Page 169 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 4 Early Eighteenth-century EEIC Porcelain Trade in Canton 1729-c.1740

connected area remains unexplored and this results in a gap in studies mentioned

above.

Figure 4-1 The composition of relation among different studies.

One crucial reason that the porcelain trade of the first half of the eighteenth

century has been less studied than later periods is the limited selection of material. Art

historians writing about Chinese export porcelain have mostly relied on objects.

Historians of China’s trade have meanwhile relied on official records and registers for

2
calculating the volume of products on board individual ships. There is a gap between

these studies. Only by linking objects can the examination of archival records and

visual resources reveal significantly less visible trade, and in doing so, we may have

a better understanding of the porcelain trade and evaluate the importance of enamelled

porcelain within that trade.

2 Earl H. Pritchard, ‘Private Trade between England and China in the Eighteenth-Century (1680-
1833)’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 1:1 (1957), pp.108-37. H.B.
Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company in China, vol. V. Christian Koninckx made
estimates in The First and Second Charters of the Swedish East India Company (1733-1766)
(Kortrijk, 1980), p.267.
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