Page 161 - A Re-examination of Late Qing Dynasty Porcelain, 1850-1920 THESIS

shared wares. The newly emerging middle class demographic wanted porcelain but was

unable to afford it. In order to satisfy this new demand, cheaply printed earthenware was

invented to provide the appearance of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain without the high

price. Using an inked and engraved copperplate, a print on paper was produced. While

wet, the paper was pressed to the surface of earthenware to transfer an impression of the

design. Manufacturers like the Spode family offered the middle classes blue-and-white

printed pottery, flooding the British market with a completely British item produced to

effectively imitate a ware from China. The most well-known of these Spode styles is the

still-popular Willow pattern (Figure 57). The blue-and-white plate explores a Chinese-

inspired landscape, conveying the overly romanticized views surrounding Chinese-

inspired objects. Just as earlier British collectors exhibited porcelain to display their

wealth, the middle-class owner of porcelain hoped that the purchase of imitation

porcelain wares would help to create the illusion of wealth, prestige, and high social

status.

Ultimately, the social connotation of Chinese porcelain promoted the rise of what

scholars deem a cult of collecting known as “Chinamania” in England. 202 This epidemic

slowly took Europe by storm (Figure 58), influencing numerous facets of culture.

Numerous cartoons and illustrations of the time emphasize this fascination, depicting

individuals filling their homes with massive volumes of porcelain. At this time, it was

clear that the Western collector of Chinese porcelain was only looking for the porcelain

itself as an object. Western collectors were not critically evaluating the artistic value of

202 Anne Anderson, “Chinamania’: Collecting Old Blue for the House Beautiful, c. 1860-1900,”
found in Material Cultures, 1740-1920: The Meanings and Pleasures of Collecting by John
Potvin, et al, eds. (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009), 112.

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