Page 152 - 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

and their final dispersal to local sellers throughout the area of distribution. It was the

broker who arranged for the goods at market to be stored and then sold to the merchant,

taking the goods elsewhere; at the other end of the trade route, it was a broker who

acted as a middleman in the sale of the transport merchants’ merchandise to shops.

The broker guaranteed the quality and price of the goods being bought and sold.

Jingdezhen’s markets were controlled by local brokers who had a licence from

the government to act as intermediaries between the kiln owners and long distance

merchants, who would bring in goods to sell and who would buy porcelain to sell

elsewhere. There were about fifty brokerage firms organised into groups known as

cihang (porcelain broker, 瓷行), with each porcelain broker dealing with buyers from

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the specific area during the late nineteenth century. A hang or bang was originally

set up by the government, and intended to be controlled by local people, assuring that

market exchanges preceded smoothly and fairly. However, as commerce expanded,

the brokerage system gradually extended to include private traders during the

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eighteenth century. Long distance merchants who travelled to Jingdezhen would
eventually have their own porcelain brokers. For example, among those fifty porcelain

brokers of the late nineteenth century, thirty-six were porcelain brokers of Jiangxi

province, six from Hubei, two from Canton, two from Anhui, one from Ningbo, one

69 Liu Jinzao, Qingchao xu wenxian tongkao [Comprehensive Investigations Based on Literary
and Documentary Sources] (1912), Volume 386, Section ‘Industry and manufacture’ cited in
Liang, Ming Qing Jingdezhen, p.320; Jiangxi sheng qinggongye taoci yanjiu suo (ed.), Jingdezhen
taoci shigao [Historical research of Jingdezhen porcelain] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian 1959), p.322:
7 from Hubei, 6 from Jiangxi, 2 from Manchuria, 2 from Zhejiang, 2 from Anhui, one each from
Tianjin, Guangdong, Henan, Sichuan, Beijing, Jiangsu, Hunan.
70 Christine Moll-Murata, ‘Guilds and Apprenticeship in China and Europe: The Jingdezhen and
European Ceramics Industries’ in Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden (eds.), Global
Economic History Series: Technology, Skills and the Pre-Modern Economy in the East and the
West (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2013), p.115.
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