Page 30 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

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even garden design are attributed to Chinese export porcelain. Chinese porcelain

has also been associated with feminine taste through household consumption in the

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eighteenth century. Focusing on objects is also useful for cataloguing collections

and exhibitions. For example, a recent exhibition entitled Passion for Porcelain:

Masterpieces of Ceramics from the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert

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Museum that was held by the National Museum of China in 2013 in total displayed

148 pieces of Chinese porcelain. This was the first time that the British Museum and

Victoria and Albert Museum exhibited their collection in China, and it was the first

time that the National Museum of China held an exhibition of Chinese export

porcelain.

However, approaching Chinese porcelain only by focusing on the individual

pieces that survived in collections and museums fails to situate these objects within a

wider context. Consequently, we have little knowledge of how these pieces were made

and how and where they were sold.

19 Classic studies on chinoiserie can be found from Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins, A Taste for China:
English Subjectivity and the Prehistory of Orientalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013);
David Porter, The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press,2010); Francesco Morena, Chinoiserie: the evolution of the Oriental style in Italy
from the 14th to the 19th century (Florence: Centro di, 2009)
20 For a useful discussion of the associations between tea and femininity in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, see Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping,
and Business in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp.19–36;
Aubrey J. Toppin, ‘The China Trade and some London Chinamen,’ Transactions of the English
Ceramic Circle, 3 (1934), pp.44–46; Stacey Sloboda, Chinoiserie: Commerce and Critical
Ornament in Eighteenth-century Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014). On
contemporary responses to female commerce at the New Exchange, where the retail trade in
Chinese export goods was concentrated, see James Turner, ‘News from the New Exchange:
Commodity, Erotic Fantasy, and the Female Entrepreneur,’in Ann Bermingham and John Brewer
(eds.), The Consumption of Culture 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text (New York: Routledge,
1995), pp.419–435.
21 This exhibition has two versions of catalogues both in English and Chinese languages, for the
English version, see Lu Zhangshen (ed.), Passion for porcelain: Masterpieces of ceramics from
the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum (Beijing: National Museum of China,
2012).
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