Page 278 - 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

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of porcelain among themselves. From this point of view, the network was no longer

beneficial to small porcelain dealers. The connections between the networks are not

static. These porcelain dealers need to devise networks to reconfigure business flows

to circumnavigate the hurdles they face. This explains that when the Co-Hong was

dismissed in 1771, there were small dealers that separated themselves away from the

network. For instance, Soychong used to trade porcelain via Guanyuan Hong, but

started to show as an independent dealer in the late 1770s and became one of the main

suppliers at Canton in the 1780s.

Such corporations also tightened up the connection between Canton porcelain

dealers and manufactures. From the late 1750s when the trade became more stable

and predictable, Canton porcelain dealers would need to travel to Jingdezhen annually

to place orders with the local manufacture. Even after they had managed to establish

their own manufacture, they would need porcelain pieces bearing no decoration.

Jingdezhen was a site of production, but it was also a site of distribution. Porcelain

pieces were sold inside the town, and prospective buyers would come to Jingdezhen.

There were brokers who acted as middlemen, and no trade could be carried on without

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such licensed brokers. In order to obtain porcelain in good quantity and quality,

merchants from other parts of China set up an agency in Jingdezhen, called in Chinese

huiguan 会馆.

48 Quoted from Jörg, the Dutch China trade (The Hague, 1982), p.118. Note 92. V.O.C.4419,
Journal, 12, March and 5 May 1779. Paul A. Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macao: Success
and Failure,p.129.
49 Lan Pu, Jingdezhen Taolu [Records of Jingdezhen Ceramics] (Jinan, 2004), p.12. This
monograph first published in 1815, it was later translated by Julien Stanislas in 1856, Histoire et
fabrication de la porcelaine chinoise (Paris, 1856). An English version was translated by Geoffrey
Robley Sayer, The Potteries of China (London, 1951).
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