Page 206 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 5 Porcelain Trade at Canton 1740-1760

Figure 5-4 Ovoid vase with four ladies and two children at a table and an
inscription. Height: 15.3 cm, c. 1724.
Photo Courtesy of Rijksmuseum. AK-NM-6352-A.

Objects of this kind have been used to prove that Canton could paint enamel on

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porcelain and fire it locally for the export market. One assumption was that the
design with borders and diapers was particularly made for export. However, the style

of painting, with borders and figures with an inscription, b, or a piece of the poem was

typical from 1730 to 1750 at Jingdezhen manufactures. The other reason to categorise

it as export porcelain made at Canton was the inscription, as the literal meaning ‘made

in Canon’. It is arguable that the inscription was just part of the design, rather than

suggesting the actual manufacture place and date.

At this time, the production of enamelled copperwares at Canton was about to

flourish. As Shi Jingfei has observed, Canton was capable of producing enamelled

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copperwares as early as the eighteenth century. From the early 1750s, Canton

34 Bushell, Chinese Art, p.40. R.L. Hobson, ‘A Note on Canton Enamels’, Burlington Magazin,
Vol.XXII, Dec. 1912, pp.165-167. C.A. Jörg and J. Van Campen Chinese ceramics in the
collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: the Ming and Qing dynasties (London: Wilson, 1997),
p.212.
35 Shi Jingfei, and Wang Congqi, ‘Imperial Guang falang’ of the Qianlong Period Manufactured
by the Guangdong Maritime Customs’ Meishushi Jikan [Journal of Art History],36 (2013), pp.87-
184.
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