Page 207 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 5 Porcelain Trade at Canton 1740-1760

36
became a main production site of enamelled copperware for the Qing court. This

development has been traced by Shi Jingfei and was further explored by Xu Xiaodong,

showing that the production of enamelled porcelain was inspired by the production of

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enamelled copperwares. The link between enamelled copperwares at Canton and
enamelled porcelain was obvious. Jingdezhen Taolu pointed out the following:

Zhaoqin (肇庆), located at Yangjiang (阳江) in Canton, has imitated

enamelled copper ware from foreign countries. Usually this is in the shape

of censers, vases, saucers, dishes, bowls, plates and boxes, although the

colour is quite brilliant but it is in poor taste, not as delicate as porcelain.

However, the design was copied by Tang Ying (唐英) the supervisor of

the Imperial Kiln at Jingdezhen from 1728 to 1758). Porcelain made under

the supervision of Tang Ying are much more delicate than those from

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Zhaoqing.

It is clear that there were enamel workshops at Canton prior to the mid-eighteenth

century, but producing copperware rather than porcelain. And Tang Ying’s own note

indicated the difficulty of fire enamel porcelain and required skilful artisans. It is

noteworthy here that Tang Ying went to Canton for one year in 1750 and was then

sent back to Jingdezhen. During his stay in Canton in 1750, he might have seen local

enamel workshops of copper wares and properly adopted their designs in porcelain

production. Tang Ying, the supervisor or the Imperial Kiln at Jingdezhen himself

noted that they were ‘porcelains on which a new technique borrowed from Western

36 Ibid.
37 Xu Xiaodong, ‘Europe-China-Europe: The Transmission of the Craft of Painted Enamel in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’ in Maxine Berg (ed.) Goods from the East 1600-1800
Trading Eurasia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp.92-107.
38 Lan Pu, Jingdezhen taolu [Records of Jingdezhen Ceramics] (Jinan, 2004), p.112.
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