Page 55 - Export Porcelain and Globakization- GOOD READ
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applying the paint. From the 15th century on, blue and white fritware was produced
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with many references to the Chinese blue and white ware of the Ming dynasty . The
so-called Golden Horn ware, was a variation of blue and white ceramics and was
popular from the 1530s to 1550s. This type of decoration consists in series of thin
concentric spirals adorned with small leaves. The more colorful products from Iznik
called Damascus ware (with green and purple) and Rhodian (including red) were
produced between the 16th and 18th century. In the 20th century the pottery industry
experienced a revival in Kütahya reproducing Iznik style products both for domestic
use and for tourists. In a sense, modern Turkey has been one of the latest countries
joining the almost 500 year’s history of Eurasian porcelain trade.
5.2 Europe under Asian Influence
The import of Chinese porcelain was first arranged by the Portuguese, but - as we
have seen - it was the Dutch VOC which started importing on a larger scale in the
17th century.
The blue and white Kraak ware was exported until the end of the Ming dynasty and
the transition period to the new Qing dynasty. Then Japanese porcelain partly replaced
Chinese exports for about 25 years, until around 1685 when the new Qing Emperor
Kangxi restarted mass exportation to Europe. The European demand for East Asian
porcelain increased over time and reached its peak in the second half of the 18th
century. A China fashion broke out and wealthy Dutch entrepreneurs and rulers from
many countries started their collections, created China rooms inside palaces, used it as
tea and dinner services or displayed imported Chinese pieces at home.
Like in the Asian neighboring countries of China, this big market also prompted
experiments in Europe to find out the secret of porcelain production. However, it took
around two hundred years after the first Chinese porcelain arrival in Europe before the
formula for porcelain was discovered in Meißen in 1709. One year earlier the first
copy of the Chinese brown Yixing stoneware was successfully produced in Meißen.
The Asian influence on European porcelain design is more than obvious. The early
Meissen pieces produced are direct copies of the huge collection of Chinese and
Japanese originals of August the Strong, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland.
The Meissen manufacturer intended to keep the formula for the porcelain paste a
secret, but was not able to avoid the fact that other German manufacturers were able
to attract some of their workers. In 1718 the formula reached Vienna, where the
Vienna porcelain manufacture was established and some decades later the secret
became known in Höchst near Frankfurt. In England the composition of the porcelain
paste was discovered in Plymouth in 1768 and the patent later transferred to the New
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Hall manufacturer in Staffordshire in 1781 .
But even before Europe developed the formula and the techniques to produce the
high fired porcelain, European manufacturers tried to imitate the appearance of
Chinese porcelain. Even not knowing the secrets of the porcelain paste, European
producers tried at least to get the same look applied on various ceramic types such as
stoneware, terracotta, white earthenware and other formulas including bone ash or
glass. Stoneware from the German Westerwald, and the white tin glazed brown
earthenware (Faience) of Delft in the Netherlands of the 17th and 18th century, and
from various German cities such as Hanau, Frankfurt or Bayreuth are, in many cases,
imitations of Chinese blue and white ceramics. China-inspired Faience has been
produced also in Liverpool and London (called “Delft” by the English) and in France
in Rouen and Nevers. The soft-paste porcelain from Lowestoft, Worcester, Liverpool,
London, Staffordshire in England and Saint-Cloud and Chantilly in France produced
in the 18th century is very much influenced by Chinese blue and white, Famille Verte
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