Page 262 - 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

Figure 7-4 A porcelain shop waiting for foreign customers.
Watercolours, 19x20cm, c.1750s.
Photo Courtesy of Hong Kong Maritime Museum, HKMM2012.0101.0033

Thirdly, the variety of porcelain types and decoration patterns declined. We found

from earlier depictions that the displayed porcelain was of various designs, especially

in decoration. We see plates decorated in the earlier period (Figure 7-5), but we only

see pieces bearing no decoration to the later period. (Figure 7-6) It echoed the

phenomenon that during the late eighteenth century, when Canton has its own

manufacture of enamelled porcelain production, shopkeepers put pieces with no

decoration in stock and waited for further instruction from their foreign customers.

They bought porcelain pieces from Jingdezhen (five hundred miles away from

Canton, where all the porcelain was made at the time), and sold their products with

their brands and informed their customers by advertising their manufacture. In doing

so, foreign buyers could order certain patterns to be decorated immediately and the

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