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| Porcelain 'lotus bud' bowl cobalt blue underglaze Ming Dynasty (15th century) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |
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| Porcelain 'lotus-bud' bowl white-ware, pale blue glaze Ming Dynasty (1426-1435) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |
"Matthew held in his hand something which was for him one of the most beautiful things in the world. It was a shallow Sung bowl with a design of peonies cut under the glaze. Its color was a sort of milky white, what an angel might conceive of if asked to conceive of white. Its texture was something indescribable, a combination of softness, hardness, smoothness, depth and light.
He placed the bowl on the table next to a Ting cup in the shape of a chrysanthemum. The cup was paler, another unearthly shade, the color of water, not as we ever see it but as God sees it.
His collection had arrived in several packing cases. He had unpacked some of the things. A history of his life, in a way. Old friends."
– from An Accidental Man by Iris Murdoch (Chatto & Windus, 1971)
When the London novelist Iris Murdoch was writing An Accidental Man, the Percival David collection of Chinese ceramics – sampled here and in surrounding posts – was on view to the public in a free-standing building near the British Museum. The benign elderly art-collector named 'Matthew' in the story may have materialized entirely as a figment of Murdoch's imagination, but it seems more likely that she was consciously summoning and idealizing the real-life figure of Sir Percival David (1892-1964). However, toward the end of the book (by contrast to reality) almost every piece of the fictional porcelain is deliberately smashed.
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| Porcelain bowl cobalt blue underglaze Ming Dynasty (1573-1620) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |
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| Porcelain bowl inscribed and dated, celadon glaze Ming Dynasty (1591) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |
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| Porcelain bowl yellow enamel Ming Dynasty (1522-1566) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |
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| Porcelain dish yellow glaze Ming Dynasty (1522-1566) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |
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| Porcelain cup yellow enamel Ming Dynasty (1522-1566) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |
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| Porcelain stem cup yellow enamel Ming Dynasty (1522-1566) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |
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| Porcelain cup white-ware, incised with dragons Ming Dynasty (1522-1566) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |
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| Porcelain cup white-ware, incised with lotus scroll Ming Dynasty (1522-1566) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |
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| Porcelain dish white-ware, pale blue glaze Ming Dynasty (1522-1566) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |
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| Porcelain dish white-ware, pale blue glaze Ming Dynasty (1403-1424) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |
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| Porcelain cup white-ware, pale blue glaze Ming Dynasty (17th century) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |
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| Porcelain jar cobalt blue underglaze, iron red overglaze Ming Dynasty (1465-1487) Sir Percival David Collection, British Museum |