Page 417 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

European Influences in Ch'ing Dynasty 251

dissipated, Chaffers's great blunder on the subject of Chinese armorial

porcelain should be forgotten by now. But it is high time that
those who are fully aware of the facts of the case should abandon
the equally stupid and wholly illogical expression, " Oriental Lowes-

toft," not for Lowestoft porcelain decorated in Chinese style,

which would be reasonable enough, but (save the mark !) for Chinese

porcelain decorated with European designs. As if, indeed, an

insignificant Suffolk pottery, which made no enamelled porcelain^

until about 1770, had any influence on the decoration of a Chinese

ware which was distributed all over Europe during the whole of

the century.

The European style of flower painting and the European border

patterns were used by the Chinese decorators on this class of ware

in the last half of the century, but they were the patterns which origin-

ated at Meissen and Sevres, and which were adopted and developed

at Chelsea, Derby and Worcester. Any of these wares might have

found their way to China and served as models to the Canton

decorators, but the likelihood of Lowestoft porcelain exerting any

appreciable influence in the Far East is simply laughable.

But to return to the subject of this chapter, the actual Euro-

pean shapes found in Chinese porcelain can be dismissed in a few

words. There are a few figures, such as the well known pair

reputed to represent Louis XIV. and his queen. These are of

K'ang Hsi type, and decorated with enamels on the biscuit. And

there are numerous groups or single figures of the same period in

Athe white Fukien porcelain, discussed on p. 111. few vase forms,

copied apparently from Italian wares and belonging to a slightly

later date, and a curious pedestal in the British Museum, modelled

in the form of a tree trunk with two Cupids in full relief near the

top, are purely Western. ^ Needless to say, the bulk of the useful

ware, being intended for European consumption, was made after

European models, which speak for themselves.

Much might be written on the painted designs of this class if

1 The Lowestoft factory started about 1752, but its earlier productions were almost
entirely blue and white, often copied, like most of the contemporary blue and white

from Chinese export wares.

A* curious instance of imitation of European ornament is a small bowl which I

recently saw with openwork sides and medallions, apparently moulded from a glass
cameo made by Tassie at the end of the eighteenth century ; and there is a puzzle jug
with openwork neck, copied from the well known Delft-ware model, in the Metropolitan

Museum, New York.