Shards of Life: Chinese Porcelain Mending
The series „Reading traces“ allows insights into the work of professional restorers at ethnographic museum of Leipzig, Dresden and Herrnhut. The first volume, published in 2018, focuses on the restoration process of 45 ambrotypes and centrally deals with the technique, history of the collection and medialisation of these early photographic portraits of diverse Pacific islanders.
Released in 2019, the second volume places its main narrative around the history of Chinese porcelain repair work.
The unique object, a completely recovered workshop of a porcelain mender, which is kept at GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde since 1912, serves as platform for stories on technique and materials as well as the Chinese craftmanship of mending broken porcelain as an up-to-date practice.
