Page 274 - Decorative Arts, Part II: Far Eastern Ceramics and Paintings, Persian and Indian Rugs and Carpets

CHINESE PORCELAINS IN EUROPEAN MOUNTS

C hinese porcelain mounted in metal in Europe represents a forced marriage of Western and Eastern traditions.
eyes of Europeans from
the fourteenth through
Sometimes it was harmonious, sometimes awkward. In the
the nineteenth centuries, the practice of subjecting Chinese forms to metal additions—which often obscured
or even distorted them—was usually thought to be not only acceptable but even highly desirable. To contemporary
lovers of Asian porcelain, these additions seem superfluous, if not jarring and even sometimes destructive.
As documents of social history and art history, however, mounted porcelains are of great interest. They
speak of their time and place, of trade and the link between East and West, and of opulent interiors. Unavoidably,
the decorative schemes and motifs of the two different traditions are unrelated, so that from an aesthetic point
of view the mounts and vessels can be studied and evaluated separately. This volume of the National Gallery's
systematic catalogue is devoted to the Chinese porcelains, while their ormolu mounts are catalogued with the
French eighteenth-century furniture in the forthcoming Decorative Arts, Part III.
As the Asian porcelain makers became aware of the European taste for mounted wares, they eventually
made some vessels specifically to have mounts added in Europe. The above observations do not necessarily apply
to those objects. For such objects, models of the ceramic pieces needed were sent to China. The uses to which
such articles were put varied from purely decorative to utilitarian.
In other instances, a vessel's function was changed by the addition of mounts; the original use may have
been deliberately ignored, or it may simply have been unknown. This was the case with the kendi, a form used in
Southeast Asia and made in China for export to that region. Typically, it has a mammiform spout from which to
drink directly. Two vessels with English mounts, one in Boston and one in Chicago, show how such pieces were
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converted to pouring vessels by adding pouring spouts and handles. A vase might become a tankard or ewer. The
top half of a large baluster vase might be transformed into a footed urn, and the bottom half could become a
bowl. Some design conceptions of the mount makers were bizarre, such as transforming a simple Buddhist deity
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figure into a candelabrum or an elaborate decorative object. Other forms, such as teapots, retained their func-
tion after mounting, and their mounts offered either embellishment or protection.
In both Europe and Asia, the practice of mounting valued objects has a long history. An eighth-century
example of a mounted object exists in the Shoso-in at Nara in Japan. The metal-banded mouth-rims of Song-
dynasty bowls are well known. Some Chinese pieces, now preserved in the Topkapi Sarayi Miizesi in Istanbul,
were metal-mounted and richly bejeweled by the sultans who owned them. In Persia and in Southeast Asia,
Chinese imports were mounted according to prevailing needs and taste.
Long before Chinese porcelain arrived in the West in large numbers, it had been prized and imported
to Islamic countries. As early as the fourteenth century, the Islamic metalwork ewer inspired a matching decora-
tive style in Chinese blue-and-white porcelain destined for Persia. There it might be further embellished with fine
metalwork additions at the base, handle, or spout to serve the Persian taste and perhaps also to provide protec-
tion for easily damaged parts. An example of a Kangxi porcelain vase transformed into a ewer or water jug is in
the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The nineteenth-century brass mounts are from a Turkish workshop. 3
European references to Asian porcelain set in metal mounts occur as early as the fourteenth century. A
Yuan-period vase, stripped of its mounts in the nineteenth century, can be seen in the National Museum of
Ireland, Dublin. Record exists of its appearance when it was mounted in silver and enamel for Louis the Great of

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