Page 257 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 7 Porcelain Dealers and their Role in Trade

14
used by historians to explore the urban development of Canton. Through my

examination of surviving sources on Chinese export porcelain trade, there has

emerged a group of paintings on the porcelain trade. The name of the porcelain shops

appears on many paintings. By examining the paintings of Canton port city, scholars

placed more emphasis on the scale of general trade, and often neglected those visual

sources that demonstrate the trade of certain type of goods, such as paintings and

watercolours on porcelain production and trade.

In order to analyse the porcelain trade, this research will look at paintings of the

porcelain trade, paying particular attention to these shops. Appendix C presents eight

sets of painting which contains porcelain shops at Canton, a sequence which includes

most of those I have been able to find, and is the result of extensive research. There

are also sets of paintings containing porcelain shops, but these were not located in

Canton, but most probably in Jingdezhen, based on the subjects of paintings being on

porcelain production and sale in Jingdezhen. Since this chapter has a particular focus

on Canton’s trade development, I only show examples of Canton porcelain shops. In

many cases, they languish forgotten in reserve collections, often un-catalogued, and

rarely if ever displayed to the public. I have contacted and consulted with museum

and library collections, as well as auction houses and galleries. As far I have

researched, at least 30 sets of those paintings have survived in albums or wallpapers

14 A good source of export painting on port city can be found in Carl L. Crossman, The Decorative
Arts of The China Trade: Paintings, Furnishings and Exotic curiosities (Suffolk: Antique
Collectors' Club, 1991), pp.410-420. See also, Andrew Lo, Song Jiayu, Wang Tzi-Cheng and
Frances Wood, (eds.), Chinese Export Paintings of the Qing Period in The British Library
(Chinese and English bilingual edition), 8 volumes, (Guangzhou: Guandong renmin chubanshe,
2011).
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