Page 66 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 2. The Production of Enamelled Porcelain and

Knowledge Transfer

2.1. Introduction

During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, new enamel colours and

decorative techniques were introduced into porcelain production methods in China,

which led to an overall technological innovation in Chinese porcelain production.

Three new over-glaze enamel colours were introduced to porcelain production:

translucent ruby enamel, opaque white and opaque yellow. The ruby enamel was

coloured with colloidal gold. Opaque white derived from fine crystals of lead arsenate

that formed in the enamel glazes, while opaque yellow exploited lead stannate. Within

a short period of time from 1720 to 1728, the production scale expanded from a series

of small workshops into massive production; moreover, the location of manufacture

was moved from Beijing to Jingdezhen and Canton.

Enamelled porcelains are well known by curators, collectors and Chinese art

dealers, but are rarely considered as a manufactured product that can illuminate

aspects of how manufacturers in different locations interact with each other. Instead,

studies on the history of Chinese porcelain have drawn attention to technological

innovation, and have paid most of their attention to aspects of the aesthetic tastes of

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