Page 281 - 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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later re-decorated locally. The contemporary visual sources throw some light on

this internal trade. A set of painting shows Canton porcelain dealers’ activities at

Jingdezhen visually. This series of thirty-four watercolour paintings, on porcelain

making and trade, show a division of labour, the logistics and trading with Canton

merchants. It is collected by Hong Kong Maritime Museum and fully published in

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2005. After the dealer arrives at Jingdezhen, a member of huiguan will receive him

and introduce him to a broker. He made his order through this broker with the

producer’s presence. The number of pieces ordered would be written down on a

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‘porcelain ticket’, and chopped with the shop’s seal as proof. On a prearranged date,
the Canton dealer then came to pick up the ordered porcelain. When the transactions,

packing and loading had finished, the broker and the member of huiguan would send

the dealer off. During the whole process of purchasing, members of huiguani would

be there to provide support. It was through this network that the trade at Canton could

be maintained and realised.

As Chapter 5 has shown, there was a shift in the production of enamelled

porcelain from Jingdezhen to Canton in the 1760s. The shift of manufacture from one

place to another was certainly important for trade. Scholars have struggled to find out

when exactly this took place. But it was also important to know where and how this

happened.

55 Liu Zifen, Zhuyuan taoshuo [Ceramics studies in bamboo garden], 1925, p.46.
56 Hong Kong Maritime Museum, Trading China: Paintings of the Porcelain Production Process
in the Qing Dynasty. (Hong Kong: 2015). There are other paintings of this kind, but only three
sets have been fully published, see Walter A. Staehelin, The Book of Porcelain: The manufacture,
transport and sale of export porcelain in China during the eighteenth century, illustrated by a
contemporary series of Chinese watercolours (Lund Humphries, 1965); Barbara Harrison,
Chineese porselein: hoe het gemaakt en cerkocht werd (Leeuwarden : Museum het Princessehof,
1987).
57 Lan Pu, Jingdezhen taolu, p.11.
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