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The British Museum has received an unprecedented donation. The Percival David Foundation (1892-1964) has donated a collection of Chinese porcelain to the museum, valued at more than $1.25 billion, TASS reports, citing the BBC.
The collection, numbering 1,700 unique items, covers seventeen centuries of Chinese art – from the 3rd to the 20th century AD. Since 2009, these masterpieces have already been on display at the museum, and now they have officially become part of its collection. In the near future, the collection will go on a journey – it will be available to visitors to the Shanghai Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Among the pearls of the collection is a rare wine bowl with an image of a chicken, which once belonged to Emperor Zhu Jianshen (1447-1487). Only 16 similar items have survived in the world. Of particular value is a pair of mid-14th-century blue-painted temple vases, the oldest dated examples of this style.
This generous gift makes the British Museum’s collection of Chinese ceramics the largest outside of China.