East Asian Artifacts at the Carnegie

Over the past weekend I took a trip with my East Asian Studies class to the Carnegie Museum. The Carnegie is in Oakland; a neighborhood of Pittsburgh where many of Pittsburgh's college universities are located. The Carnegie Museum has a wide assortment of artwork and historical pieces. The East Asian artifacts are in a gallery mixed with artifacts from other ancient cultures such as Greek, Roman, and Egyptian. One of the things that was the most astonishing to me about the pieces was their intricacy despite their age.
       The first glass encasement that we looked at contained artifacts predominantly from the Zhou dynasty. It is amazing to think that some of these articles were made more than 1,000 years B.C.. Before Western culture became fully developed, China was already a sprawling empire.

                   
      

                   
As we made our way through the exhibit the next pieces that really caught my eye were from the Ming Dynasty, approximately from 1279 to 1644 A.D. I was perplexed by how much one of the bowls reminded me of western culture, particularly art nouveaux. The colors on the bowl were glazed and the flower design was captivating. Although very beautiful, compared to the other ceramic pieces I saw this one seemed more casual, informal, and perhaps even modern.  I would be interested to know if the phenomenon of Parisian art nouveaux was a later result of Ming Dynasty ceramics. What do you think?