Page 4 - Chinese Export Porcelain Art, MET MUSEUM 2003

DIRECTOR'S NOTE

y the eighteenth century trade services. Half of the collection was lent to the
between China and Europe had Metropolitan in 1946, and 414 pieces were
expanded from a quest for spices to given to the Museum in 1951 by the Winfield
embrace tea, textiles, silver, and porcelain. Foundation, established by the McCann
Porcelain was incidental to the success of family. By agreement with the foundation,
this trade, constituting 6 percent or less and in collaboration with the Museum of Fine

of the value of East India Company cargoes. Arts, Boston, the remainder of the McCann
But the quantity of exported porcelains- Collection was dispersed among twenty-four
some 300 million pieces are believed to American museums. Subsequent additions,
have reached England over two centuries- for the most part generously supported by
ensured a lasting influence on Western the Winfield Foundation, have been made
taste and ceramics history. Several hun- with a view to illustrating more of the stylistic
dred thousand blue and white porcelains and cultural interactions between China
received yearly in ports from London to and Europe that have come to light over
Gothenburg graced shelves, cabinets, and two decades of ever-widening scholarship.
dinner and tea tables, as the novelty of the No single collection, donor, or collector

material impelled its reinvention by fledg- stands out among our American-market
ling European porcelain factories. An porcelains. Works with important American
entirely new aesthetic-part Western, part connections were bought during the 1930s,
Asian-emerged with private traders, who 1940s, and 1950s. What is consistent in the
gave rein to their individual tastes by pattern of acquisitions is that a number of
ordering, directly from China, specially significant porcelains were not "collected"
designed porcelains painted with armorials, per se but cherished and passed down
views, or timely images based on drawings from generation to generation of family
and prints. Today, part of the appeal of members, who felt, ultimately, that the best
Chinese export porcelain lies in the bio- place for their heirlooms to be cared for
graphical and historical contexts of these and appreciated was at the Metropolitan
orders, which provide a personal element Museum. I refer in particular to superb
that is particular to the porcelain trade. examples given by Verplanck descendants

The foundation of the Museum's collec- and to three great American-market punch
tion of Chinese export porcelain for the bowls made for John Lamb, Benjamin
European trade was the Helena Woolworth Eyre, and Ebenezer Stevens, as well as
McCann Collection of about four thousand to the large Paine service, a gift from
pieces, which was formed in the late 1930s the family.
in Europe and the United States and The authors of this Bulletin are Alice
focused on eighteenth-century armorial Cooney Frelinghuysen, Anthony W. and

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