Page 42 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

that China is merely the place of manufacture from where porcelain was exported to

other parts of the world. We need to investigate how local industry responded to

impulses such as increasing interactions along with trade, and the influx of new ideas

and new techniques.

More importantly, much research has failed to recognise that the movement of

Chinese porcelain is neither linear nor one-dimensional. Chinese porcelain’s

production and consumption have changed through time and space. As Stacey Pierson

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pointed out, even in the same location, consumption occurred in different ways. We

cannot conclude that China responded to new materials such as cobalt-blue and

enamels in the same way, or that the markets all responded to blue-and-white and

enamelled porcelain in the same way. Therefore, it is necessary to apply a more

contextual and localised approach to studies of Chinese porcelain. As Anne Gerritsen

has suggested, it is now time to approach it as part of more all-encompassing material

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culture studies that examine object, text, and image through space and time.

For example, Ronald W. Fuchs II argues in his 2011 article that current studies on

Chinese export porcelain have not paid enough attention to the place of origin of these

ceramics; China is merely seen as the place of manufacture of export porcelain to

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Western markets. Fuchs suggests that the reason why the place of origin itself has
been ignored is that the Chinese origin of export porcelain gave the pieces an exotic

and romantic lustre, and the collectors of this porcelain want to keep it unknowable

and mysterious. This was widely reinforced by scholars, antique dealers, auction

54 Stacey Pierson, ‘The Movement of Chinese Ceramics: Appropriation in Global History’
Journal of World History, 23, 1 (2012), p14.
55 Gerritsen and McDowall, ‘Global China’, p.6.
56 Ronald W.Fuchs II, ‘A Passion for China: Henry Francis du Pont’s Collection of Export
Porcelain,’ in Vimalin Rujivacharakul (ed.) Collecting China: The World, China and a Short
History of Collecting (Lanham, Maryland: University of Delaware Press, 2011), pp.126-128.
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