Page 28 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

limited. This seems problematic, as the scholarly and general public associate

enamelled porcelain only with the emperors. However, I argue that this is not the

whole story. As I go on to demonstrate in my thesis, enamelled porcelain was in fact

widely consumed outside the court, and played an important role in eighteenth-

century Chinese society.

Western scholars, on the other hand, have mainly examined enamelled porcelain

for the export market by using collections from museums or notable private

collections in terms of design motifs, forms and aesthetic qualities. From the 1950s,

the exported enamelled porcelain of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries received

considerable attention. The terms ‘Chinese export porcelain’ and ‘China trade

porcelain’ were applied in these works. Based on various collections, curators have

established a chronological and thematic history of Chinese porcelain made for the

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Western market of the eighteenth century. In addressing different themes, these

catalogues either categorised Chinese export porcelain as blue and white and

enamelled porcelain or divided them in terms of their designated markets. Such

16 Among the considerable scholarship, the most influential works were done by Rose Kerr and
Luisa E. Mengoni, Chinese export ceramics (London, 2011); D. F. Lunsingh Scheuleer, Chine de
commande (London, 1974); David S. Howard, Chinese armorial porcelain, Volume 1 (London;
Faber and Faber 1974); Chinese armorial porcelain, Volume 2, (London, 2003); The Choice of
the Private Trader: The Private Market in Chinese Export Porcelain illustrated from the Hodroff
Collection (London, 1994); David S. Howard and John Ayers, China for the West. Fully illustrated
two-volume catalogue of the Mottahedeh Collection of export porcelain and other Chinese
decorative arts (London, New York: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1978); Clare Le Corbeiller, China
trade porcelain: patterns of exchange : additions to the Helena Woolworth McCann Collection in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1974); Geoffrey Arthur Godden, Oriental export
market porcelain and its influence on European wares (London, New York: Granada Publishing,
1979); Margaret Jourdain and Jenyns Soame, Chinese export art in the eighteenth century
(Feltham: Spring Books, 1967); For the most recent works, see: William Sargent, Treasures of
Chinese Export Ceramics from the Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, Mass.: Peabody Essex
Museum, 2012); Daniel Nadler, China to Order: Focusing on the 19th Century and Surveying
Polychrome Export Porcelain Produced during the Qing Dynasty 1644- 1901 (Paris: Vilo
International, 2001); Helen Espir, European decoration on oriental porcelain, 1700-1830
(London: Jorge Welsh, 2005).
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