Page 115 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 3 Enamelled Porcelain Consumption in Eighteenth-century China

2
archaeology and now ‘world history’, which all assume a fixed identity for the

objects concerned. In terms of enamelled porcelain, it is either defined simply as a

type of court art in China or a luxury good in Europe. As a result, its consumption

beyond the Qing court in the domestic market is easily ignored.

This chapter will explore the internal or domestic trade and circulation of

enamelled porcelain within eighteenth-century China. It questions the assumption that

enamelled porcelain was either consumed exclusively in the court or dedicated to

export, an assumption that has previously gone unexamined. This study identifies

different trajectories for enamelled porcelain through time and space and sets out to

prove, firstly, that enamelled porcelain was consumed widely beyond the court;

secondly, it shows that consumers actively responded to the new commodity

throughout eighteenth-century China.

2 As globally traded commodities, Chinese porcelains were proved to be useful exemplars for
discussions of the development of the history of international trade, which in turn were used as
evidence by historians of world history Recent examples include Robert Batchelor, ‘On the
Movement of Porcelains: Rethinking the Birth of Consumer Society as Interactions of Exchange
Networks, 1600-1750’, in J. Brewer and F. Trentmann (eds.), Consuming Cultures, Global
Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges (Oxford, 2006), pp.95-121;
Maxine Berg, ‘Asian Luxuries and the Making of the European Consumer Revolution’, in Maxine
Berg and Elizabeth Eger (eds.), Luxury in the eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and
Delectable Goods(London, 2003), pp.228-244.
99