Page 405 - Chinese and japanese porcelain silk and lacquer Canepa

Conclusions unprecedented growth of direct intercontinental maritime trade between Europe, the

New World and Asia prompted an economic interdependence between these distant
regions of the world, and ultimately led to a continuous flow of cultural and artistic
influences in all directions and a wider interest in non-Western cultures.
This research study has focused on the prolific early European trade and
consumption of three Asian manufactured goods: Chinese silk and porcelain, and
Japanese lacquer and has shown how the material cultures of late Ming China and
Momoyama/early Edo Japan became inextricably linked with the West. A new
approach was adopted for this multidisciplinary research. Multiple sources were
consulted in search for documentary and material evidence. These included a wide
variety of published primary and secondary sources, which contained information
relating to the actual trade as well as to the varied types and quantities of these Asian
manufactured goods brought by Europeans as merchandise, private consignments or
gifts. These sources also provided information relating to the commercial networks
through which these Asian goods circulated, and the way in which they were acquired,
used and appreciated in the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and English societies in
Western Europe as well as in the multi-ethnic societies of the European colonies in
the New World.
The study of the trade in Chinese silk proved to be the most challenging. The
fact that silk does rarely survive in archaeological contexts and that extant silks of this
period are exceedingly scarce made it difficult to compare the information provided
by textual sources with surviving examples that would have served as tangible evidence
of the trade in silks and its consumption in Western Europe and the colonies in the
The great maritime voyages of exploration launched by the Iberian kingdoms of New World. Nevertheless, an attempt was made to give an idea of how the various
Portugal and Spain at the end of the fifteenth century led to the emergence of a silks traded may have looked like. In the case of the Dutch silk trade in the early
global long-distance trade system between Europe, the New World, Africa and Asia seventeenth century, however, this approach proved largely unsuccessful. The fact that
via both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This resulted in the trade of a variety of I am not able to read Dutch did not allow me to consult Dutch primary sources, but
luxury manufactured goods from Asia, that were much sought after in Renaissance obviously this is an area that needs attention in future academic research.
Europe, among them Chinese silk and porcelain. Lisbon became the most important Textual sources brought to light some new and surprising information
commercial marketplace in Europe for Asian luxury goods, rivalling Seville, Antwerp, concerning the use of porcelain in Western Europe in the sixteenth century. From the
Venice and Genoa. late sixteenth century onwards, this was mainly Kraak porcelain, a type specially made
Portuguese trade relations with China began in the early sixteenth century. When for export, which dominated the ceramic cargoes imported into both Western Europe
trade relations were banned, the Portuguese continue to trade clandestinely at various and the New World. Portuguese and English textual sources have demonstrated that
places off the south China coast. By the mid-sixteenth century, Japan was linked to the custom of displaying a large quantity of porcelain in a separate architectural space
this global trade system. Portuguese merchants and missionaries of the Society of Jesus or in a room specially created for that purpose began in Western Europe much earlier
actively participated in the silk trade between Macao and Japan. Japanese lacquer than previously thought, and not, as is generally assumed, in the Dutch Republic.
objects were made to order for the Jesuits residing in Japan, and later for Portuguese In 1563, more than 100 pieces of porcelain were listed among the contents of the
merchants, who began to import them into Portugal. The Portuguese, based in dowager Duchess’s ‘House of glass and porcelain’ at Vila Viçosa in central Portugal
Macao, had a monopoly in the Asian trade until the Spanish settled in the Philippines, while the 1605 inventory of the furnishings of Wardour Castle in Wiltshire lists 154
founding Manila in 1571. The Spanish began a regular trans-Pacific trade with the vast pieces of porcelain displayed in the ‘possylen house’.
Spanish colonial empire in the New World that encompassed the viceroyalties of New Another interesting find refers to the terminology employed in northwestern
Spain and Peru. By the turn of the sixteenth century, the desire to participate in the Europe to refer to Kraak porcelain. Two English inventories from Exeter, dating to
highly profitable trade in East Asian spices and Asian manufactured goods drove the 1596 and 1598, have provided the earliest written references known thus far of the use
countries of northern Europe to search for a route to Asia, and this put them in direct of the terms ‘carracke’ and ‘carricke’, i.e. Kraak porcelain. In Dutch sources, the earliest
competition with the Iberian trade monopoly. The trading companies formed in the use of the terms referring to Kraak porcelain date to 1638 and it is clear that these
Northern Netherlands/Dutch Republic and England to trade directly with Asia via the terms were already commonly used in northern Europe around 1600. No references to
route round the Cape of Good Hope, would partly gain control of the Asian maritime such terms have yet been found in Portuguese or Spanish textual sources.
trade in the seventeenth century. The European-Asian encounters and the historically

404 Silk, Porcelain and Lacquer Conclusions 405