Page 153 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780
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CHAPTER 3 Enamelled Porcelain Consumption in Eighteenth-century China
from Nanjing. Among those brokers, those from Hubei, Canton and Nanjing ran a
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larger sale of porcelain trade than the others.
The process of ordering and buying porcelain assisted by a porcelain broker was
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recorded in Records of Jingdezhen Ceramics. This text is quoted at length because
it reveals much about the process of purchase porcelain in Jingdezhen. As it reads:
Dealers wishing to buy porcelain are introduced by porcelain brokers.
Porcelain brokers will bring them to a seller. The price is discussed with
the buyer and the seller, with the presence of the porcelain broker. With
the agreement of both sides, a future purchase is arranged, with a fixed
date and fixed price written on a ticket as proof, as they called ‘porcelain
ticket’. On the prearranged date, the buyer and the porcelain broker will
come to the seller’s warehouse or shop with the ticket to pack the ordered
pieces. If any of the goods to be carried away have blemishes or wrong
colours, the seller should provide an exchange service, the buyer will then
receive another ticket for exchange, called an ‘exchange ticket’. Both
‘porcelain ticket’ and ‘exchange ticket’ will be stamped with the name of
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the seller, the detailed information of the deal will be written down.
Figure 3-12 shows a Canton merchant making his order to a seller with the
presence of a porcelain broker. A red poster reads ‘早晚时价不同,日下一言为定’
and states that ‘Spoken words would be counted as an agreement even the later price
may differ from the agreed one’, in other words that the agreed prices are not subject
to discussion later. There will be no actual receipts, as this is based on a verbal
71 Liu, Qingchao, cited in Liang Miaotai, Ming Qing Jingdezhen, p.320.
72 Lan Pu, Jingdezhen Taolu, p.112.
73 Ibid.
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