Page 39 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

House in an Imperial and Global Context addressed the possibilities of looking at

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interior decoration in the context of the British Empire. It paid particular attention

to materials brought back to Britain and their integration in interior decorations, and

aimed to trace how Asian goods changed the domestic interior of eighteenth-century

Britain.

Comments made by scholars involved in these two projects so far refer to matters

of how Asian goods changed Europe. They both remain silent, however, on the

question of the impact of the trade on China. Moreover, and highly significantly for

this thesis, throughout research carried out to date, Chinese porcelain was viewed as

a type of commodity without any distinction between blue-and-white and enamelled

porcelain. Most of this scholarship failed to point out that Chinese porcelain was not

simply of one kind; rather, the types ranged from blue and white, white and enamelled

porcelain, each of which required different manufacturing skills. Moreover, they

failed to recognise that the difference amongst these porcelains led them to different

markets and consumers. For example, private traders only bought small amounts of

very specific and expensive luxury porcelain of superb quality and complexity. An

invoice of a private trade dated Canton, 19 November 1731, about the purchase of

porcelain survived. This document records the name of the customer who ordered it,

the date and other details of the shipment, as well as the quantity of items shipped and

their price. The contents of the order are described as 'China Wares blue-and-white

painted with a crest' and it is recorded that there were 100 plates, 6 soup serving dishes,

60 soup plates, 4 sets of bowls, 12 sauceboats and 12 salts totalling some 250 pieces

47 Funded by the Leverhulme Trust from 2011-2014 and based at the University of Warwick
(2011-12) and later University College London (2012-14). For more information of this project,
please visit the project website: http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/eicah/
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