“Arguably the most significant piece of ceramic from Vietnam is not in Vietnam, but on display at the Topkapi Sarayi Muzesi in Istanbul. Many significant cultural artefacts were stolen during the French colonial period and the successive occupations of Vietnam throughout the 20th century, but the story of how this particular vase, The Annam Vase, came to be in the collection of a Turkish museum tells a different story of the globality of Southeast Asian ceramics.”