Beginning with the shard market, held weekly in the city of Jingdezhen, this chapter explores the enduring attraction of locally made ceramics, even in their broken form. The objects for sale here fragments of porcelain objects made over the centuries in Jingdezhen point to the historical importance of what was manufactured here between the eleventh and nineteenth centuries as much as to the contemporary value of fine porcelains made locally for the imperial court. The manufacture of ceramics in Jingdezhen has attracted scholars working in many different disciplines; this chapter presents some of that scholarship but takes the research in new directions, drawing on the historical record, visual representations, objects and the records of administrators and visitors in Jingdezhen. The chapter situates the methodology of the book between global and local history, and explains its focus on the movement of objects, people and ideas during the many centuries in which Jingdezhen flourished. The shard market can only be explained by situating it in its historical context.