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Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
August 29th 2025
Many years ago, on my first visit to the Dutch National Museum in Amsterdam, I came across a sight that was both dazzling and slightly absurd. Surrounded by the splendour of the Dutch Golden Age, the self-congratulatory portraits, the oversized world maps, the still lifes that looked like they were promoting a Calvinist version of MasterChef, there they were: ceramics proudly displayed that had been made in imitation of Ming Dynasty porcelain. It seemed odd that they would insert replicas of Chinese ceramics into an exhibition meant to showcase their own Golden Age.
The shape of the replicas looked fairly convincing, but even at a glance, the clumsy traces of copying the authentic originals were unmistakable. The cobalt blue designs looked like they had been applied in a rush, possibly by someone with a vague memory of what dragons might look like. The Chinese characters resembled the result of a blindfolded attempt at calligraphy. It was as if someone had tried to paint serenity while riding a bicycle through a thunderstorm. Whatever it was, it had none of the quiet grace or compositional elegance I associated with Chinese porcelain. Compared to a nearby Rembrandt, this thing looked like a drunken cousin at a family reunion: trying hard, dressed up for the occasion, but clearly out of its depth.
Only later did I learn the truth. This was Delftware, a homegrown Dutch imitation of Chinese porcelain, produced in the town of Delft during the seventeenth century. At the time, Ming Dynasty porcelain was all the rage in Europe, the ultimate sign of wealth and sophistication. But when wars and trade disruptions cut off access to the real thing, the Dutch did what any resourceful people would do; they started making their own. It was less homage and more high-stakes cosplay. These were not merely decorative objects. They were part of a national strategy to domesticate luxury, to turn imitation into economy, and to prove that with enough determination, even cultural desire could be locally sourced.
That vase was not a forgery in the criminal sense. It was a bold experiment in international aesthetics, an early exercise in global branding, a ceramic remix. And there it sat, not hiding its flaws but wearing them with confidence, like a tourist who speaks three words of Mandarin and insists on ordering in Chinese anyway.
This impulse to imitate, adapt, and reimagine foreign luxury was not unique to the Netherlands. On the other side of the continent, during the fifteenth century, a remarkably similar story was unfolding on the Korean Peninsula. According to official court records from the Joseon Dynasty, in the ninth year of his reign, King Sejo issued a royal decree that rippled across the country: artisans were to produce celadon ware matching the quality and refinement of the Ming Dynasty’s porcelain. This was not a polite suggestion. It was a state-sponsored call to aesthetic arms, a declaration that Korea too would master the visual grammar of high ceramic culture.
After years of experimentation, the challenge was met. In 1464, a potter finally succeeded in producing a specimen that passed royal scrutiny. It was presented to the court, presumably with the kind of ceremonial gravitas reserved for diplomatic tributes or rare treasures. The king was pleased. So pleased, in fact, that the production of celadon was institutionalised through a network of state-managed kilns, overseen by local officials but tightly coordinated under central government control. The result was not only a flourishing of technical skill but the creation of a national style, an aesthetic standard that bridged courtly ambition and regional craftsmanship.
What made this Joseon celadon particularly striking was not just the quality of its glaze or the elegance of its form, but the shimmering presence of cobalt blue pigment. Unlike local minerals or clays, cobalt was not native to the Korean Peninsula. It was an international substance, transported across great distances: from the mountains of Persia, through the Silk Road, into the kilns of China, and finally into the workshops of Korean potters. It was, in short, globalisation in powdered form.
From a contemporary standpoint, fourteenth-century celadon ware can be understood not merely as decorative art but as the cutting-edge technology of its time, something akin to artificial intelligence today. It represented a high-stakes convergence of science, aesthetics, and state ambition.
In the same way that the development of advanced algorithms and large language models today signals national competitiveness in the technological arena, the production of celadon functioned as a material index of a state’s scientific infrastructure and artisanal sophistication.
Fast forward to our present, and the echoes are striking. Today’s porcelain is the semiconductor chip: technically demanding, universally desired, and jealously guarded. TSMC in Hsinchu, Samsung in Suwon, Intel in Arizona, these fabs are the kilns of our age.
Artificial intelligence is simply the next step in this genealogy. Like porcelain, it aspires to universality, a shared language that transcends culture. Yet, like porcelain, it is immediately territorialised. States capture it, regulate it, subsidise it, weaponise it.
Therefore, that porcelain vase was never just a decorative curiosity. It was already a fantasmatic object, a support for the dream of universality.
Porcelain and chips are not simply objects in the history of technology. They are the stage props of capitalism’s fantasy, the material screens through which value and enjoyment circulate while obscuring the violence of their production.
Alex Taek-Gwang Lee is Professor of Cultural Studies in the School of Communication at Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea.