Page 211 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 6. A New Context of Porcelain Trade 1760-1770

We were then shown the difference processes used in finishing the

China ware. In one long gallery, we found upwards of a hundred

persons at work in sketching or finishing the various ornaments

upon each particular piece of the ware, some parts being executed

by men of very advanced age, and others by children even so young

as six or seven years. Mr. Devisme then led us to some of their most

celebrated painters upon glass, to the fan makers, workers in ivory,

1
japanners, jewellers, and all the various artificers of Canton.

This was a scene of painting enamels on porcelain at Canton in 1769, observed by

William Hickey. Hickey’s note is the earliest textual source on a porcelain painting

workshop at Canton, and depicts the process of ‘painting’ on porcelain before the

second firing. By the end of the eighteenth century, visiting porcelain painters were

quite common for foreign traders. As Chevalier Charpentier Cossigny noted in 1798,

We went to most often to the workshops of the embroiderers and the

porcelain painters…if one wants to have pieces decorated according to a

pattern brought from Europe, it has to be sent to Kim-tet-

chim(Jingdezhen), but then one cannot have the porcelain until the

following year. Travellers who cannot wait can buy white pieces already

1 Alfred Spencer, (ed.), Memoirs of William Hickey (1749-1775) (2 volumes, London &
Blackett, Ltd., 1913), vol.1, p.210. Available online at:
https://archive.org/details/memoirsofwilliam015028mbp, accessed 1 April 2016.
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