A hat tip to Peter Combs, a leading expert in Asian works of art, for bringing to his followers’ attentions the 2017 doctoral thesis of Tang Hui which studies Chinese porcelain production and trade along with their affects on world socio-economic-political order during the 18th century. The reason for my interest in the dissertation is that it provides clues for dating Chinese porcelains, and also presents some histories of the era which are interesting in their own rights. As such, I will sample the approximately 350 page tome in a few postings, focusing on useable dates and facts related to evaluating Chinese porcelain.
One bit of useful information is that during this period, 3 taels of silver were equal to about 1 British pound which was indeed sterling in those days. This information is more important than it appears because the drain of British silver to China was one of the leading causes of the British brutal opium wars in China.
I will further digress by stating that Hui is a master of the obvious at times. He contends that contrary to previous scholars’ assumptions, enamel porcelains were consumed not just within the imperial court of China, but also in domestic and export markets. Hui notes that until quite recently, scholars believed that the enameled porcelains were an imperial monopoly.
My view had been that affluent classes emerged which had access to these same wares. On the hand, intuition and common sense never earned a doctorate.
Most collectors of Chinese porcelains probably know that Westerners introduced pigmented enamels to China, but this belief is rather distorted. The Chinese had used overglaze enamels of 5 colors as early as the 13th century. What the Europeans introduced were glass-based pigments.
By the end of the 16th century, the potters had a repertoire of 6 overglaze colors which included red, yellow, green, turquoise, aubergine, and black. By the 1720s new colors were ruby red, opaque white, and opaque yellow. Hui then notes that during the Yongzheng emperor reign (1723 – 1735) 18 more enamel colors were introduced.
Hui is pleased that the famille [color] term has died in favor of porcelain painted in polychrome enamels. So all of you famille rose diehards are politically incorrect fuddy duddies.
The author makes the point that enameled porcelain initially was monopolized at the imperial court, but then it was transmitted to Jingdezhen and then to other places, especially Canton. The diffusion of the technology was an important element in Chinese and international trade.
Somewhat related to manufacturing diffusion is the topic of domestic wares versus export wares which Hui notes were frequently produced at the same time at Jingdezhen during the 18th century and often in the same pattern. So the hard dichotomy between domestic and export wares espoused by certain dealers and collectors has been overplayed, the idea being that there was more fluidity between the two classes and designs than one might like in a highly regimented world. Nonetheless, one cannot consider a great deal of the Canton wares as in the domestic Chinese taste.
There is much more to share from the thesis, and I will do so, but one of the reasons this period is so signal to Chinese porcelains is that the 18th century is often considered the high summer of its long and legendary porcelain production, which owes not a small debt to Western contributions. The next installment will focus on the porcelain industry in China which was a rather sophisticated and specialized enterprise.