Page 139 - 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

emperor Yongzheng (r.1723-1735) gave two enamelled porcelain feather holders to

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Nian Gengyao 年羹尧 (1679-1726).

Later the same year, Nian received more gifts from the emperor, including five

pairs of enamelled porcelain snuff bottles, two boxes of enamelled porcelain cups. In

his memorial letter for the thankfulness to the emperor, Nian stated that these

enamelled porcelains had ‘brilliant colours…shine forth, more brilliant than

embroidered tapestries worked with gold,’ that ‘their colours are clear and beautiful,

and they are of exquisite and elegant shape. They truly are equal exquisite and

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beautiful to the best coloured wares of the previous period.’

In terms of the period before 1728, it is clear that enamelled porcelain was a

luxury intended for very few Chinese consumers, but I name them as non-accessible

items, because they could only be accessed via the imperial court. For consumers

outside the imperial family, it was only possible to get enamelled porcelain as a

bestowed gift from the emperor.

However, from 1728 onwards, we see that enamelled porcelain reached wider

consumption. Examining a broader range of sources including literary observations

shows that enamelled porcelain found its way onto the market in the early 1730s.

According to a memorial on 19 October 1734, Haiwang 海望 (?-1755) the supervisor

of the Imperial Household Department reported that yellow enamelled porcelain

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snuffboxes and other utensils numbering roughly ten pieces in total were sold in

48 Nian was a Chinese military commander of the Yongzheng period.
49 National Palace Museum, Gongzhong dangan zouzhe yilan yongzheng chao [The memorial of
Yongzheng Reign], vol.1 (Taipei, 1982), p.362.
50 In the eighteen century China, snuffboxes were distinctively Qing products consumed by the
elites. Carrying on the person a small bottle made of precious materials such as jade, enamelled
porcelain, glass, and so forth was fashionable in the Qing period. Susan Naquin and Evelyn
Rawski, Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven and London, 1987), p.75.
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