Page 122 - 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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gazetteer, as well as in other monographs on porcelain, such emphases stimulated a

very distinctive character of the eighteenth-century China’s consumer’s taste, as

importance was given to technology and techniques.

The solidity of the material combined with sophisticated craftsmanship together

makes a piece of enamelled porcelain that attracts the very attention of a contemporary

Chinese consumers. With bright colours at their disposal, Chinese potters and painters

executed their skills in a more sophisticated way. The painter enjoyed greater choice

in using enamels than those in previous times. Because of the new enamel, the style

of painting on porcelain also experienced changes. Rosemary E. Scott, used examples

from the Percival David Collection to demonstrate that the new enamels of the

Yongzheng period created a boneless effect on porcelain, which was different from

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previous periods. ‘Boneless’ is a term to describe a style of Chinese painting. It

means that there are no outlines; brush strokes are made in either ink or colour, but

each stroke produces an object or a part of one. The form of the subject painted is

achieved entirely through the free spirited and spontaneous execution of brush strokes

without first sketching or outlining. For example, the new rose enamel gives a

translucent red tone, and the opaque white could be used as a ground to be overlaid

by another colour. A detail from a large dish in the Victoria and Albert Museum shows

the rose enamel mixed with white to produce pastel pink, shaded and outlined in a

slightly darker tone. (Figure 3-2) Scott did not mention the nature of porcelain, as

22 Tang Ying's Taoye tushuo was not only reproduced in the Jiangxi provincial Gazetteer, but also
in Wenfang sikao (1778), the Fuliang xianzhi (Fuliang County Gazetteer) (1783), and as
mentioned above, in Tao Shuo (1774). Because it was included in the Tao Shuo, it was also
translated into English and published as a separate chapter in Stephen Bushell’s monumental
Oriental Ceramic Art (London, 1896) and Description of Chinese Pottery and Porcelain (London,
1910).
23 Rosemary E. Scott, ‘18 century over-glaze enamels: the influence of technologies
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development on painting style’ in Rosemary E. Scott and Graham Hutt (eds.), Style in the East
Asian Tradition Colloquies on Art & Archaeology in Asia No.14 (London: SOAS, 1987), p.164.
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