Page 212 - 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

enamelled (glazed), which are painted under your eyes. The decoration is

2
applied to the surface of the enamel and fuses with it by firing.

We also have visual sources of porcelain workshops. Figure 6-1 shows that

painters were painting porcelain at two workshops in Canton, which was similar to

Hickey’s observation. These workshops were quite close to each other and there was

another one behind these two, suggesting that this was not a small scale operation.

The description and the visual source may not perfectly correspond to the historical

reality or tell exactly the truth, as the description was written several years later by the

memoirist. However, the author must have been impressed by such a production line.

It was certainly not a small workshop, indicating potential production capacity. Thus

the description from William Hickey is of great importance. The scale of the

production and the organisation of craftsmen indicated that this workshop was capable

of mass production, and there were probably other similar workshops.

2 C.Charpentier Cossigny, Voyage à Canton (Paris, 1798), cited in Michel Beurdeley, Guy

Raindre, Qing Porcelain Famille Verte, Famille Rose (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), p.192.
196