Page 69 - 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

five colours). From the mid-sixteenth century onwards, over-glaze enamelling had

7
become a highly popular style, and it began to be produced in prodigious quantities.

It should be note here that from the sixteenth century, the output of general

domestic and export quality wares rose in response to the increase in local markets

and the foreign trade. The latter was operated mainly through the east and southeast

coast ports in Zhejiang and Fujian. At the moment, the flow of silver into China rose

8
to unprecedented heights, and the export trade in porcelain expanded rapidly. The
expansion of the trade, especially with Japan, had a particular beneficial effect on the

production of porcelain in Jingdezhen. Several innovations occurred in relation to

9
Japanese markets, new body materials and new shapes and decorations were applied.

The production of Jingdezhen porcelain was destroyed during the civil war

10
(invasion of the Manchu) towards the end of Ming dynasty and again in the 1670s.
11
Dutch traders increasingly turned to Japan for export porcelain supplies. At first,

the Dutch orders from Arita were only blue and white, but by the late 1650s coloured

wares had been included (Imari, and later Kakiemon), which are of much better

quality. Japanese Imari porcelain was made at Arita in Kyushu and the type that was

copied in China is characterised by red, dark blue and gold decoration on a white

12
ground. Imari porcelain is named after the port through which it was shipped and

7 Stacey Pierson, From Object to Concept: Global Consumption and the Transformation of Ming
Porcelain (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013). pp.8-10.
8 Sir Michael Butler, Margaret Medley, Stephen Little, Seventeenth-Century Chinese Porcelain from
the Bulter Family Collection (Alexandria, 1990), p.13.
9 Ibid., p.14.
10 Sun Hai and Lin Jianxin, (eds.), Zhong guo kaogu jicheng [Completed records of archaeological
finds], Volume 22 p.994.
11 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, 1971), pp.117-177.
12 Oliver R. Impey, Japanese Export Porcelain: Catalogue of the Collection of the Ashmolean
Museum (Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2002), p.31.
53