Page 427 - 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 259

here a design of Oriental figures (as on the Mandarin porcelain)
in pink and red surrounded by borders of pink scale diaper, broken
by small panels of ornament. It has no connection with the
armorial group, but it has apparently been bandied back and for-
ward from East to West. Based on a Chinese original, it was largely
copied on English porcelain, such as Worcester, Lowestoft, etc.,
and apparently services of the English make found their way east
and were copied again at some coast factory, or even in Japan, for

the export trade. Much of this hybrid ware is found in Australia
and on the east coast of Africa, and though the material and the

colours are obviously Oriental, the drawing of the faces reflects a
European touch. The porcelain is coarse and greyish, and the
decoration roughly executed, probably in the first decades of the
nineteenth century.

The trade in Chinese armorial porcelain seems to have gradu-

ally died out in the nineteenth century, for reasons which are not
far to seek. As far as England was concerned, the improvements
in the manufacture both of porcelain and fine earthenware changed
her position from that of a consumer to that of a producer. In

addition to which, a high protective duty must have adversely
affected the import trade, for we read ^ in the notes of Enoch
Wood, the Staffordshire potter, that alarm was felt in 1803 in the
potteries at the " proposed reduction of £59 8s. 6d. per cent, from

the duty on the importation of Oriental porcelain, leaving it at

50 per cent."

Not the least interesting part of the Franks Collection is the
section devoted to Chinese porcelain decorated in Europe. In the
early years of the eighteenth century a number of enamelling
establishments appeared in Holland and in other countries where
glass and pottery were decorated in the enamel colours which were
then coming into play. As the supply of home-made porcelain
was as yet practically non-existent, the enamellers had to look for
this material in the Oriental market. Chinese porcelains with
slight decoration, plain white wares, or those mainly decorated
with incised and carved design under the glaze, and white Fukien
porcelain offered the most suitable surface ; and these we find
treated by Dutch enamellers with the decoration then in vogue
among the Delft potters. In the British Museum there are plates
with portraits of Dutch celebrities, with designs satirising John

1 Frank Falkner, The Wood Family of Burslem, p. 67.