Page 72 - 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

officials. The falangzuo ( 珐琅 作 , enamel workshop) was established and was

sponsored and commissioned to conduct experiments for making new enamel colours

and enamelled wares. Not only did they employ opaque enamels, but they created a

relief effect by mixing white enamel with other colours. The immediate result was an

imperial attempt to recreate and translate the technique on a porcelain surface.

Generally speaking, apart from the body that was intended to be enamelled, three

techniques were essential to the production procedure of enamelled porcelain, namely

making enamel colours, preparing enamel colours, painting colours on the body

(copper, glass and porcelain) and firing the painted pieces. Each procedure required

special skills and techniques. As a complex technique, painted enamel was introduced

in China during the late 1680s, and the imperial workshops were established; from

1729 onwards Chinese craftsmen already mastered the techniques of making enamel

colours, as well as using these enamel colours on porcelain, since both the imperial

workshop and the manufacture Jingdezhen have successfully produced their own

enamel colours.

Scholars have paid considerable attention to proving how the transmission of

techniques occurred at the Qing court. Xu Xiaodong and Shi Jingfei have illustrated

that during the Kangxi period (r.1644-1722), enamelled objects were given to the

court by European Jesuits and then inspired the emperor to establish a workshop of

20
enamel manufacture. This workshop has been discussed, and Xu and Curtis have

20 Xu Xiaodong, ‘Europe-China-Europe: The Transmission of the Craft of Painted Enamel in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’ in Maxine Berg (eds.) Goods from the East 1600-1800
Trading Eurasia (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015), pp.92-106. Shi Jingfei, Riyue guanghua
Qinggong hua falang [Radiant Luminance: the painted enamelware of the Qing Imperial court]
(Taipei, 2012), pp.27-42.
56