Page 136 - 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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most influential works are from Craig Clunas and Timothy Brook. Their works

show how antiques and contemporary objects such as porcelain objects circulated

through shops and with references to specific prices paid or offered, which antique

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ceramics were becoming very expensive.
When it comes to the eighteenth century, the consumption of porcelain remained,

to some extent, the same as in the late Ming period. Porcelain of past dynasties was

regarded as antiques. The porcelain made in the contemporary period was seen as

ware for daily use or as decorative works of art. However, Chinese consumers had a

different perception of enamelled porcelain. As we will see, enamelled porcelain was

desirable for eighteenth-century domestic consumers. It served a role in eighteenth-

century Chinese society not only as a type of luxury object, but as a valuable material,

because enamelled porcelain contained essential elements that distinguished

themselves from other types of porcelain. I will argue in the following section that

techniques and decorative colours became important for eighteenth-century Chinese

consumers.

41 Craig Clunas has done extensive research on the Ming China, and he is also an active scholar
related to museum exhibitions. He was co-curator of the exhibition ‘Ming: 50 years that changed
China 1400-1450' in the British Museum between September 2014 and January 2015. This
exhibition reconsidered the Ming China in the fifteenth century and its political and trade
engagements with other parts of the world. See more from the exhibition catalogue, Craig Clunas
and Jessica Harrison-Hall, (eds.), Ming: 50 years that changed China (London: British Museum,
2014). For studies from Craig Clunas, see, Screen of Kings: Royal Art and Power in Ming China
(London: Reaktion Books, 2013); Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early
Modern China (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991 and 2004). Timothy Brook is a
Canadian historian specializing in the study of China (sinology); His research includes Mr.
Selden's Map of China. Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer (New York: New York,
Bloomsbury, 2013; Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World
(New York: Bloomsbury; Toronto: Penguin; London: Profile, 2008); The Chinese State in Ming
Society (London: Routledge Curzon, 2005); The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture
in Ming China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); ‘Communications and Commerce’
in Denis C. Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote (eds.), The Cambridge History of China Volume 8:
The Ming Dynasty, Part 2: 1368–1644 (Cambridge University Press, 1998),pp.579-707.
42 Craig Clunas, ‘The Cost of Ceramics and the Cost of Collecting Ceramics in the Ming Period’
Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong Bulletin, 8 (1986-1988), pp.47-53.
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