Page 185 - 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

A surviving invoice shows the details of such orders. From the invoice, Charles

Peers ordered more than 800 pieces of porcelain, half blue and white, and half in

30
enamel; the total amount was 268 taels of silver or about £ 90. This invoice

illustrates the way that the directors of the EEIC traded and ordered services for their

own use. The order consists of instructions in terms of size and decoration. As

mentioned above, in 1731, the EEIC only traded enamelled porcelain with Coiqua (a

Chinese dealer). In the same year, the EEIC also had a contract with Coiqua for some

31
porcelain for private trade. In a Court Minute dated 16 December 1733 we see the

following:

Request of Mr. Thomas Fytche being read praying leave to remit the sum

of the 95 pounds in foreign silver by the Harrison to Coiqua in Canton

for a parcel of china he had bespoke with coats of Arms. Ordered that his

32
request be granted.

Thomas Fytche was at this time second Supercargo of the Harrison, having been

the fifth in line in the 1731-32 seasons, when the ships Harrison, Hartford, Caesar

and Macclesfield were in China. It must have been on this previous trip that the

armorial design was sent to Coiqua, and this dealer places the order to the

30 The invoice has been examined by Clare Le Corbeiller, China Trade Porcelain: Pattern of
Exchange (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1974), pp.52-54. Details of ordered pieces
of porcelain can be found from Geoffey A. Godden, Oriental Export Market Porcelain: and its
influence on European Wares (London, Toronto, Sydney, New York: Granada, 1979), pp.195-203.
According to David S. Howard’s research, these services were made for Lord King Ockam. who
had a service made for himself when he became a baron in the summer of 1725 and was made Lord
Chancellor. The services would have been ready by the end of 1727. See David S.Howard, The
Choice of Private Trader: The Private Market in Chinese Export Porcelain illustrated from the
Hodroff Collection (Zwemmer: The Minneapolis Institute,1994), p.25.
31 The Minutes of the Court of Directors and the Court of Proprietors (together known generally
as 'Court Minutes') form the central record of the deliberations and resolutions of the English East
India Company.
32 India Office Records and Private Papers, Court Minute on 16 December 1733, cited in Godden,
Oriental Export Market Porcelain, p.208.
169