Page 156 - 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

area. The broker charged 1 to 2 per cent for a new buyer, and in return, the buyer

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obtained the services of packers and carriers engaged by the house.

3.6.3. Porcelain Market in Jingdezhen

There were two porcelain markets in Jingdezhen: porcelain shops and the retail market.

Porcelain shops were wholesalers which were mainly selling porcelain in a large

parcel. Most of the porcelain shops were located in ‘Porcelain Street’ (Figure 3-13)

According to Jingdezhen taolu, Porcelain Street was located 500 meters away from

Huangjiazhou 黄家洲 (Huang island), where the trade guild Suhu 苏湖 (Suzhou

and Hangzhou) was located. The porcelain street was broad, about two or three

hundred meters in length. Porcelain shops were lined on both sides, displaying every

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sort of vessel.
In 2013, the area of Porcelain street, the porcelain market as well as the trade

guilds of Jingdezhen were examined and investigated by the government, as circled

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in Map 2. A program was launched to preserve and conserve the historical value of

this area, Map 2, produced by the bureau of urban design of Jingdezhen. The yellow

areas are marked as being of ‘historical value’, most of them being porcelain kilns.

75 Hermamp Theodore, ‘An Analysis of China's Export Handioraft Industries to 1930’ (Ph.D
thesis, University of Washington 1954), p.136, cited in Dillon, Dillon, ‘Porcelain industry in
Jingdezhen’, p.131.
76 Lan Pu, Jingdezhen taolu, p.113.
77 I sincerely thank Professor Liang Hongsheng (Jiangxi Normal University) for sharing this
information with me when I visited Nanchang and Jingdezhen in 2014.
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