Page 20 - Chinese Export Porcelain Art, MET MUSEUM 2003

Factory of the Metal Pot for Wenzel Ferdinand, I6. Dish. Chinese (Italian market), ca. 1698. Hard paste. Diam. I35/8 in.
Prince Lobkowicz. From about that time (34.6 cm). Helena Woolworth McCann Collection, Purchase, Winfield
armorial export porcelains were made for Foundation Gift, 1962 (62.188)
Dutch families associated with the trade in
The densefoliate scrolls of the border are common to Portuguese-marketporcelains
Batavia and elsewhere. These were blue and
of about I700, and this dish is said to have been shippedfrom Goa to Lisbon in 1699.
white, although the blazoning of a coat of The arms, however, are those the Ginoris Florence. Several members of the
of
of
arms requires observance of a rigorous and family were active in Lisbon in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,
inflexible system of which color is an essen- and the survival ofpieces in the family today confirms theirprovenance; otherwise,
the both unexceptional and in blue and white-would be diffcult
tial component. In its absence there are sev- heraldry-being
to identify.
eral ways of blazoning an armorial accurately.
One is by means of a code of directional lines
The inheritance Chinese blue and white andfamiliarity with Florentine
of
and dots representing the tinctures and metals Medici porcelains (ca. i575-87) easily accountfor the experimental blue and white
of the shield, familiar from eighteenth-century production in the i74os at the Docciafactory, established outside Florence in 1737
bookplates. Another is through heraldic lan- by Carlo Ginori.
guage (fig. 15). But coats of arms in shades
of blue become either barely intelligible or

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