Museum shines spotlight on cloisonne

Donations by influential Hong Kong antiques dealer and collector include pieces unparalleled for their beauty, Zhang Kun reports.

Thanks to the donations of a patriotic connoisseur, the Shanghai Museum has become one of the country's first public museums with a showroom dedicated to cloisonne enamel objects.

On May 8, the museum celebrated the opening of its new room and an exhibition, All that Glitters, which features 55 cloisonne pieces donated by Robert Chang, a 97-year-old collector of Chinese artifacts.

"In the future, I will make more donations, and I hope everyone will be able to gather here again then," he said from his wheelchair, clad in a blue linen jacket, elegant white trousers and a smart white fedora.

"I began to collect fine cloisonne objects in my 40s, and now all of them are in the Shanghai Museum," Chang says.

"I will keep on supporting the Shanghai Museum for the remaining days of my life. People all over the world who love cloisonne will come to the museum and learn about the great civilization of China," Chang says. "We've had top-class culture, art and education for millennia … I hope one day students from all over the world will come to study here and be fascinated by the glorious history of China."

Chang was born to a family with a long background in art and antiques in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, in 1927. His grandfather Zhang Jiru, was a famous bamboo carving artist, and his father Zhang Zhongying, a renowned antique dealer in Shanghai in the early 1900s. In 1948 Chang moved to Hong Kong to found his own antique shop, Yong Yuan Hang, in the 1950s.

He was one of the first Chinese to attend international auctions in the 1960s.