Page 117 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 3 Enamelled Porcelain Consumption in Eighteenth-century China

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1741), with a special focus on the general production of Jingdezhen. How porcelain

was consumed by Chinese is absent from this study.

Shelagh Vainker, on the other hand, provided a more detailed study of porcelain

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consumption in China during the eighteenth century. Together with silk, she argued
that in eighteenth-century China, porcelain was consumed neither exclusively by the

court, nor specifically by export markets, but by the domestic market. She suggested

that by the eighteenth century, both silk and porcelain conferred little social status on

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those who possessed them. That they were used neither as luxury nor as exotic items

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contradicted the European conception of the use of porcelain in China. Generally
speaking, this insight works in many ways. For example, it explains why blue-and-

white porcelain was used for everyday items in Qing China, even though it is highly

valued as a luxury good in today’s world. However, it does not address the fact that

enamelled porcelain in this period was a desirable luxury item in China: the market

demand and production were not only for everyday use, but also for collecting or

interior decoration.

Those studies mentioned above are basically what we have in current studies

concerning issues of domestic consumption. Their discussions are more or less too

6 François Xavier d'Entrecolles (1664-1741) was a French Jesuit priest whose mission in China
was to convert people to Christianity. He lived in Beijing and Jiangxi, where he observed the
manufacture of porcelain in Jingdezhen, and sent two letters on porcelain making to Europe in
1712 and 1722. The letters were shortly published in France. See, Finlay, The Pilgrim Art, p.26.
The letters have been included in Tichane, Ching-te-chen, and the texts of these letters were also
translated into English and have been placed online,
see, http://www.ceramicstoday.com/articles/entrecolles.htm.
7 Shelagh Vainker, ‘Luxuries or Not? Consumption of Silk and Porcelain in Eighteenth Century
China,’ in Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger (eds.), Luxury in the Eighteenth-Century: Debates,
Desires and Delectable Goods (London, 2003), pp.209-218.
8 Vainker, ‘Luxuries or Not?’ p.216.
9 Ibid. p.218.
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