Page 32 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

way, not only by focusing on the object itself but by considering objects in a wider

context. We should consider the context of the objects that have survived, who

produced them, what techniques have been applied, where they were produced, who

consumed them and who sold them. Such questions are certainly important and crucial

because the answers can provide us with details about the porcelain trade. In doing so,

we can have a better understanding of those objects.

1.3.2. Enamelled Porcelain and the Chinese Export Porcelain Trade

Situating the porcelain trade in the context of the East India Companies, art historians

and trade historians have demonstrated that Chinese export porcelain was made for

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various markets. Some of them applied a different approach from curators, mainly
using the records of East India Companies, and seeing Chinese porcelain as a

26 J. A. Lloyd Hyde, Eduardo Malta and Ricardo Espirito Santo Silva, Chinese porcelain for the
European market (Lisbon: Editions R.E.S.M, 1956); Michele Buerdeley, Chinese Trade Porcelain
(Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1962); Michel Beurdeley Porcelain of the East India Companies
(London: Barrie & Rockliff, 1962); John Goldsmith Phillips, China Trade Porcelain, An Account
of Its Historical Background, Manufacture, and Decoration and a Study of the Helena Woolworth
McCann Collection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956); Geoffrey Arthur Godden,
Oriental export market porcelain and its influence on European wares; Marie-Florine Bruneau
t
and François Hervouë, La Porcelaine des Compagnies des Indes àDécor Occidental (Paris:

Flammarion, 1986); Jean McClure Mudge, Chinese Export Porcelain for the American Trade,
1785-1835. (2nd edn., Revised, Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1981); Clare Le
Corbeiller, China Trade Porcelain: Patterns of Exchange: Additions to the Helena Woolworth
McCann Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art,
1974); Jorge Getulio Veiga, Chinese Export Porcelain in Private Brazilian Collections (London,
1989); Peabody Museum of Salem. Chinese Export Porcelain in the 19th Century: The Canton
Famille Rose Porcelains in the Alma Cleveland Porter Collection. (Salem, MA: Peabody Museum
of Salem, 1982); T. Volker, Porcelain and the Dutch East India Company: As Recorded in the
Dagh-registers of Batavia Castle, Those of Hirado and Deshima, and Other Contemporary Papers,
1602-1682 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1954); C.J.A. Jörg, Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982); Sargent, Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramic; Jan Wirgin From
China to Europe, Chinese Works of Art from the Period of the East India Companies, East Asian
Museum (Stockholm, 1998).
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