period in the 10th century BC, it had been used all along as a cheap substitute for jade until the Qing Dynasty in the early 18th century, when glass developed into an individual art form and enjoyed imperial patronage. Throughout the three high Qing reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, an enormous quantity of glass objects was produced with high standard at the glasshouse of the Imperial Household Workshop in Beijing under the supervision of the Jesuit missionaries. Glass manufacturing in China reached a pinnacle then. In this lecture, Andrew Lee King Fun (???) will give a comprehensive survey on the aesthetic appreciation of the types, forms and decorative techniques of glass, using the illustrations from his exquisite collection of Qing imperial glasses that dates from the 17th to the 20th century.

Speaker:
Former Chairman of the prestigious Min Chiu Society, Honorary Fellow and Director of The University of Hong Kong Foundation and renowned architect, Andrew Lee King Fun comes from a family in the glass manufacturing business. His important collection of glassware was exhibited at the Chinese University Art Museum in 2000, accompanied by an authoritative, scholarly catalogue entitled "Elegance and Radiance: Grandeur in Qing Glass, the Andrew K.F. Lee Collection".