Page 9 - Chinese Export Porcelain Art, MET MUSEUM 2003

masks, and several bowls and bottles Middelburg and Amsterdam established a
inscribed and dated either 1541 or 1552. demand that the VOC was quick to recognize.
What is important for the impact on taste The allure and novelty of the blue and
and trade is the expeditiousness with which white palette-then and still synonymous
Chinese porcelain became available and with the material itself-called for no change.
that it was all in underglaze blue and white, The immediate challenge was to exploit the
a relatively recent innovation of the Yuan existing industrialized production of Jingde-

dynasty (1260-1368) that was in production zhen and the responsiveness of the private
in Jingdezhen, southeastern China, by about kilns to new markets by making Chinese

1330 and was, by the sixteenth century, the porcelain useful in a Western context. For the
lingua franca of export porcelain. Dutch, as for the Portuguese, export porcelain
Little is known of the extent of Portugal's was intended chiefly for table use, and this
sixteenth-century trade, even after the coun- emphasis would eventually result in the
try was accorded a permanent station in programmed table service of the eighteenth
Macao in 1557, but it succeeded in initiating century (figs. 31, 41).

the two most defining aspects of export The cargoes of the late Wanli period (1573-
porcelain: as a vehicle for Western decoration 1620) were composed largely of what has

and as tableware that would ultimately deter- come to be known as kraakware (fig. 3). Mass
mine the repertoire of the eighteenth-century produced from the second half of the six-
European ceramics factories. In 1563 the teenth century to nearly 1640 for export
archbishop of Braga observed that "in within Asia as well as to Europe, it quickly
Portugal we have a kind of tableware which, defined Chinese porcelain in the European
being made of clay, may be compared advan- marketplace, figuring as early as about 1615
tageously to silver both in its elegance and in still-life paintings by Floris van Dijck (1575-
in its cleanliness.... We call it porcelain.... 1621) and Osias Beert (ca. 1580-1623). The
The pieces which are decorated in blue shapes were chiefly bowls, cups, and dishes
dumbfound the eyes.... They are not con- in standard sizes, and though these continued
cerned about their fragility since they are to be in demand, the VOC records indicate a

quite cheap." Here are all the features that growing desire for specifically Western forms.
made Chinese porcelain so attractive- In 1608 the company requested butter dishes,
and even, until the late eighteenth century, mustard pots, saltcellars, and wine pots "if
necessary-to the West: material, usefulness, they can make them"; but there is no surviv-
color, and cost. ing evidence that these early orders were
It was in competing with the Portuguese filled. Steady trade began about 1634, when
for inter-Asian trade that the Dutch East India relations between the Chinese merchants and
Company (Vereenigde Ostindische Com- the Dutch, established a decade earlier in

pagnie, hereafter VOC) created a European Taiwan, became settled. From then until 1647,
market for Chinese porcelain. Founded in when the first period of Dutch trade came

1602, the company captured two Portuguese to a halt, the range of forms expanded to
ships between 1602 and 1604, one with a encompass a wide spectrum of utilitarian
cargo estimated at 100,000 porcelains. wares: standing salts, jugs, tankards, mustard
The profitable sale of these cargoes in pots, and plates. Patterns for these pieces

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