Page 126 - 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

The Imperial Workshops Archives contain detailed information on foreign products

that were imported to the court and those made in the workshops under the

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supervisions of Jesuit Missionaries. The preference of foreign goods in the court

was believed to promote a fashion of prizing foreign goods in eighteenth and

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nineteenth centuries China. The most obvious feature of utensils and household
items imported to China was the various colours.

The list below is from Yue haiguan zhi (History of the Guangdong Customs,粤海

关志) written by Cantonese scholar Liang Tingnan 梁廷楠 and first published in

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1839. This list is of imported goods from Western countries via Canton during the
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eighteenth century, showing goods in different materials and in various colours.

Liang has listed goods that have been taxed via Canton Customs during the eighteenth

century, gold and silver utensils of different colours, Figure 3-5 shows the original

text:

Enamels, enamels of different colours;

Bronze and tin utensils, bronze utensils of different colours;

Iron utensils, iron utensils of different colours;

Wood utensils, bamboo and wood utensils of different colours;

Precious toys of different colours;

Stone utensils of different colours;

25 Catherine Pagani, ‘Europe in Asia: The Impact of Western Art and Technology in China’ in
Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer (eds.), Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800
(London, 2004), pp.302-309.
26 Pagani, ‘Europe in Asia’, p.302; Zheng Yangwen, China on the Sea: How the Maritime World
Shaped Modern China (Boston: Brill, 2012), pp.237-238.
27 It was published in 1839, 30 volumes.
28 Liang Tingnan, Yuehaiguan zhi [History of the Guangdong Customs], vol.9 (30 vols. Taibei,
1975). It is available online https://archive.org/details/02089235.cn, pp.82-83, accessed on 15
June 2016.
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