Page 23 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

happened within China is inextricably linked to global patterns of technology,

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production and consumption.

This thesis aims to extend our knowledge of Chinese porcelain of the eighteenth

century. It will shed light on studies of Chinese porcelain from art historians, but will

argue that we should move on from a sole focus on the style and physical

characteristics of individual pieces of porcelain to a wider study of the context of

production and consumption. In doing so, how and why styles changed and why

production sites shifted from one place to another can be better understood.

This thesis also aims to provide a different approach to studies of Chinese export

porcelain trade. This research does not attempt to revisit what has already been

accomplished for curatorship, connoisseurship and interested collectors. Nor does this

thesis look at porcelain from the point of view of individual objects or from the

perspective of the quantities exported; rather it looks at porcelain as a dynamic field

which was shaped by consumers, artisans, craftsmen and commercial networks. This

field involves complex interrelated social processes such as technological innovation,

consumption and global trade, which need to be studied in their connected contexts.

8 Shi Jingfei, Riyue Guanghua, Qinggong huafalang [Radiant Luminance: The Painted
Enamelware of the Qing Imperial Court] (Taipei: The National Palace Museum, 2012), pp.161-
181. 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 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015), pp.92-106. Xu Xiaodong,
‘Kangxi Yongzheng Shiqi Gongting yu Difang Huafalang de Hudong’ [The technological
interactions of enamelled porcelain between the court and local production during Kangxi,
Yongzheng reigns] in Dagmar Schäer (ed.), Gongting yu defang: shiqi yu shiba shiji de jishu
f
jiaoliu [The court and the localities-technological knowledge circulation in the 17th and 18th
centuries] (Beijing: Zijincheng Chubanshe, 2010), pp.277-336.
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