Page 40 - Export Porcelain and Globakization- GOOD READ

a commodity for daily use. The tea, coffee and chocolate drinking habits made new
forms necessary. The Dutch always had a preference for Chinese blue and white
porcelain; the same applied for the British. When Japan started exporting the more
colorful Imari and Kakimon porcelain to Europe, tastes were changing. French
customers – being the focus of the French Compagnie des Indes who imported most
of their porcelain only after the Kangxi period had a preference for colorful enameled
ware. Famille Rose porcelain with western décor or with a quite westernized
decoration dominates the export to France.
As mentioned above, the Ottoman Sultanate was the most important customer in
the intraAsian trade. The Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul hosts the biggest
collection of Chinese export porcelains worldwide if we don’t take into consideration
the shipwreck founds stored in Chinese and South-East Asian museums. Another
famous Asian collector of Chinese porcelain in the Kangxi style (Kangxi revival) was
the Thai King Rama V. In Europe, by far the most addicted collector was the Elector
of Saxony and King of Poland, August the Strong (1670-1733). His collection
consisted of approximately 21,000 pieces of porcelain. He himself called his addiction
the maladie porcelain which, together with other artistic plans he realized in Dresden,
was a burden for the state treasury. Many courts around Europe were touched by
China and contributed to a new chinoiserie fashion wave by building East Asian
cabinets, Chinese pavilions or Japanese lacquer rooms. However, August the Strong
was unique in planning a whole Porcelain Palace (Japanisches Palais) in Dresden
Neustadt, facing the river Elbe. His passion for porcelain also led to the discovery of
the secrets of porcelain making in Europe. The collection of August the Strong now in
the Dresden Zwinger is probably the biggest Chinese export porcelain collection in
the world and by far the biggest collection of Kangxi period porcelains. The
Guangzhou Thirteen Hongs Museum hosts with approximately 650 pieces a big
collection of 19th century exports ceramics for the European and US market. The
Winterthur Museum in Delaware has a collection of 5,000 Chinese Western market
export porcelains focusing on the late 18th and 19th century. Other important export
porcelain collections can be found in the Keramiek Museum Princesshof in the
Netherlands in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the British Museum in London, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and in the Östasiatica Museum in
Stockholm.
66
Pic. 18: August the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony (1670 – 1733)

Still these days, Chinese export porcelain is not highly valued and lacks
39