Page 127 - Chinese and japanese porcelain silk and lacquer Canepa

This Chapter relies on a wide variety of primary and secondary sources,
which contain information relating to the porcelain trade as well as to the
varied types and quantities of Chinese porcelain 1 imported into Western
Europe and the New World via the Atlantic and Pacific sea trade routes
in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It also relies on a vast
quantity of material evidence provided by both marine and terrestial
archaeological finds from Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and English
shipwrecks, survival campsites, colonial settlements in Asia, the New
World and the Caribbean, as well as the respective mother countries in
Western Europe. Whenever possible this material is complemented by
porcelain finds made at kiln sites in China, which serve to identify the
origin of the different types of porcelain imported, dating from the reigns
of Zhengde (1506–1521) to Chongzhen (1628–1644). Archaeological
finds from Chinese junks that sank during this period are also discussed
as they provide further material evidence for the classification and dating
of the porcelain traded by the Europeans.
China was not only renowned for its high quality silks as we saw in
the previous Chapter, but also for its fine porcelain. First manufactured in
the sixth century, porcelain was exported from the ninth century onwards
to Japan, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East and Africa. 2 Unlike
silk, the highly vitrified porcelain was heavy enough to be stored deep
in the hold of a ship, serving as ballast. It was predictable that a wooden
ship sailing upon rough seas would leak and items stored in the hold
would get wet. Thus the impermeability of the vitrified porcelain body,
which prevented it from being damaged by sea water, made it a popular
ballast trade good. 3 Information about both the uniqueness and beauty
of porcelain from China, which held the monopoly on the technique
of its production until the early seventeenth century, began to arrive in
Europe at the end of the thirteenth century after the Italian merchant
Marco Polo and other European travellers reached China during the time
of the Mongol rulers of the Yuan dynasty. 4 Only a few pieces of porcelain
are known to have reached Europe before 1500, either as gifts sent from
the rulers of Egypt to the doges of Venice and the Medici in Florence,
or brought back from Asia by travellers. 5 Thus when porcelain made of
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1 Unless otherwise specified, Chinese porcelain
will the referred to as porcelain throughout this
doctoral dissertation.
2 Rose Kerr, ‘Chinese Porcelain in Early European
Collections’, in Jackson and Jaffer, 2004, p. 46.
3 Brigadier, 2002, p. 54.
4 The travel account written by Marco Polo, Description
of the World, is the most comprehensive account of
China written by a European before the sixteenth
century. Marco Polo described porcelain as ‘And again
I tell you that the most beautiful vessels and plates of
porcelain, large and small, that one could describe are
made in great quantity in this aforesaid province in a
city which is called Tingui [Tongan, near Quanzhou]
more beautiful that can be found in any other city. And
on all sides they are much valued, for none of them are
made in another place but in this city, and from there
they are carried to many places throughout the world.
And there is plenty there and a great sale, so great
that for one Venetian groat you would actually have
three bowls so beautiful that none would know how
to devise them better’. Marco Polo, The Description of
the World, translated and annotated by A. C. Moule
and Paul Pelliot, London, 1938, Vol. 1, p. 352. Cited in
Jean Michel Massing, ‘From Marco Polo to Manuel I.
The European Fascination with Chinese Porcelain’, in
Levenson, 2009, p. 302.
5 Kerr, 2004, p. 47; and Massing, 2009, p. 303.
Silk, Porcelain and Lacquer
this unknown light, smooth and translucent material began to arrive
more regularly and in larger quantities in Renaissance Europe, it was
greatly valued.
As in the previous Chapter concerning the trade in Chinese silk,
excerpts from teatrises, accounts and letters written by Portuguese,
Spanish, Italian, Dutch, English, French and German merchants and
explorers, and clerics, as well as English and Spanish literary works,
provide descriptions and personal comments concerning the material
qualities and decorative schemes, and sometimes the purchase or sale
price of the various types of porcelains imported into Western Europe
and the New World as merchandise, private consignments or sent as
gifts. Surviving bills of lading, ship registers, cargo manifests, shipment
receipts, memorandums, probate inventories, wills, judicial and notarized
documents, appraisals and auctions provide valuable information relating
to the commercial networks through which the imported porcelains
circulated, and the way in which they were acquired, used and appreciated
in the societies in Western Europe as well as in the multi-ethnic societies
of the Spanish colonies, and of the Dutch and English colonies in the
New World. More importantly, they show that by the early decades of
the seventeenth century in most countries of Western Europe as well as
in the Spanish colonies in the New World, porcelain was highly valued
and incorporated into the daily life not only of the nobility, clergy and
rich merchant class but also of individuals that belonged to lower levels of
society, if only in small quantities. Visual sources, including still-life and
portrait paintings, drawings and prints serve to illustrate fairly accurately
not only the various types of porcelains imported, but also their practical
and ornamental uses within these societies at a given time. Extant porcelain
pieces in public and private collections around the world, some of them
with datable metal mounts, provide tangible evidence of the porcelains
traded by the Europeans. Moreover, they help us visualize the differences
between the porcelains made to order for the Iberian market for both
secular and religious use during the early period of European trade with
China, with those made for the Dutch market for secular use during the
last decades of trade, before the Ming dynasty collapsed in 1644.
Trade in Chinese Porcelain 127