Page 247 - 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

they may retain the designs with which, by the pencils of the artists, they

have been beautified and adorned. Each of the ovens, to which were refer,

consists of two circular walls. Of the circular walls in question, the inner

one is made of clay tiles. And the outer one of bricks. At the base of outer

wall, these are several small openings or grates. Between the circular walls,

which form the oven, the fuel, which consists of charcoal is placed. The

top of the oven is enclosed by flat clay tiles, which are made to rest upon

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the porcelain vessels, which the oven contains.

Figure 6-6 depicts a similar oven observed by John Henry Gray in 1875 but of an

earlier period. This oven was similar to the one in Jingdezhen, as shown in Chapter 2.

According to local craftsmen of the early twentieth century, the oven was usually two

meters in diameter. This was much larger than the one in Jingdezhen which was only

half a meter in diameter. The larger oven of Canton certainly contributed to large

production, which could meet the demand from overseas markets.

The growing production locally at Canton led not only to quantitative changes in

exported pieces, but also to qualitative changes. Samuel Shaw, in Canton in 1784 as

supercargo for the Empress of China, found that:

There are many painters in Canton, but I was informed that not one of

them possesses a genius of design…it is a general remark, that the

Chinese, though they can imitate most of the fine arts, do not possess any

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large portion of original genius.

70 John Henry Gray, Walks in the City of Canton, (Hong Kong, 1875), pp.83-84.
71 Samuel Shaw, The Journal of Major Samuel Shaw, the First American Consul at Canton, edited
with a life of the author by Josiah Quincy (Boston, 1847), pp.198-99, cited in Mudge, Chinese
Export Porcelain, p.53, note 32.
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