Ceramics from this era have always been prized by both Asian and Western collectors for their purity of form and glaze, and their inventiveness of decoration. Admired in China since the thirteenth century, they are still avidly collected throughout the world today. In the last twenty years new research in China has led to a great expansion in knowledge about this fascinating era. Rose Kerr has travelled to China annually and has brought together in this book the fruits of this new research, much of it now published in the West for the first time. She uses it to provide context for the remarkable pieces illustrated here, and to bring the subject up-to-date for an English speaking audience. The wealth and variety of the V&A's collection is brought definitively and authoritatively to life in a way that throws light on the material culture of the Song Dynasty as a whole, and the changing perspectives upon it over the past century.