LONDON.- The British Museum announced that the Trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation are gifting their world-famous private collection of Chinese ceramics to the Museum permanently. This is the highest value object donation in UK museum history with the 1,700 pieces estimated at around £1bn.

The generosity of The Sir Percival David Foundation allows this significant collection to continue to be on display and benefit visitors both in the UK and across the globe.

Sir Percival David (1892–1964) was a visionary British businessman whose passion for China inspired him to study the language to a very high level. Throughout his life he collected ceramics in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and China, building the finest private collection of Chinese ceramics.

Sir Percival was determined to use his collection to inform and inspire people and to keep it on public view in its entirety. It has been on loan to the British Museum since 2009 in the specially designed bilingual Room 95, where it has been studied and enjoyed by millions of visitors. Its bilingual online catalogue can be accessed all over the world.

Thanks to this donation the British Museum will hold one of the most important collections of Chinese ceramics of any public institution outside the Chinese speaking world, numbering 10,000 objects.

Director of the British Museum, Dr Nicholas Cullinan said: “I am humbled by the generosity of the Trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation in permanently entrusting their incomparable private collection to the British Museum. These celebrated objects add a special dimension to our own collection and together offer scholars, researchers and visitors around the world the incredible opportunity to study and enjoy the very best examples of Chinese craftsmanship anywhere in existence.”

Chair of the British Museum, George Osborne said: “Wow. I am thrilled by this blockbuster decision by the Trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation. This is the largest bequest to the British Museum in our long history. It’s a real vote of confidence in our future, and comes at a highly significant moment for us – as we embark on the most significant cultural redevelopment of the Museum ever undertaken”.

Chair of The Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art and The Sir Percival David Foundation Academic and Research Fund Colin Sheaf FSA said: “It’s exactly 100 years since Sir Percival David made his first visit to China. His inaugural trip engendered a lifelong love of its art and culture, especially the Imperial porcelains made for the use of the Emperor and his Court, which inspired him to assemble his unparalleled private collection. It’s entirely fitting therefore that, in this Centenary year, the Trustees of his Foundation should resolve that the most suitable permanent home for his Collection is the British Museum, where – on loan for fifteen years – it has attracted millions of visitors every year, accomplishing all the charitable purposes of the Foundation.

“In every respect, this gift achieves the three objectives which most preoccupied Sir Percival as he planned for the Collection’s future: to preserve intact his unique Collection; to keep every single piece on public display together in perpetuity in a dedicated Gallery; and to ensure that the Collection would remain not only a visual display of surpassing beauty, but also an inspiration and education for future generations of academics, students and non-specialists alike, attracted to the Imperial arts of Asia’s greatest and longest civilisation.”

Arts Minister Sir Chris Bryant said: “Thanks to the huge generosity of the Sir Percival David Foundation, I am thrilled these world-famous Chinese ceramics will now be displayed permanently in the British Museum where the collection will educate and enlighten future generations for many years to come."

“I am immensely grateful for this phenomenal act of generosity and very much hope it will help set a trend for others."

The Artist Edmund de Waal said: “Encountering the Percival David Collection has been the foundational experience for generations of potters, scholars, students – all those who love ceramics. I first saw these beautiful pots when I was sixteen and they have stayed with me over the decades. The collection was created out of deep love and respect for Chinese culture and has been profoundly generative in its turn. To hear the news that they are to become part of the permanent collections of the British Museum is just fabulous news. Who knows who will have their lives changed in the future?”

Highlight examples from the Sir Percival David collection include the ‘David vases’ from 1351. Their discovery revolutionised the dating for blue and white ceramics. The collection also includes a “Chicken cup” used to serve wine for the Chenghua emperor (1465–87) and Ru wares made for the Northern Song dynasty court around 1086.

Sir Percival David’s connection with the British Museum goes back nearly 100 years when in 1929 he gave a dated Ming shrine on display in Gallery 33. Specialist curator for Chinese Ceramics, then R.L. Hobson, catalogued David’s most important pieces in 1934.

Ceramics from The Sir Percival David collection will be lent to the Shanghai Museum in China and Metropolitan Museum in New York as part of the British Museum’s extensive support of exhibitions worldwide. Engagement with scholars to advance studies of the collection continue across the world while we teach using the collection with universities in the UK. Our recent partnership with forensic scientists at Cranfield discovered the identity of another Ru ware.

The Sir Percival David Foundation’s generous commitment comes as the Museum moves forward with its masterplan which will safeguard the Sir Percival David Collection for posterity.

As Sir Percival David said himself in the Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society in 1952: “…the private collector justifies his existence by providing very necessary pabulum for the art critic and the art expert. In our particular field this could be translated into whetting their mental appetites with “problem pieces”, pieces which may prove one day to be duds after all, or else emerge as key specimens of some newly identified class of ware of great significance.”

To note – as is usual with donations of this nature the final transfer of ownership to the British Museum will be subject to the Charity Commission’s consent, if needed.