Page 8 - Chinese Export Porcelain Art, MET MUSEUM 2003

THE EUROPEAN TRADE

t once exotic and mundane, ornamental
and utilitarian, Chinese porcelain began
to alter Western taste at the onset of
the seventeenth century. Until then its influ-
ence had been intermittent and circumstan-
tial, its occasional presence the result of a
rare gift (fig. 2) or a princely collection, like
that of the Medici grand dukes in the mid-
sixteenth century. Commercial trade with the

West was made possible by the Portuguese
opening of the sea route around the Cape of
Good Hope in 1498, and the first porcelains
decorated specifically for the Western market
resulted from Portugal's direct contact with
Beijing between 1517 and 1521 (fig. 1). A fail-
ure of diplomacy caused a breach lasting
until 1554, but a sizable and heterogeneous, . . ' *
" '
group of porcelains datable to this early :i ,
period bears witness to Portugal's success in .
establishing the mechanics of East-West 0
,
trade. Among these porcelains are ewers
'i . . ..
bearing the coats of arms of Portuguese
active in the East, large dishes with Christian

emblems, a bowl with Renaissance grotesque

2. Covered Cup. Chinese with English mounts, ca. I565-70. Hard paste and
silver gilt. H. 73/8 in. (I8.7 cm). Gift of Irwin Untermyer, I968 (68.I4I.I25a, b)

Six bowls of this type were recorded at Schloss Ambras in the Austrian Tyrol in 1596,
the rich and honorable."
five marked with a seal translated as 'jine vesselfor Our
cup, with its sober mounts by an unidentfied English silversmith, corresponds closely
to the description of one given to Queen Elizabeth I in 1582.

The outside the bowl was originally gold decoration;
covered with finely drawn
of
now almost
although entirely lost, it is still a dramatic contrast to the blue and white
in
interior. This style ofpainting gold on a colored was in the
ground produced
primarilyfor the Japanese market, where it was termed
mid-sixteenth century
kinrande
('gold brocaded").
Covered cup, interior
7