Page 178 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780
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CHAPTER 4 Early Eighteenth-century EEIC Porcelain Trade in Canton 1729-c.1740
4.3. The EEIC’s Enamelled Porcelain Trade 1729-c.1740
By the early 18th century, with the increasing fashion for tea drinking culture in
Europe, there was a great demand for thin, delicate, translucent porcelain dinner sets
and tea sets in Chinese porcelain with over-glaze colours. The introduction of new
enamels such as white and pink enamels in the 1720s expanded the range of the colours
available to the decorators in the manufacture centre at Jingdezhen. From the late 1720s
onwards, pattern, designs and decoration seemed to be more important for the EEIC
21
than shape, because ‘the newer the pattern of decoration the easier to sell.’ It is
noteworthy that only from the year 1729 did enamelled porcelain begin to appear in
the EEIC’s Canton trade, The EEIC supercargoes realised that enamelled wares would
bring more profit at home, as they wrote in 1731: ‘‘Coiqua (a Chinese porcelain
dealer) has a parcel of fine enamelled China ware which we think will turn to good
account in England and as it will sink much more money than Blue and White.’’ 22
Around the turn of the eighteenth century, porcelain began to replace silver on
the dinner table. Along with the prevalence of tea drinking in Britain, the EEIC were
especially interested in buying matching tea ‘services’ and chocolate sets, as well as
dinner sets — ‘useful wares.’ When enamelled porcelain first appeared in Canton in
1729, the EEIC bought 78,817 pieces, but in 1732, this number increased to 198,871
pieces. Perfection in the use of opaque enamels of the enamelled porcelain from about
1729 provided Chinese craftsmen with a full range of colours with which to satisfy
the needs of their trade. It is clear that a requirement for enamelled porcelain was
21 IOR/E/3 Original Correspondence, 1602-1712 and Despatch Books, 1626-1753 (124 volumes)
Despatches book, 1726, 1 November, vol.103, p.508, cited in Cheong, The Hong Merchants of
Canton, p.18.
22 IOR/G/12/30, 20 July, 1730.
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