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The Pilgrim Art: The Culture of Porcelain in World History
Author(s): Robert Finlay
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Source: Journal of World History, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Fall, 1998), pp. 141-187
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The Pilgrim Art: The Culture of Porcelain
inWorld History*
ROBERT
University
FINLAY
of Arkansas
entrance
into Lisbon,
i619 Philip III of Spain made a ceremonial
the
the
of
his
triumphal arches
Portuguese
kingdom.1 Among
capital
In
he paraded under was one put up by the guild of potters that depicted
in the city's harbor
Chinese
carracks unloading
porcelain
Portuguese
imitations
of the Chinese
and other ships taking aboard Portuguese
wares for export to other European
countries. An
inscription boasted,
the
world."
of
"Ours also go to different
up an earth
Holding
regions
an
enware vase
labeled "porcelains"
allegorical
figure
(porcelanas),
declared:
Here most gracious Majesty
We
offer
you
the
pilgrim
art
*
at the National
for
Some of the ideas in this paper were first presented
Endowment
at the University
at Santa Cruz,
the Humanities
Institute
of California
1995 Summer
World
I would
like to thank my
History,
1500-1750."
"Rethinking
Europe/Rethinking
fellow participants
for their encouragement,
Burke
Edmund
III, Julia Clancy
especially
Barbara Solow,
and Joselyn Ziven. William
H. McNeill
Smith, Ross Dunn,
Sidney Mintz,
and Jonathan D. Spence
advice and criticism
after reading a longer version of the
provided
paper,
while
many
valuable
Suzanne Maberry,
also responded
with
and Patricia
Coon,
Singleton
suggestions.
1
as monarch
III was the second of that name
of Portugal:
II of Spain
Philip
Philip
in 1581 by virtue of the union of crowns
I of Portugal
became
that
(r. 1556-98)
Philip
in battle of the last of the Aviz dynasty, Dom Sebastian
followed
the death
I (r. 1557-78).
in
See J. H. Elliot,
"The Spanish Monarchy
and the Kingdom
of Portugal,
1580-1640,"
and Coalescence:
The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe, ed. Mark Green
Conquest
glass
(London:
Lynda
Edward Arnold,
1991),
pp. 48-67.
Journal ofWorld History, Vol. 9, No. 2
of Hawai'i Press
by University
?1998
141
JOURNAL
142
Made
Which
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
1998
in the Lusitanian Kingdom
China sold us at such high prices!2
Philip IIIwas familiar with Chinese porcelain, for his father Philip II
of some 2,000 pieces,
had a collection
several with his coat
including
of arms, and the earthenware
of Madrid)
potters of Talavera
(southwest
tiles for his Escorial palace in imitation
had turned out blue-and-white
ceramics. Philip III saw similar
of the dominant
color scheme of Chinese
tiles adorning
the churches
of Lisbon, while
the Santos Palace of the
crown held several hundred pieces of porcelain.3
Portuguese
since 1499,
Lisbon had been a European port of entry for porcelain
to India with
when Vasco da Gama
returned from his historic
voyage
I (r. 1495-1521).
After Portu
about a dozen pieces for Dom Manuel
in 1517, the monarch
reached China
had vessels com
guese captains
missioned
for him: the earliest known
por
piece of blue-and-white
coat
is a ewer of 1520 with Manuel's
decoration
celain with European
of arms.4 The Portuguese
the first to
king and his fidalgos thus became
as Samuel
of China-fancy,"
be infected by "the contagion
Johnson
caustically
merchants
eighteenth
it. In response to the craze for porcelain, Western
at
in the seventeenth
least 70 million
and
pieces
imported
to
aristocrats
and
centuries.5 European
succumbed
princes
a feverish desire to possess the
disease" (Porzellankrankheit),
described
"porcelain
Chinese
ware, which
in a cabinet or arrayed in a Porzel
they exhibited
as "porcelain
the Chinese
condemned
lanzimmer. Indeed, Europeans
to pay
because of the treasure that went to China
headed extortioners"
a unique
of porcelain holding
for the imports.6 This was a consequence
2
in the Chinese
in
Blue-and-White
Faience
Style,"
Jean McClure
"Hispanic
Mudge,
and White Chinese
Porcelain and Its Impact on theWestern World
(exh. cat.), ed. John
and Alfred
Smith Gallery,
Carswell
1985), p. 44; Robert C. Smith, The
(Chicago: David
1600-1800
Art of Portugal,
Press, 1968), p. 261.
(New York: Meredith
3
in Castile:
A Documentary
Pottery
Study," Burl
Ray, "Sixteenth-Century
Anthony
Blue
ington Magazine
National Museum
33
(1991):
of Azulejo,
Lion-Goldschmidt,
Pereira, Portuguese Tiles from the
298-305;
Jo?o Castel-Branco
trans. Peter F. Ingham
Zwemmer,
Lisbon,
(London:
1995), p.
chinoises
"Les porcelaines
du Palais de Santos," Arts asiatiques
47; Daisy
39 (1984): 5-72.
4Rui
em busca da China:
Ler
Loureiro,
(1498-1514),"
Imagens e miragens
"Portugal
Trade with China," Arts in
Porcelain
Historia
"The Portuguese
19 (1990): 33; Jorge Gra?a,
Asia 7 (1977): 45-47.
5On
see J. H. Plumb,
in In the
"The Royal Porcelain
for porcelain,
enthusiasm
Craze,"
Lane,
(London: Allen
imports, see Peter
1972), pp. 57-68. On porcelain
Light of History
trans. Ewald
Porcelain
Wilhelm
Meister
and Horst Reber,
European
of the 18th Century,
see The
Osers
Press,
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
1983), p. 18. For the quotation,
University
Princeton
Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. Bruce Redford,
Press,
5 vols. (Princeton:
University
1992), 3:70-71.
6Otto
Walcha,
Reber,
European
Meissen
Porcelain,
Porcelain
p. 19.
(New York: G.
P. Putnam,
1981),
p. 95; Meister
and
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
position
143
in trade between East and West.
coveted
European merchants
were grown in India, Sri Lanka, and maritime
Southeast
spices, which
Asia, and theywanted silk,which was produced in theMiddle East and
a Chinese
as well as in China,
but porcelain
remained
In 1708 the researchers
until the early eighteenth
century.
monopoly
II (the Strong),
and king of Poland
of Augustus
elector of Saxony
discovered
the secret of porcelain manufacture?a
dream
(1670-1733),
of
of European
princes for two centuries. The porcelain manufactory
Central
Meissen
Asia
brought
the West
into competition
with
China
for the first
time.
For over
a thousand years, Chinese
porcelain was the most univer
most
in the world.
imitated
It influ
admired
and
widely
product
sally
it encountered,
and in some cases
enced virtually all ceramic traditions
?most
in maritime
Southeast Asia and coastal East Africa?
notably
it displaced
into indigenous
them altogether,
thereby reaching deeply
a
in
and
social
life.
Porcelain
central
role
cross-cultural
religious
played
was
in
since
it
the
Afro-Eurasian
the principal
oikumene,
exchange
vehicle
for the assimilation
and transmission
of artistic sym
It yields the first and
themes, and designs across vast distances.
on a
extensive
for sustained cultural encounter
physical evidence
worldwide
of genuinely
scale, perhaps even for indications
global cul
com
ture. Moreover,
evidence
for
artistic,
presents
porcelain
striking
material
bols,
most
interaction
and technological
between
the high cultures of
mercial,
China and western Asia from the seventh century to the advent of the
modern
age at the end of the eighteenth.
an illuminating
The cultural
but un
impact of porcelain
provides
in
in
the
of
world
theme
explored
study
history. Pottery
general has
since the eigh
for archaeologists
been a crucial source of information
teenth century, but historical
culture, commodities,
study of material
recent decades.
in
it is not
In particular,
and consumption
began only
have overlooked
there
surprising that historians
porcelain. Although
is an enormous
literature on the subject, much of it is in publications
auction
such as exhibition
rarely consulted
by historians,
catalogues,
museum
house magazines,
and art journals. Even within
the
booklets,
is slighted: as one of the decorative
arts,
porcelain
below painting and sculpture, and not much above
examina
furniture and costume design. For the purpose of historical
are
for
vessels
tion, however,
porcelain
particularly
revealing,
they were
often simultaneously
functional wares, treasured possessions,
and bearers
of cultural significance;
the history of porcelain must be linked
hence,
to changes
in commerce,
to
and
social values. This essay attempts
art,
realm of art history,
it ranks considerably
these contexts
within
place porcelain
in world history.
central developments
while
also
relating
it to some
144
JOURNAL
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
1998
in roughly chronological
The argument proceeds
order, beginning
in China
with a sketch of the technology
of ceramics
from the Shang
the
followed
b.c.e.)
(c. 1700-1027
Song
(960-1279),
through
period
an
account
in the
of
of
the
blue-and-white
by
development
porcelain
Yuan (1279-1368)
and Ming
The
impact of
(1368-1644)
dynasties.
on
ecumene
in
ceramic
is
traditions
other
the
then
porcelain
surveyed,
a theme that is continued
in
with examination
of the rise of porcelain
the West
porcelain
to around
from 1500. The
in cross-cultural
of the role of
essay concludes with discussion
from
the
Tang period
(618-906)
exchange
1800.
The Technology
of Ceramics
from
the
Shang
to the
Song
to
in relation
China
and the West
categorize
differently
porcelain
is
stoneware.7
and
The
which
earthenware
based
view,
contemporary
on aWestern
is that pottery encompasses
all three types,
taxonomy,
to the ware's material
and to the tem
ranked according
composition
a
at
it
is
in
which
fired
kiln.
Made
from
many
types of clay,
perature
1
at
is
if
formed
between
6oo?C and
the tempera
earthenware
,ooo?C;
ture is higher than i,ooo?C,
in a liquid
the vessel will bloat and collapse
or
is
is
unfused and there
melt. The fired clay, which
buff,
red, brown,
it must be covered with a glaze in a second firing to be
fore porous;
come impermeable.
to i,25o?C,
Stoneware is produced at about i,ioo?C
a
in
ceramic
whose hardness
lies between
that of earthenware
resulting
res
it is vitreous
and porcelain;
(or glassy), almost entirely nonporous,
onant when
struck, and varies in color from light gray to black.
and translucency
Whiteness
chiefly distinguish
porcelain from stone
ware. The porcelain produced at Jingdezhen
from around the thirteenth
of china-stone
(or "porcelain-stone,"
cishi) and
century was composed
kaolin
(or china-clay).8
China-stone
gives
translucency
and hardness
7For basic terms in ceramics
in the following
works: The
see the glossa
them),
(but without
unanimity
regarding
ed. Jessica Rawson
British Museum
Book of Chinese Art,
David W Kingery
and Pamela B. Van
and Hudson,
(London: Thames
1993), pp. 361-70;
Art, Structure, and Technology
(New York: Free Press, 1986), pp.
diver, Ceramic Masterpieces:
and Hudson,
(London: Thames
315-24; Mary Tregear,
1982), pp. 233-38;
Song Ceramics
S. J.Vainker, Chinese Pottery and Porcelain
Press, 1991), pp. 218
(London: British Museum
see William
of terms and various wares,
25. For discussion
Honey,
European
Bowyer
Ceramic Art from the End of theMiddle Ages to about 1815, 2 vols. (London: Faber and Faber,
ries
some technical material
in the notes.
will be placed
1949). For ease of exposition,
8Petuntse
as the term for the
in most
of porcelain
(baidunzj)
appears
descriptions
used in the manufacturing
of china-stone
white
process. Originally
processed
briquettes
term in porcelain
studies. See John
potters'
slang, it is now regarded as an inappropriate
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
145
to the porcelain paste but is difficult to work with by itself; kaolin
and whiteness.9
softens the paste, providing
smoothness,
plasticity,
to above
two components
fuse to form a single mass when heated
a process of vitrification
that renders the finished
i,300?C, undergoing
The
and translucent
resonant, wholly
very white,
impermeable,
product
and kaolin that
china-stone
when
thin. In terms of fusion of material,
are fired below i,ooo?C make earthenware;
fired below i,3oo?C,
they
are
stoneware
stoneware.
and
both
Since
high-fired
produce
porcelain
to improve their appearance,
not because
wares, they are glazed merely
they
are
porous.10
are regarded as distinct
and porcelain
stoneware,
Earthenware,
in
in
The Chinese,
how
all
modern
the
West
studies).
(and
categories
two
earthenware
and
ever, traditionally
ci,
recognize only
groupings,
the latter including both stoneware and porcelain. Of course, the West
sense in terms of
ern classification
of stoneware
and porcelain makes
as
are
differ
inasmuch
there
chemical
and physical
genuine
analysis
ences
and material
formation between
the two
ingredients
are
in
the scientific
historical
categories
employed
confusion.
narrative,
however,
they result in considerable
Depending
one
account
in any one
modern
which
reads, porcelain
upon
emerged
in mineral
ceramics.
When
to
of the periods of Chinese
b.c.e.)
history from the Zhou (1027-221
the Yuan.11 The terms proto-porcelain,
and
quasi-porcelain,
porcellaneous
some of the
stoneware often are used to identify pottery made with
at Hutian,"
and Kaolin:
Late Yuan Developments
"Porcelain-Stone
Transactions
Addis,
of
62 (journal hereafter
theOriental Ceramics
cited as TOCS).
The term
Society 45 (1980-81):
was mined
kaolin derives from Kaoling
where
the china-clay
(High Ridge) near Jingdezhen,
and processed.
9There
are two main kinds of kaolin,
and primary. The former is a product
secondary
contains
of lengthy
and deposition
and therefore
that
transport
sedimentary
impurities
its firing range. Ceramics
reduce
of the Song period generally were made
from secondary
was primary kaolin.
as Jingdezhen
is
kaolin. The china-clay
used at Jingdezhen
Inasmuch
is found in association
the only place where
china-stone
with primary kaolin,
that pottery
a formula for a ceramic of the highest
center had a unique advantage
in developing
quality.
See Vainker, Chinese Pottery and Porcelain,
pp. 218-19.
10
see Rollo Charles,
On the manufacture
of porcelain,
Continental
Porcelain of the Eigh
For a useful graph of firing ranges
teenth Century
(London: Ernest Benn,
1964), pp. 22-31.
see Adrian Malcolm
and materials,
Joseph, Ming Porcelains: Their Origins and Development
(London: Bibelot,
1971), p. 10.
11For
see Li Jiazhi,
"The Evolution
of Chinese
and Porcelain
example,
Pottery
toModern
in Ceramics
and Civilization:
Ancient Technology
Sciences, ed. W D.
Technology,"
Ohio: American
Ceramic
The
(Columbus,
Kingery
Society,
1984), p. 135; Robert Temple,
Genius
and Schuster,
(New York: Simon
Mao,
1986), p. 92; Philip Wen-Chee
of China
E. Lee, A History of Far East
Oriental Art 23 (1977): 333; Sherman
"Early Blue and White,"
ern Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
Yuan Porcelain and
1982), p. 286; Margaret Medley,
Stoneware
(London: Pitman,
1974), p. 14.
JOURNAL
146
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
I998
of porcelain
and sharing some of its physical
characteris
ingredients
at
centuries
the
of
"true
before
tics,
emergence
supposed
porcelain"
in
the
Yuan
Jingdezhen
dynasty.12
The Chinese
and stoneware has
category of ci for both porcelain
at the price of
such otiose
the virtue of avoiding
albeit
terminology,
two
ceramics.
In
real
distinctions
between
the
fact, the vari
ignoring
ant classifications
of porcelain
reflect significant
differences
between
wares (or ci)
of China and the West. High-fired
the ceramic experiences
for some 1,600 years before Jing
defined
the ceramic history of China
in
dezhen porcelain
the thirteenth
century. Grouping
porce
appeared
since the new material
lain with stoneware was natural
resulted from
an established
a matter of
incremental
tradition, mainly
change within
ves
of known
the proportion
adjusting
ingredients. Because porcelain
and impermeability,
seemed
indis
resonance,
sels, in their hardness,
from stoneware,
potters had every reason to regard the
tinguishable
new Jingdezhen
as just another,
improved variety of ci. In
product
the pottery
defined
tradition until the arrival of
Europe, earthenware
to learn
Chinese
subsequently
investigated
porcelain, which westerners
re
the ceramic
for themselves.
Their
research
how to manufacture
In other words, Euro
scientific
sulted in the contemporary
taxonomy.13
in the early modern
the nature of porcelain
peans
period analyzed
in the thirteenth
while
the Chinese
because
of its novelty,
century
as a natural
extension
of their ancient
simply regarded the material
ceramics.
craft of high-quality
in the his
and the West
The most striking contrast between China
is that the former was about two millennia
ahead of the
tory of pottery
wares. The foundation
of high-fired
for this
latter in the manufacture
lies in the geology of the Tibetan
achievement
plateau and
precocious
more than a million
Gobi desert. Beginning
years ago, loess from those
China.
This fine rock dust,
the plains of northern
regions blanketed
to
of igneous stone, was blown southeast
by the weathering
produced
form a topsoil as much as 300 meters deep in places. Loess (huangtu, or
12 In
is a consequence
for wares
of trying to account historically
part, this nomenclature
and china
from secondary
kaolinized
kaolin,
china-stone,
naturally
being made variously
stone mixed with processed
I.C. Freestone,
and M. Bimson,
primary kaolin. See M. S. Tite,
26
of the Yuan Dynasty,"
of Chinese
Porcelain
"A Technological
Archaeometry
Study
139-54.
(1984):
13The
category
identified
of stoneware
having
emerged by a kind of back-formation:
westerners
those
of porcelain,
characteristics
the particular
necessarily
recognized
physical
was made
as well. Some
stoneware
in the Rhineland
from around
the four
of stoneware
no special interest or
it provoked
in Europe,
teenth century, but since it had slight currency
in Germany,"
inWorld Ceramics,
ed. Robert
See F. A. Dreier,
"Stoneware
J.
investigation.
Charleston
(London: Paul Hamlyn,
1968), pp. 129-33.
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
147
its name, and it provided
the
"yellow earth") gave the Yellow River
raw material
for the 7,000 terra-cotta warriors buried with Qin Shi
founder of the Qin
b.c.e.).14 The develop
empire
(221-207
huang,
on
ment
ceramics
loess in two respects. First,
of Chinese
depended
since it consists mainly
of quartz, loess has a high melting
point and
therefore made
for high-temperature
kilns. Second,
superb material
since it has a very low clay content
and thus does not shrink during
ceramic piece molds
ideal for making
for
drying and firing, it proved
and ritual bronze vessels that emerged dur
casting the bronze weapons
ing the Shang
dynasty.15
of loess for ceramic molds meant
that pottery
and
Employment
In western Asia, metal objects
metallurgy
together in China.
developed
were first made by being pounded out with a hammer and anvil as part
In China,
of a smithy tradition.
the earliest metal artifacts came out of
a ceramic context,
in which
the potter's piece molds determined
the
Loess soil and the
of bronze
shape and ornamentation
implements.16
in metallurgy
of ceramics
also impelled Chinese
early predominance
In ancient Meso
craftsmen
toward a highly effective kiln technology.
in which
their kilns on smelting
furnaces,
potters modeled
potamia,
the smithy strives to keep the metal
and fuel in close contact with
each
other: thus, they built kilns of brick from the ground up, with
a uniform
beneath
the pots, producing
but
large fireboxes
directly
modest
achieves
(of about i,ooo?C). The potter, however,
temperature
the best results by separating pots from the source of heat in the kiln.
a
In the loess soil of China,
all that artisans had to do was excavate
in rising ground, tamp the walls, and create a vent to the sur
chamber
excellent
and an effective
face; the sandy soil provided
insulation,
a
a
10 meters
in
Some
draft
and
flame.17
gave
strong
chimney
good
14On
Chinese
Uni
S. Golany,
Earth-Sheltered
loess, see Gideon
(Honolulu:
Dwellings
Press, 1992), pp. 14-21.
versity of Hawai'i
15
see Pamela B. Vandiver,
On loess and ceramics,
"Ancient Glazes,"
Scientific American
262 (1990): no;
in The British Museum
S. Vainker,
"Ceramics
for Use,"
Book of Chinese
and Vandiver,
Ceramic Masterpieces,
bronzes
and
Art, p. 215; Kingery
p. 33. On Shang
see Jessica Rawson
and Emma C. Bunker, Ancient China and Ordos Bronzes (Hong
ceramics,
Ceramic
Kong: Oriental
1990).
Society,
16
in the Discovery
"The Role of the Potter
Noel
and the Development
of
Barnard,
in Ancient
to Kiln and Furnace Construc
Particular Reference
China?with
Metallurgy
tion," Bulletin of theOriental Ceramic
1-33.
Society 2 (1976):
17Ursula Martius
of Metallurgy
in China: A Comparative
"The Beginnings
Franklin,
in The Great Bronze Age
in China,
ed. George
Los
(Los Angeles:
Approach,"
Kuwayama
of Art,
"Ancient Glazes,"
See
p. no.
Angeles
County Museum
1983), pp. 94-99; Vandiver,
also Henry Hodges,
"Interaction
between Metalworking
in the
and Ceramic
Technologies
in Pottery and Metalwork
in T'ang China,
ed. William
Watson
(London: Per
T'ang Period,"
cival David Foundation
of Chinese
Art,
1970), pp. 64-67.
JOURNAL
148
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
I998
ce.)
length, the "dragon kilns" (long) of the Han period (206 B.c.E-220
to produce
in southern China
used the natural
slope of the hillside
a natural draft that raised the firing temperature
than Euro
higher
obtain
before
the
nineteenth
could
century. By the Song
pean kilns
as much
as
kilns
stretched
up hillsides
dragon
period, multichamber
a
sev
over
more
at
time
60 meters
could
fire
than
and
50,000 pieces
eral days.18
of Chinese
led to the finest achievements
This kiln technology
as
for
used kaolin
the Shang period, craftsmen
pottery. As far back
fell somewhat
short of
their kilns generally
ceramics, although
making
to move
In the Zhou
earthenware.
needed
the temperature
beyond
wares at about
fired their kaolinic
period, with better kilns, potters
and resonant.19 Long
them hard, almost nonporous,
i,25o?C, making
before the first centuries of the Common
Era, then, the most advanced
but some kind of ci. By
ceramic was no longer earthenware
Chinese
was
tradition
the earthenware
the Song period,
defunct, while high
in large part because
of the
fired wares were
diverse,
increasingly
numerous
centers in China.
The structure
variety also stemmed from kiln technology.
that there were temperature
differences
kilns meant
of the tunnel-like
as 6oo?C between
in the lower area and the
the firebox
of as much
wares could be
in the upper. In a single operation,
high-fired
chimney
pottery
Ceramic
in the top. In order
in the lower chambers
and earthenware
produced
to use all parts of the kiln and thereby reduce the enormous
expense of
and
china
with
kaolin
wood
with
fuel,
potters
experimented
firing
in withstanding
that were chemically
substances
stone, mineral
unique
in vessels
that were
resulted
of the kiln.20 This
the hottest
portion
much desired effect,
whiter and harder than those previously made?a
to imitate the pale shades and thin body of
since it allowed ceramics
to China
from western Asia
introduced
silverwork vessels, a medium
in the Tang
period.21
18
of Chi
Ceramic Masterpieces,
and Vandiver,
p. 77; Li Jiazhi, "The Evolution
Kingery
pp. 143-48.
Technology,"
Pottery and Porcelain
19
William
Watson,
of China: Chinese Pottery from 4000 b.c. to 600
Pre-Tang Ceramics
F. Shangraw,
A.D. (London:
Faber and Faber,
Origins
of Chinese
1991), p. 175; Clarence
in America,
Institute
Ceramics
(exh. cat.)
(New York: China
1978), pp. 43, 45; C?cile
trans. Katherine
toChinese Ceramics,
Guide
and Michel
Beurdeley, A Connoisseur's
Beurdeley
nese
Fine Arts Collection,
(New York: Alpine
1984), pp. 26, 42.
20
Chinese Art, 2 vols. (New York: George
William
Braziller,
Willetts,
1958), 2:410-11.
21
120 (1984):
with Ceramics,"
Apollo
"Song Silver and Its Connexions
Jessica Rawson,
in Pottery and Metalwork
inYang
and Silver,"
"T'ang Gold
18-23. See Margaret
Medley,
China, pp. 19-26.
Watson
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
149
In addition, the long cooling period required for the large kilns
green shades on the glazed wares as a result
to Song
in the chambers. This
revealed
and opalescence
could
potters that striking effects of depth, brightness,
be achieved
the kiln atmosphere.22 The Chinese
by controlling
prized
the surfaces resembled
vessels with bluish green glazes because
the
of enormous
and symbolic signifi
colors of jade, a material
ceremonial
cance in China. More prosaically,
an eighteenth-century
con
Chinese
sometimes
produced bluish
carbon monoxide
of excess
and thick as
praised Song glazes for being "as transparent
on
lard."23 The
lavish glazes
massed
that most
Song ceramics meant
the potters decorated
them by incision of
pieces were monochromatic;
the glaze or ceramic body rather than by the use of pigments.
Judging
noisseur
of their vessels, Song potters had an
by the variety and excellence
of aesthetic
effects, kiln technology,
impressive practical understanding
and ceramic chemistry.24 Their whitewares
and greenwares
(or cela
in the history of
the finest achievement
dons) are generally considered
ceramics.25
In the Song period,
kilns producing
the most prestigious
white
wares were located
in Hebei
in northern China,
Province
and those
in Zhejiang Prov
the best greenwares were at Longquan
manufacturing
ince on the southeastern
coast; both kinds of ci usually were made with
a variety of kaolin. At first a relatively minor pottery center, Jingde
zhen produced wares made only of china-stone.
From the tenth cen
was known as qingbai (bluish white).
line of production
tury the main
These were small, thin vessels with a fine white body and a blue-tinted
transparent
glaze. Qingbai
had
limited
circulation
in China,
but mer
22
and Vandiver,
Ceramic Masterpieces,
p. 107.
Kingery
23
Bushell,
Description
Pottery and Porcelain:
of Chinese
Stephen
Being a Translation
of
the T'ao Shuo (Oxford: Clarendon
the significance
of jade, see
Press,
1910), p. 64. On
to
Chinese
the
Neolithic
the
Jade from
(London: British Museum
Press,
Jessica Rawson,
Qing
1995)
24P. Vandiver
tion of Pre-Song,
Robert D. Mowry,
Fur, Tortoiseshell,
1400 (exh. cat.)
in the Microstructure
"Variations
and W D. Kingery,
and Microcomposi
in Ceramics
and Civilization,
Ceramics,"
p. 218;
Song, and Yuan Dynasty
"Chinese
Brownin Hares
and Black-Glazed
Ceramics:
An Overview,"
and Partridge Feathers: Chinese
Brown- and Black-Glazed
Ceramics,
400
Harvard University
Art Museums,
1996), pp. 23-42;
and Nigel Wood,
eds., Irons in the Fire: The Chinese Potter's
Ceramic
(exh. cat.) (London: Oriental
Exploration
1988).
Society,
The Chinese Potter: A Practical
pp. 7-48; Margaret
25Tregear, Song Ceramics,
Medley,
is no agreement
(Oxford: Phaidon,
History
of Chinese Ceramics
1976), pp. 103-68. There
on the origins of the term celadon. Itmay be derived from a character
in a seventeenth-cen
Guide
tury French novel who wore ribbons of a pale green color (Beurdeley, A Connoisseurs
John Ayers,
toChinese
(Cambridge,
Mass.:
Margaret Medley,
of Iron Oxide Glazes
Ceramics,
p. 94). The
preferred
usage
is now greenware.
JOURNAL
150
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
1998
to maritime
chants shipped large quantities
Southeast Asia,
and some
reached the Middle
East.26
at
the china-stone
By the last years of the Song dynasty, however,
was
mined
from
that
aluminium
lacked
Jingdezhen
being
deep deposits
to withstand
the chemical
that allowed
the mineral
ingredient
To
the
of
their
the
preserve
high firing.
quality
product,
Jingdezhen
to the china-stone,
potters began adding kaolin
thereby restoring the
of aluminium
oxide required.27 This was a turning point in
percentage
the history of pottery, for the new formula proved vastly superior to the
oxide,
use of china-stone
alone. The addition of kaolin permitted
the potters
to raise the temperature
for firing in the kiln to above i ,30o?C. This
led to fusion (or vitrification)
of the china-stone
and kaolin,
greatly
and
of the finished
the
hardness
whiteness,
enhancing
translucency,
new
snow-white
brilliance
of the porcelain
product. The
presented
more
meant
its
while
for
that
decoration,
strength
potential
larger,
elaborate vessels could now be produced.28 The potters of Jingdezhen
had invented a material with which
tradi
they would change ceramic
tions around the world. Those
transformations
innovation
after they had adopted a significant
East.
craftsmen of the Middle
The Development
and Ming
of Blue-and-White
Porcelain
began, however,
only
from the earthenware
in the
Yuan
as a long-term
Blue-and-white
of
consequence
developed
porcelain
East. The Middle
East and
the impact of Song ceramics on the Middle
in the ecumene;
India were the great areas of consumption
precious
their best markets
and
manufactured
found
there.29
metal,
spices,
goods
26Guo
Porcelain
and the Characteristics
"Raw Materials
of Porce
for Making
Yanyi,
in Ancient
in North
and South China
Times," Archaeometry
29 (1987):
3-6;
in
from Jingdezhen,"
of Song Dynasty
"The Development
Chen
Qingbai Wares
Baiquan,
ed. R. Scott
Percival David
The Porcelains
(London:
Foundation,
1993), pp.
of Jingdezhen,
as yingqing (shadow-blue).
also was known
!3-32- Qingbai
27Peter Y. K.
of the Yuan Dynasty,"
Orientations
15 (1984):
Lam, "Jingdezhen Wares
"A Technological
Porcelain
of the
and Bimson,
18-19; Tite, Freestone,
Study of Chinese
see note 9 above.
Yuan Dynasty,"
and kaolin at Jingdezhen,
pp. 139-54. On china-stone
28
reasons having
to
of the Yuan Dynasty,"
Lam, "Jingdezhen Wares
p. 22. For technical
the glaze also lost its blue tint around the same time.
do with glazing compounds,
29K. N.
in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from
Trade and Civilisation
Chaudhuri,
the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge:
Press, 1985), pp. 39, 184-85;
Cambridge
University
The East in theWest
Press, 1996), pp. 82
Jack Goody,
University
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
Hindu
97. As discussed
below, however,
regarding ceramics
strictly limited the
prohibitions
in India.
market
for porcelain
lain Wares
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
151
Whitewares
and greenwares were exported by ship to Egypt and Persia
as
from
merchants
century, probably
early as the ninth
by Muslim
in the port cities of Guangzhou
and Quanzhou.30
Porcelain
(Canton)
East, as is shown by hundreds
greatly inspired the potters of the Middle
of earthenware
shards in Egypt, Syria, and Persia.31 Mari
of ceramics
increased considerably
after the Liao state of
state
and
the Qidan
of
the Jurchen
then
the
Jin
(907-1125)
(1115
cut
contact
off
China
northern
from
with
Central Asia. As
1234)
of thousands
time export
in the southeastern
coastal
of
provinces
and
China
turned
the
toward
Zhejiang, Fujian,
Guangdong,
decisively
sea. The
came to
of the Southern
government
Song
(1127-1279)
on
at
maritime
20%
its
for
of
cash
trade
least
income, and
depend
manufacturers
of porcelain
with
those
of
other
commodi
(along
meet
to
demand
from
ties) dramatically
stepped up production
foreign
population
mushroomed
markets.32
its population
in the late twelfth
of well over 100 million
as
as
attractions
its
the
of
well
manufactured
century,
products, China
enormous
to the wider
it
exerted
when
committed
itself
leverage
an
world. The overseas reach of the vast Chinese
intensified
economy
Given
cient
patterns
the countries
marketplaces
the eleventh
as its center,
of trade and cultivation
Southeast Asia and
throughout
of the Indian Ocean.
It caused an upsurge of activity
in
as distant as the merchant
of
from
which
republics
Italy,
on trade in Asian
century flourished
spices. With China
an economic
system emerged for the first time to encom
30David
"Abbasid Maritime
Trade: Archaeology
and the Age of Expan
Whitehouse,
Peter Y. K. Lam, "Northern
sion," Rivista degli studi orientali 59 (1987):
346-47;
Song
in A Ceramic
Asian
ed. Southeast
Wares,"
Trade,
Legacy of Asia's Maritime
Guangdong
Ceramic
Press, 1985), p. 9; Jessica Rawson, M. Tite,
Society
(Singapore: Oxford University
and M. J. Hughes,
"The Export of Tang Sancai Wares:
Some Recent
TOCS
Research,"
52
see Hugh
in Quanzhou,
merchants
P. Clark,
"Muslims and
(1987-88):
39-58. On Muslim
in the Culture
to the Thirteenth
Hindus
and Morphology
of Quanzhou
from the Tenth
6 (1995): 49-74.
Journal ofWorld History
Century,"
31
"China and Egypt: Fus?t," TOCS
T
45 (1980-81):
Tsugio Mikami,
67-89; George
in Islam and the Trade of Asia,
ed. D. S.
Scanlon,
"Egypt and China: Trade and Imitation,"
Richards
of Pennsylvania
Press, 1970), pp. 85-88; Moira Tempoe,
University
(Philadelphia:
Maritime
Trade between China and theWest: An Archaeological
Study of the Ceramics
from
8th to 15th Centuries A.D.
International
(Oxford: BAR
Series,
Siraf (Persian Gulf),
1989),
pp. 47-68.
32On
see Jung-pang
maritime
as a Sea Power
of China
Lo, "The Emergence
activity,
11 (1952):
the Late Sung
and Early Yuan Periods,"
Far Eastern Quarterly
91
during
to the Fourteenth
and East-West
Trade
from the Tenth
Cen
105; "Chinese
Shipping
et dans l'Oc?an Indien (Paris: SEVPEN,
tury," Soci?t?s et compagnies de commerce en Orient
see So Kee Long,
of ceramic
"The Trade
1970), pp. 167-74. On
expansion
production,
in Southern
Ceramics
the Song," Journal of Sung-Yuan
Fukian during
Studies 24
Industry
(1994):
1-19.
JOURNAL
152
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
I998
the entire
ecumene.33 Furthermore,
the effects of Chinese
seas
were
to
the
southern
reinforced
from the
expansion
into
maritime
of
Asia.
the
Islam
thirteenth
Muslim
century by
spread
traders from the regions of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean,
from Gujarat
and the Coromandel
them
coast, established
especially
a cultural foun
selves along the littorals of Asia, where
they provided
commercial
network.34
dation for an extensive
benefited
The growth of Chinese
seaborne commerce
particularly
the pottery
thus
industry, since ceramics are fragile, bulky, and heavy,
far easier to transport by ship than by camel or cart. Commodities
high
in value and low in bulk (such as gemstones
and musk oil), as well as
to transport (such as
in
those high
value and relatively uncomplicated
were
on the
silk and incense wood),
always the principal merchandise
pass almost
commercial
from the Yellow River
silk road, which
traversed some 8,000 kilometers
to the Mediterranean.
in the Song period of the
But with
inauguration
a maritime
of the ancient
"ceramic route" to western Asia,
equivalent
caravan trail, porcelain
became a preferred bulk export of high value.35
of trade ceramics
led to a lowering of
The great expansion
certainly
costs to consumers
in
in the Middle
East. A merchant
of Guangzhou
when
that
left
the
"the
the twelfth century
harbor,
ships
reported
in
greater part of the cargo consists of pottery, the small pieces packed
left."36
the larger, till there is not a crevice
came as a revelation
to the
whitewares
and greenwares
Chinese
to Egyptian
and Persian pottery, porcelain
East. Compared
Middle
in 851, an Arab
seemed to have a jewellike, magical
quality. Writing
merchant
named
Sulayman
marveled
that porcelain
vessels
have
"the
33
H. McNeill,
William
The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since
iooo (Chicago: University
of Chicago
Press, 1982), pp. 53-55;
Janet L. Abu-Lughod,
The World
(Oxford: Oxford University
System A.D. 1250-1350
Before European Hegemony:
Press, 1989), pp. 317-22,
347-48.
34See Marshall
in aWorld
The Venture
G. S. Hodgson,
and History
of Islam: Conscience
of Chi
vol. 2, The Expansion
Civilization,
of Islam in theMiddle Periods (Chicago: University
A.D.
and Capitalism:
Cen
Fernand Braudel, Civilization
cago Press, 1974), pp. 532-51;
i$th-i8th
trans. Si?n Reynolds
and Row,
(New York: Harper
tury, vol. 3, The Perspective
of theWorld,
1984), pp. 526-27.
35K. K.
in A
Asian Maritime
Pulau Tioman,
and Southeast
Trade,"
"Canton,
Kwan,
Asian Ceramic
Ceramic Legacy of Asia's Maritime
Trade, ed. Southeast
Society
(Singapore:
of the silk
the development
and importance
Oxford
Press, 1985), p. 49. On
University
Trade inWorld History
Cross-Cultural
road, see Philip D. Curtin,
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
and Peri
Interaction
"Cross-Cultural
Press, 1984), pp. 93-96;
Jerry H. Bentley,
University
101 (1996):
inWorld
Review
odization
761-62.
History," American Historical
36
in A
in Sri Lanka,"
in John Carswell,
from Allaippidy
"Chinese Ceramics
Quoted
Ceramic Legacy of Asia's Maritime
Trade, p. 33.
Finlay:
The
Culture
of Porcelain
inWorld
153
History
transparency of glass bottles; water in these vases is visible through them
Eastern potters aspired to
?and
yet they are made of clay!"37 Middle
resources
imitate the Chinese
natural
and
but
their
given
imports,
Because
of
the
formidable
ostacles.
faced
impurities,
technology,
they
natu
not
East
fire
of
Middle
could
which
the
i,ooo?C,
clays
beyond
limit of kilns in the region.38 Potters
rally was also the temperature
a ceramic body made of ground glass and white clay, but the
developed
brittle vessels that resulted looked unsatisfactory
A far more
successful
technique was pioneered
of the Fatimid dynasty (908-1171)
next
to the real thing.
craftsmen
by Egyptian
and developed further in Seljuk
the effect of
(c. 1040-1220)
by potters at Rayy and Kashan:
as
an
was
to a
tin
simulated
oxide
whiteware
by adding
Song
opacifier
tones
the
brownish
of
the
earthenware
clear glaze, thus covering
up
with a soft, matte white.39
of imitation, however, Middle East
the technical difficulties
Beyond
ern potters also faced an aesthetic problem. The sober, monochromatic
ran counter
to an ancient
nature of Song ceramics
tradition of color
Persia
on Middle
Eastern glass and pottery.40 Around
4500
a clear blue by
colored artifical gemstones
craftsmen
inMesopotamia
tinted their wares
using cobalt oxide, and glassmakers
with cobalt about 2,000 years later. In the ninth century ce. Persian
to color glazes as well as to paint over them.41
potters used cobalt
in the twelfth century they began painting designs
in cobalt
Sometime
of their tin-glazed products. The proper
blue on the white background
and decoration
B.c.E. Egyptian
37
in Temple, The Genius of China, p. 91; see Voyage du marchand arabe Sulayman
Quoted
en Inde et en Chine,
Ferrand
(Paris: Editions
Bossard,
r?dig? en 851, trans. Gabriel
1992).
38Ahmad
R. Hill,
Y. Al-Hasan
and Donald
Islamic Technology
Cambridge
(Cambridge:
and Vandiver,
Ceramic Masterpieces,
Press, 1986), pp. 169-70; Kingery
p. 40.
University
Middle
that cannot be dealt with here.
Eastern pottery had a very complex
development
to Late Twelfth Centuries
See Helene
Islamic
Philon, Early Islamic Ceramics: Ninth
(London:
Lustre Pottery: Technique,
Art Publications,
and Inno
Tradition,
1980); Alan Caiger-Smith,
vation in Islam and theWestern World
(London: Faber and Faber, 1985).
39Alan
Tin-Glaze
Pottery in Europe and the Islamic World: The Tradition of
Caiger-Smith,
1000 Years inMaiolica,
Faience, and Delftware
(London: Faber and Faber, 1973), pp. 45-46.
See also R. B. Mason
and M. S. Tite,
"The Beginning
of Tin-Opacification
of Pottery
account
For an early fourteenth-century
of
39 (1997):
Glazes,"
Archaeometry
41-58.
in Persia, see J.W Allan, Abu'l-Qasim's
ceramic manufacture
Treatise on Ceramics
(Oxford:
Ashmolean
Museum,
1973).
40Marina
D. Whitman,
2
"Persian Blue-and-White
Ceramics:
of Chinoiserie,"
Cycles
(Ph.D. diss., New York University,
1978), 1:25.
41
Ceramic Masterpieces,
and Vandiver,
Blue
pp. 9, 53; Harry Garner, Oriental
Kingery
on
and White
Faber and Faber,
Craftsmen
concentrated
(London:
1970), pp. xviii-xix.
in Persia and withstood
it was readily obtained
cobalt oxide as a coloring
agent because
firing in a kiln far better than other oxides.
vols.
JOURNAL
154
effect was hard to achieve,
to run in the kiln.42
exact dates
Although
cant changes
took place
ceramic traditions of the
with a new
experimented
however,
because
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
the blue decoration
FALL
I998
tended
cannot
it is clear that signifi
be established,
in the two great
during the same centuries
ecumene.
at Jingdezhen
In China,
craftsmen
in the
formula for their qingbai wares, while
Middle
East, under the influence of Song imports, potters created an
innovative
of decoration.
These
glaze and explored new techniques
came together as a result of one of the great
eventually
In
of
the Mongols
launched
their invasion of
1219
history.
cataclysms
Persia. Along
with much
else in Persian cultural
of
life, the potteries
at
into
and
those
Kashan
subsided
Rayy disappeared,
provincialism.43
in 1279, the nomadic
the Southern
After
Song fell to the Mongols
to the Pacific.
ruled an empire that stretched
from Russia
conquerors
on the silk road, and
In 1271 Marco
Polo began his journey to China
developments
seventeen
to return to Venice
years later he took ship from Quanzhou
Persia.
His
of
and
Chinese
Vietnam,
Java, India,
sojourn is the
by way
most
intense
of
the
famous
cross-cultural
that
example
exchange
on
achieve
flowed from the great Mongol
conquests.44 Building
Song
even
China
became
under the Yuan dynasty of the Mongols
ments,
overseas
more
with
often
Muslim
linked
regions,
through
closely
for
officials
and traders. Chinese
merchants
government
competed
commerce
with
Indians and Persians,
and Chinese
seaborne
junks
the ships carried large amounts of
sailed the Indian Ocean.45 Naturally,
porcelain.
in China
East in the
and the Middle
and craftsmen
Entrepreneurs
a
centuries
in
thirteenth
col
and early fourteenth
remarkable
engaged
laboration
that brought the ceramic traditions of the two regions closer
trading diaspora,
together than ever before. As part of an international
42
The Chinese
"The Technical
Problems
of Copying
Potter, p. 177; Hodges,
Medley,
in The Westward
in Tin Glaze,"
Porcelains
Influence of the Chinese Arts from the
Foundation
of Chinese
Percival David
Art,
(London:
1973), pp.
14th to the 18th Century
79-87.
43Arthur
Lane, Later Islamic Pottery, 2nd ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1971), pp. xiv,
in the Gulf: The nth
"Maritime
Trade
and 12th Centuries,"
6-8; David Whitehouse,
Chinese
World
Tin-Glaze
14 (1983): 328-34;
Pottery, p. 44.
Archaeology
Caiger-Smith,
44See
in
Contacts
and Exchanges
Cross-Cultural
Jerry H. Bentley, O?d World Encounters:
Pre-Modern Times
Press, 1993), pp. 141-49; Thomas T Alisen,
(Oxford: Oxford University
"Ever Closer Encounters:
of Culture
The Appropriation
and the Apportionment
of Peoples
1 (1997): 2-23.
in the Mongol
Empire," Journal of Early Modern History
45
as a Sea Power during the Late Sung and
of China
Lo, "The Emergence
Jung-pang
to
and East-West
Trade from the Tenth
Shipping
Early Yuan Periods," p. 95; and "Chinese
the Fourteenth
Century,"
p. 170.
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
155
in Quanzhou
the initiative. On the one
merchants
provided
in the
for
knew
about
the
market
hand,
pottery
high-quality
they
East as well as about the frustrating attempts by Persian potters
Middle
to use cobalt
in ceramic decoration.
On the other hand, they recog
an improved ceramic
had
nized that the Jingdezhen
potters
developed
an
for
sufficient strength
that
offered
decoration
and
ideal
surface
body
to replicate
in pottery
the massive
metal
basins and platters
that
as
in
East
standard
utensils.46
the
the
Middle
used
Moreover,
people
Muslim
were famed for their riches, filled
merchants
homes of the Quanzhou
Eastern metalwork
that could serve Chinese
with Middle
potters as
as
sources
and
textiles
of
Islamic
with
models,
carpets
design. To
along
even
oxide
for
could
with
cobalt
decoration,
experiment
they
provide
in
the potters with samples of the ore, which was sold as a medicine
craftsmen
found that the
apothecary
shops. The Jingdezhen
the
cobalt
from
of
their
viscosity
diffusing
during
glazes prevented
to be executed
intricate designs
in
the most
firing, thereby allowing
blue on white.47
Muslim
For many decades to come, the Quanzhou
merchants
imported sub
of processed
cobalt oxide (or smalt) from Persia to
stantial quantities
it was a jealously guarded industrial asset at Jingdezhen,
China, where
known as huihui qing (Muslim blue) and sumali qing (from the Arabic
"sky-colored")-48 The scale and far-reaching nature of the enter
ore shipped over 6,000 kilometers
from the Middle
East
prise?refined
wares manufactured
to China,
in bulk at Jingdezhen
customized
for
in world history,
Islamic markets?were
and provide
unprecedented
in the
interaction
of commercial
and technological
striking evidence
ecumene during the years of the Pax Mong?lica
and after.
venture. The Muslim merchants
It was also a highly profitable
of
were
for the great investment
of capi
Quanzhou
probably
responsible
into well
tal that transformed
the privately owned kilns of Jingdezhen
industrial complexes
controlled
organized
by commercial
syndicates.
was inadvertently
in the Ming
The
transformation
reinforced
period
samawi,
46
in The Westward
and Islamic Design,"
"Chinese Ceramics
Margaret Medley,
Influence
the
Chinese Arts, pp. 2-3; The Chinese Potter, pp. 170-71; Addis,
"Porcelain-Stone
and
of
on Blue-and-White
Influence
Kaolin,"
pp. 58-60; Adrian
Porcelain,"
Joseph, "The Mongol
in Jingdezhen Wares: The Yuan Evolution
of Hong
Ceramic
(Hong Kong: Oriental
Society
Kong,
1985), pp. 44-49
47
"Chinese
and Islamic Design,"
Ceramics
Oriental
Blue and
p. 2; Garner,
Medley,
p. 2.
White,
48Clarence
in the Asian
F. Shangraw,
"Fifteenth Century
Blue-and-White
Porcelain
16 (1985): 34-46; Liu Xinyuan,
Art Museum
of San Francisco," Orientations
"Yuan Dynasty
in The Porcelains
Official Wares
from Jingdezhen,"
of
of Jingdezhen, pp. 36-37. On varieties
cobalt and their sources, see He Li, Chinese Ceramics
(New York: Rizzoli,
1996), pp. 211-12.
JOURNAL
i56
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
I998
commuted
labor
by a new tax system (called the "single whip"), which
a flexible
to silver payments,
services by peasants
thereby creating
work
center.49 By the sixteenth
force for the pottery
the
century,
in
that had begun
the late Yuan period had made Jingdezhen
changes
in the world, with over 1,000 kilns,
the largest industrial operation
a
and
that anticipated
modern
70,000 workers,
process
production
A sophisticated
methods
of assembly-line
manufacture.
division of labor
of quality along with a great increase in
made possible
improvement
insistent on the finest wares,
the imperial court
Always
production.
at a time. P?re Fran?ois
ordered as many as 105,000 pieces of porcelain
a
in the early eigh
Xavier d'Entrecolles,
Jesuit who visited Jingdezhen
teenth century, declared
that uone thinks that the whole city is on fire,
or that it is one large furnace with many vent holes."50
in blue and white
first decorated
around the
Jingdezhen
porcelain
of
the
fourteenth
Until
the
last
of
the
century.
part
century,
beginning
it mainly
for export to the Middle
East and Southeast
potters made
accus
to a domestic market
it seemed vulgar and ostentatious
Asia;
tomed
celain
to austere Song whitewares
and greenwares.
won
over
the
finally
imperial court under
thetic
values
Blue-and-white
por
the Xuande
emperor
of the early Ming
(r. 1426-35)
period. By that time, the taste of the
on ceramics
as
to regard painted
elite had been educated
decoration
more significant
and pleasing
than glaze tone or body shape.51 In effect,
to pottery
the standards of expressive
and
painting
by thus applying
aes
the
those of sculpture,
the Chinese
traditional
rejecting
adopted
of the Middle
East.
of blue-and-white
huge quantities
Jingdezhen
produced
porcelain
as large dishes, wine
for export. The potters turned out utensils?such
49
in Seventeenth-Century
and Decoration,"
"Trade, Craftsmanship,
Margaret
Medley,
Va.: Art Services
Porcelain from the Butler Family Collection
(exh. cat.) (Alexandria,
The Single
system, see Liang Fang-chung,
International,
1990), pp. 12-13. On the taxation
in China
Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1956). On
(Cambridge,
Whip Method
of Taxation
see Dennis
O. Flynn and Arturo
of China
and silver in the Ming
the importance
period,
in 1571" Journal ofWorld
ofWorld
Trade
"Born with a 'Silver Spoon': The Origin
Gir?ldez,
Chinese
History 6 (1995): 201-21.
50 "The Letters
of P?re
in Robert
translated
Tichane,
d'Entrecolles,"
Ching-te-chen:
for Glaze Research,
Views of a Porcelain City (New York: New York State Institute
1983), p.
in the original French
in Bushell, Description
60. The
letters are available
of Chinese Pottery
see Michael
of Jingdezhen,
and Porcelain,
On the organization
Dillon,
pp. 181-222.
"Jing
dezhen as a Ming
Industrial Center," Ming Studies 6 (1978): 37-44.
51
The Chinese
"Beloved
Duncan
Blue and
Macintosh,
Potter, pp. 178-91;
Medley,
to the Porcelains
Orientations
of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties,"
White:
An
Introduction
4
in
scroll painting
and porcelain
between
painting
36-38. On the close relationship
(I973):
see Roderick Whitfield,
Plants and Insects inChinese
Fascination
the Yuan period,
of Nature:
2 vols.
(Seoul, Korea: Yekyong
Painting and Ceramics
of the Yuan Dynasty
(1279-1368),
Publications,
1993).
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
157
bottles, basins, platter stands, and
jars, ewers, tankards, gourd-shaped
were alien to Chinese
massive vases?that
taste.52 They decorated many
items with designs from Islamic culture, such as arabesques,
vine-and
But
leaf motifs, and renditions of Arabic
calligraphy.
although
they had
to the Middle
Eastern cause of painted decoration,
the
been converted
own
their
drew
traditional
Chinese
upon
generally
kaleidoscopic
repertoire for compositions,
mainly
lotus, camellia, and morning
glory),
and
and peacock),
dragon, heron,
the peony,
plant forms (including
animal forms (such as the phoenix,
scores of auspicious
emblems
from
and Daoism.53
of blue-and-white
Indeed, the 200 years from the appearance
por
a
encounter
celain to the sixteenth
witnessed
remarkable
and
century
two
the
accommodation
between
and design tradi
great calligraphic
tions of the ecumene.54 Since those traditions had developed
largely in
Buddhism
isolation
from each other,
aesthetic
quite different
they embodied
values. The
Islamic approach
symmetry, mathematically
emphasized
and detailed
enrichment
of sur
space, rectilinear
patterns,
organized
a
sense
conventions
face. Chinese
stressed asymmetry,
of space,
flowing
curvilinear
naturalism,
(such
patterns, and rotating directional
designs
as cloud, wave, and lotus scrolls). The contrast
is epitomized
by Islamic
units of Kufic
metalwork
embellished
with
script and a
interlocking
cranes
a
Chinese
frame. The two
painting of
flying toward the edge of
traditions
learned
Persian
from
potters, when
in the fifteenth
patterns
of movement
and space,
taneity and dynamism
each other, however.
and
Syrian,
Egyptian,
blue-and-white
they began copying Chinese
century, slowly adopted a more liberated sense
opening up their designs to some of the spon
that characterized
the Chinese
tradition.55
In
52
"Some Characteristic
Wares
of the Yuan Dynasty,"
TOCS
29 (1954-55):
John Ayers,
in the Palace
Blue-and-White
Porcelain
69-83;
"Yongle and Xuande
Feng Xianming,
18 (1987): 56-71.
Orientations
Museum,"
53
The Chinese Potter, pp. 180?82.
Medley,
54On
see Medley,
the following,
"Chinese
Ceramics
and Islamic Design,"
pp. 3-5;
in Blue and Red Decorated
"The Yuan-Ming
Transformations
Porcelains
of China,"
Ars
on Chinese
Orientalis
of Near Eastern Metalwork
9 (1973): 97; Basil Gray, "The Influence
18 (1940-41):
TOCS
"The Islamic Potter and China,"
47-60; Yolanda Crowe,
For comparison
of the Chinese
and Islamic calligraphic
tradi
103 (1976): 298-301.
see Oleg Grabar, The Mediation
Princeton
(Princeton:
Press,
of Ornament
University
116.
1992), pp. 55-58,
55On Persian
at the court of the Timurid
blue-and-white
earthenware
produced
dy
see Thomas W
Lentz and Glenn
D. Lowry, Timur and the Princely
nasty
(1378-1506),
in the Fifteenth Century
Vision: Persian Art and Culture
Los Angeles
(Los Angeles:
County
Museum
of Art,
Ernest J.Grube,
"Timurid Ceramics:
1989), pp. 108, 228-29;
Filling a Gap
in the Ceramic History
of the Islamic World,"
TOCS
East
58 (1993-94):
77-86. On Middle
ern adaptation
see Marina
D. Whitman,
of Chinese
"The Scholar,
the Drinker,
and
design,
Ceramics,"
Apollo
tions,
the Ceramic
Pot-Painter,"
cilla P. Soucek
(University
in Content and Context
Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania
ed. Pris
of Visual Arts in the Islamic World,
State University
Press, 1988), pp. 255-61.
JOURNAL
158
the course
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
I998
because
they were deco
craftsmen?partly
than
before?embraced
elements
of Islamic
larger objects
such as banded ornamentation
and stricter regulation
of
of time, Chinese
rating much
composition,
space.
ceramics had influenced
Chinese
Although
at least the time of the
from
elsewhere
pottery
intensified
and expanded
after the
impact greatly
was
it
Above
blue-and-white
with
all,
porcelain,
design
adopted
principles
shaped ceramic traditions
and Ceramic
Porcelain
from
the Middle
East,
the ecumene.
throughout
Traditions
in the
the development
of
that
Tang dynasty,
fourteenth
century.
a color scheme and
that most powerfully
Ecumene
Wherever
Chinese
porcelain was traded and used, it greatly influenced
to this generaliza
local ceramic traditions.
India is the only exception
never
even
it
fell
of
for
under
the
tion,
porcelain,
though
spell
immense
Middle
celain,
Hindu
to the
amounts of porcelain
passed through the subcontinent
of Muslims,
Indians did not use por
East. Except for a minority
isolated from it. Ancient
and their ceramic traditions remained
notions
of religious pollution
dictated
that utensils made
from
are
cannot
and
thus
be
cleaned,
earthenware,
porous
thoroughly
must be discarded after use. This
to
extended
injunction was naturally
even
in
when
became
available
the
ninth
vessels
century,
they
porcelain
Of course, porcelain was always
though their surface is impermeable.
too expensive
for such casual employment.
Many
scrupulous Hindus
all ceramic utensils and instead used plates made of leaves or
eschewed
which
in every Indian village,
craftsmen made
Small-scale
crockery
local social norms;
red wares that reflected
they were neither
commodities.56
Porcelain was
traded widely nor influenced
by foreign
in the port cities and Muslim
esteemed only among Muslim merchants
aristocrats at the courts of the Delhi
sultanate
and Mughal
(i 206-1526)
metal.
coarse
empire (1526-1707).
In general,
the most
other ceramic
traditions
to Chinese
creative
responses
porcelain
by
arose in regions with a sophisticated
culture
(as characterized
religion, and some
by density of urban life, organized
areas
measure
in relatively
less developed
of literacy), while peoples
sometimes
their native pottery styles altogether. Naturally,
abandoned
56K. N.
and Civilisation
Asia before Europe: Economy
Chaudhuri,
of the Indian Ocean
Press, 1990), pp. 332-33;
University
Cambridge
from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge:
8 (1977): 46-48.
Orientations
S. P. Gupta,
Subcontinent,"
"Pottery of the Indo-Pakistani
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
159
to China
countries
in
closest
felt its effects
the most.
Early
the Koryo dynasty
Korean
encountered
Chinese
potters
(918-1392)
ceramic styles and technology,
and by the eleventh
century they were
wares
even
that
the
Chinese
for
admired
their excellence.57
producing
in
from
the Heian
Chinese
Japan purchased
early
porcelain
period
the
the Kamakura
substantial
During
(645-1185).
period
(1185-1333),
in style
of
Chinese
influenced
pottery
imports
Japanese earthenwares
came
ceramic
and decoration.58
Chinese
and
traditions
much
Japanese
closer late in the Ashikaga
when
Hide
Toyotomi
period (1336-1600)
invasions of 1592 and
yoshi, the ruler of Japan, attacked Korea. The
called "the Potters' Wars"
because
the Japanese
1598 are sometimes
ceramic
hundreds
of
Korean
craftsmen
and brought
them to
captured
in southern
kiln tech
they introduced Chinese
Japan, where
as well as the use of kaolin.59 Japanese pot
nology and craftsmanship,
wares
with Chinese
in Japan and
tery even competed
successfully
in part by its inventive
and color
century,
Europe in the seventeenth
on Chinese
ful variations
styles.60
Kyushu
a sophisticated
Vietnam
also developed
that rep
pottery tradition
a
resented
distinctive
the context of Chinese
In
influence.
style within
the first century of the Common
Era, armies of the Han dynasty con
From that time, even
quered the area that is today northern Vietnam.
when Vietnam
threw off Chinese
control,
namese ceramics paralleled
that of Chinese
the development
of Viet
wares.61 In the early Ming
57Yutaka
in The Radiance
Minio,
Ceramics,"
Dynasty
"Koryo and Choson
of Jade and
the Clarity ofWater: Korean Ceramics
(exh. cat.) (New York: Hud
from theAtaka Collection
son Hills Press, 1991), pp. 27-34; C. St. G. M. Gompertz,
Korean Celadons
and Other Wares
of the Koryo Period (London: Faber and Faber, 1962), pp. 19-20.
58Soame
Faber and Faber,
(London:
pp.
Japanese
Jenyns,
Pottery
164-96;
1971),
in the East and West,"
"The Significance
in Impe
of Chinese
Ceramics
George
Kuwayama,
rial Taste: Chinese Ceramics
Los
(exh. cat.) (Los Angeles:
from the Percival David Foundation
of Art,
Angeles
County Museum
1989), pp. 93-102.
59Oliver
in the First Half of the Seven
Impey, The Early Porcelain Kilns of Japan: Arita
teenth Century
The Art of
(Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1996), pp. 26-27,
57; Tsugio Mikami,
and
(New York: Weatherhill,
Japanese Ceramics
1972), p. 160; Judith H. Day, "Influence
Innovation:
Korean
Potters
and Japanese Ceramics,"
Bulletin of the Oriental
Transplanted
Ceramic
54-58.
Society of Hong Kong 10 (1992-94):
60
in Competition
Oliver
and Tianqi: Arita
and Jingdezhen
for the
Impey, "Shoki-Imari
in Porcelain
in the Second Quarter
of the Seventeenth
Japanese Market
Century," Me
nederlandse
"The
15-29;
dedelingenblad
vereniging van vrienden van de ceramiek 116 (1984):
in Japanese Porcelain,"
in Porcelain for Palaces: The Fashion for Japan in Europe,
1650
Ceramic
1750 (exh. cat.) (London: Oriental
Society,
1990), pp. 18-21; T. Volker, The Japa
nese Porcelain Trade of the Dutch East India Company
after 1683 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1959).
61Roxanna
M. Brown, The Ceramics
Uni
(Kuala Lumpur: Oxford
of South-East Asia
P. Griffing,
Blue and White,"
versity Press, 1977), pp. 16-17; Robert
Jr., "Dating Annanese
Orientations
7 (1976): 32-48.
Trade
i6o
JOURNAL
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
I998
launched an invasion of Viet
period the Yongle emperor (r. 1403-24)
an
unsuccessful
but as a result of the conflict
nam,
venture,
ultimately
to production
Vietnamese
shifted entirely
of blue-and-white
potters
in Tonkin
Merchants
in
earthenware.
pottery
exported Vietnamese
Chinese
styles to Japan and Southeast Asia, while craftsmen made tiles
in blue and white
court of Majapahit.62
for the Hindu-Javanese
In the
late sixteenth century entrepreneurs
ceramics
shipped some Vietnamese
to Persia, where potters copied their designs?in
fact, mainly variations
on themes
taken from fifteenth-century
Persian
pieces?onto
Ming
whose decorative
earthenware
patterns also came in part from Chinese
In turn, Chinese
potters sometimes
porcelain.
copied Vietnamese
styles
onto their own exports to Southeast Asia.63
The Thai people of the lower Mekong
basin lived far enough from
to escape invasion yet close enough
to benefit from the impact
China
of Chinese
culture
and technology.
Chinese
merchants
exported
a
soon
to
after
there in the ninth
porcelain
polity emerged
Angkor
and Sisatchanalai
and kilns at Sukhothai
vessels
century,
produced
to China,
that owed much
with
for
the
tiles
along
glazed
temple com
the Yuan period Chinese
potters
plexes of the Thai kingdom. During
even migrated
to Thailand,
and
where
they set up kilns at Sukhothai
Thai wares sold well in maritime
then at Sawankhalok.
Southeast Asia
in Thai
for a time, but by the sixteenth
century political
disruption
land and an increase
an
in Chinese
trade ceramics
brought
the exports
to
end.64
in a dramatically
Southeast Asia responded
different way
The peoples of the
than did Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.
first came into contact with Chinese
pottery during the
archipelago
own
Since
their
crude
kilns
only unglazed
Tang dynasty.
produced
Maritime
to porcelain
earthenware
(or terra-cotta),
they enormously
admired
the high-quality
62
Traditions
Press,
(Oxford: Oxford
University
John Guy, Ceramic
of South-East Asia
and Guy, "Cultural Relations
and Asian Trade: The Vietnamese
Wall
1989), pp. 42, 51-54;
in Southeast Asian Archaeology
Tiles of Majapahit,"
(Ox
1986, ed. Ian and Emily Glover
Hiromu
ford: BAR
Honda
and Noriki
International
Shimazu,
Series,
1990), pp. 275-85;
Vietnamese
and Chinese
Ceramics
Used
in the Japanese
Tea Ceremony
(Singapore:
Oxford
Press, 1993).
University
63
Seok Chee,
"Persian
Blue-and-White
Whitman,
Ceramics,"
1:141-42;
Eng-Lee
in Trade Ceramics,"
Arts of Asia
and Mimicry
17 (1987): 88.
"Adaptations
64Hiroshi
in the Southeast Asian
Fujiwara, Khmer Ceramics
from the Kamratan Collection
Oxford
Ceramics
Museum,
Press,
pp. 6-7; Guy,
Kyoto
University
1990),
(Singapore:
"The Dating
of
Ceramic Traditions of South-East Asia, pp. 16-17,
28-36; Hiram Woodward,
Ceramics:
Some Considerations,"
Sukhothai
and Sawankhalok
Journal of the Siam Society
66 (1978):
1-7.
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
161
Chinese
imports and came to scorn their own crockery.65 The substan
that litter
tial nature of the trade is revealed by the shards of porcelain
the beaches of Southeast Asia and lie buried inmiddens in the high
An English
and the Philippines.66
traveler
lands of Sumatra, Borneo,
in
in the isolated Andaman
the
of
Islands
(in
1613
Bay
Bengal)
a little ile wee founde a greate percell
of
"Heere uppon
reported,
.. From whence
it was come
of sortes..
broken porseleyn of all manner
wee coulde not knowe,
for wee sawe no signe att all of any junckes or
there have bene caste awaye."67 Chinese
imports
shipps which might
native
ceramic
for porcelain,
devastated
traditions,
along with Chi
and Thailand,
earthenwares
from Vietnam
locally
replaced
nese-style
such as marriage
all
cultural
made crockery
for
functions,
important
were typical: beginning
in the
The Philippines
and burial ceremonies.
a
a
to
dealt
deathblow
tradi
flood of Chinese
Song period,
porcelain
tons
the thousands of
of porcelain
shards
tional pottery styles. Given
in the islands, the period of Filipino history
from the Tang
excavated
at Cebu
to the arrival of the Spanish
in 1565 has been termed "the
Porcelain
Age."68
of porcelain
the
rather than invigorated
advent
destroyed
there was an enormous
traditions of the archipelago
because
and maritime
South
cultural and technological
gap between China
east Asia.
It is clear that many tribes there regarded pottery in the con
text of the supernatural world. Like peoples
in early Mesopotamian
The
ceramic
and Chinese
civilization,
they
looked
upon
the
seemingly
magical
65
in the Age of Commerce,
vol. 1, The Lands
Reid, Southeast Asia
1450-1680,
Anthony
Yale University
below theWinds
Press, 1988), p. 104; John S. Guy, Oriental
(New Haven:
to Sixteenth Centuries,
in South-East Asia, Ninth
with a Catalogue
Trade Ceramics
of Chinese,
in Australian
and Thai Wares
Oxford University
Collections
Vietnamese,
Press,
(Singapore:
and P. M. Shariffuddin,
1986), pp. 4-22; Barbara Harrisson
"Sungai Lumut: A 15th Cen
Brunei Museum
Journal 1 (1969): 47-48.
tury Burial Ground,"
66Abu
inMuara
in Proceedings
Ceramics
Found
"The Chinese
Ridho,
Jambi, Sumatra,"
Sciences inAsia and North Africa,
ed. Yamamoto
of Human
of the 31st International Congress
Tatsuro
C. Zainie and Tom Harrisson,
1984), pp. 420-21;
(Tokyo: Toho Bakkai,
"Early Chi
nese Stonewares
in Sarawak,
Excavated
Sarawak Museum
Journal 30 (1967): 30
1947-67,"
in Guangdong
Ceramics
90; Rita C. Tan, "Vestiges of the Nanhai
Trade,"
from Butuan and
M. Brown
Other Philippine Sites (exh. cat.), ed. Roxanna
Ceramic
(Manila: Oriental
Society
of the Philippines,
1989), pp. 29-33.
67Peter Floris: His
to the East Indies in the Globe,
ed. W H. More
Voyage
1611-1615,
land (London: Hakluyt
Society,
1934), p. 108.
68
in Southeast
"Notes on Chinese
Michael
Sullivan,
Asia," TOCS
33
Export Wares
de
71-74;
Jesus T. Peralta, Kayamanan:
(1960-62):
Pottery and Ceramics
from the Arturo
Santos Collection
Bank of the Philippines,
and
(Manila: Central
1982), pp. 6-10; Chinese
in the Philippines
Southeast Asian Greenware
Found
Ceramic
(exh. cat.)
(Manila: Oriental
of the Philippines,
Society
1991).
I?2
JOURNAL
OF WORLD
FALL
HISTORY,
I 998
of clay in fire as a metaphor
for divine creation and for
with occult forces.69 To societies
that made only terra
its ethereal qualities
with
and enigmatic
cotta, porcelain,
designs, was
a functional
a
not merely
to be
but
talismanic
substance
commodity
transformation
human contact
in exalted terms. The peoples of the
comprehended
as communal
entities
vessels
imbued with
porcelain
not as utilitarian
articles for the domestic
economy.
the vessels came to the islands as precious
foreign
took on great political
and symbolic
significance.
trade goods)
(and other prestige
who controlled
their distribution,
archipelago
viewed
power,
cosmological
since
Furthermore,
commodities,
they
Porcelain
utensils
and power on those
conferred wealth
while
their mysterious
origin in dis
realms enhanced
their value.70 As a consequence
of their
tant, potent
about
and
because
Chinese
ceramics,
assumptions
imports so
precisely
local
the
inhabitants
of mari
traditions,
pottery
thoroughly
displaced
more
time Southeast
into
Asia
their
integrated porcelain
thoroughly
culture than did any other people.
This
is suggested by the scene that greeted Ferdinand Magellan's
survivors
in the Victoria when
in
Borneo
they reached northwestern
men
at
after
the
commander
and
other
had
been
killed
1521, just
forty
Cebu. Ranks of warriors carrying porcelain
jars draped in silk welcomed
a feast on "china
the Spaniards,
and women
later served the mariners
more
dishes."71 Those
ceremonial
involved
than
just bringing
displays
out the best tableware for guests: the natives
the
apparently
employed
a
to
force
of
their
establish
harmonious
apotropaic
porcelain
footing
with
radiated
strangers. Chinese
"dragon jars" (martarban)
unsettling
saw
in
of
Borneo
and
the
them
the
power;
peoples
Philippines
magical
terms. The jars were given names,
to each
into clans, married
inducted
69See
P. R. S. Moorey,
Ancient Mesopotamian
Materials
and Industries (Oxford: Claren
Karen D. Vitelli,
and the Shaping
of
"Pots, Potters,
Press,
1994), pp. 147, 162-63;
in The Emergence
inAncient
and Innovation
Greek Neolithic
Society,"
of Pottery: Technology
K. Barnett
D.C.:
Smithsonian
and John W. Hoopes
ed. William
Societies,
(Washington,
Institution
Press, 1995), pp. 61-62;
John Hay, Kernels of Energy, Bones of Earth: The Rock in
in America,
Institute
Chinese Art (exh. cat.) (New York: China
1986), pp. 44, 54, 56. For
see Nicholas
in contemporary
and Kodzo
West Africa,
similar notions
David,
Judy Sterner,
don
Current Anthropology
29 (1988): 365-89.
Gavua,
"Why Pots Are Decorated,"
70On
see Leonard
Y. Andaya,
The World
power and trade goods,
of Maluku:
political
of Hawai'i
Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modem
Period (Honolulu:
Press, 1993),
University
see Mary W
On
and trade goods,
Helms,
pp. 177-78.
"Essay on
symbolic
significance
in Implicit Understandings:
of Distance
Made Tangible,"
Observing,
Objects:
Interpretations
on the Encounters
in the Early
between Europeans
and Other Peoples
and Reflecting
Reporting,
Modern
Era,
355-77.
71Antonio
Henry
Stanley
ed. Stuart
B. Schwartz
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
The First Voyage Round
the World
Pigafetta,
(London: Hakluyt
1874), p. 115.
Society,
University
by Magellan,
Press,
ed.
1994),
and
pp.
trans.
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
163
and passed down
buried with ceremony,
through generations;
one another,
were
seen
to
turn into animals and
chase
converse,
they
forest spirits, take human
form, heal the sick, tell fortunes, and issue
other,
prophecies.72
The Pala'wan
Borneo
and the
Island, between
people of Palawan
stars striking the earth gave birth
believed
that shooting
Philippines,
to porcelain
in the Philip
from the region of Abra
jars. The Tinguian
name
of that
pines and the Ifugao from the province
regarded the jars
as gifts from gods who lived in the sky and in local caves. The Tagba
nuwa
on Palawan
Island summoned
deities and spirits to tribal feasts
across
jars to give a musical
ring. Blowing
by tapping their porcelain
the tops of the vessels produced
vibrating moans, which were read as
divine warnings
of Borneo
rubbed
against calamity.73 The Melanau
coconut oil from small porcelain
jars on the bodies of married
couples
to ensure fertility. The nearby Kelabit
pots from the
hung Chinese
so that
rafters of their homes
the heads of their enemies
along with
the spiritual energy of the latter would
into the con
be drained
tainers. Warriors
to offer
used seventeenth-century
Chinese
flasks
in Borneo placed Chi
libations to enemy heads. The Iban of Sarawak
nese ceramics
at the base of carved poles from which
the heads of
were
enemies
and the Punan Ba adorned
their carved
suspended,
to celebrate
funeral columns with porcelain
the heroic
loss of fellow
a
warriors.74 In short, porcelain
in
central
role
whole
the
played
cycle
of existence
in maritime
Southeast
Asia?birth,
marriage,
feasting,
combat, and death.
The Chinese
and other commodities
ships that brought porcelain
to the archipelago
to the littoral of East Africa,
sometimes
continued
the western
realm that stretched
from the
edge of the great maritime
72Atremio
C. Barbosa,
in A Thousand
"Heirloom
Rituals,"
Jars in Philippine
Stoneware Jars in the Philippines
(Manila: Jars Collectors,
1992), pp. 70-94; Barbara
son, Pusaka: Heirloom
Jars of Borneo
Press, 1986).
(Singapore: Oxford University
in maritime
Southeast
Asia.
dragon and phoenix
designs were especially
popular
to Twentieth Centuries
bara Harrisson,
in South-East Asia:
Later Ceramics
Sixteenth
Press, 1995), p. 35. On dragon
Lumpur: Oxford University
jars see Eine Moore,
Years of
Harris
Jars with
See Bar
(Kuala
"A Sug
of Stonewares
Classification
of Martabani
Sarawak Museum
Journal 36-37
Type,"
(1970):
1-78.
73
"Heirloom
Barbosa,
Rituals,"
Jars in Philippine
pp. 76-77,
80; Michael
Sullivan,
"Notes on Chinese
in Southeast
Asia," TOCS
33 (1960-62):
Export Wares
63; Fay-Cooper
in the Philippines
Field Museum
of Natural
Cole, Chinese Pottery
(Chicago:
History,
1912),
pp. 11-12.
74
"Ceramics
and Their Uses among the Coastal Mela
Tutong Kaboy and Eine Moore,
in
"Chinese Ceramics
naus," Sarawak Museum
Journal 30-31
10-29; Lucas China,
(1967):
11 (1980):
Pusaka: Heirloom
Sarawak," Orientations
Jars of Borneo, pp.
34-36; Harrisson,
gested
25-28.
JOURNAL
164
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
1998
amounts of porcelain
and the Spice
Islands.75 Substantial
Philippines
on
coast
in
the
Swahili
the
fourteenth
century. Peddlers
began arriving
traded some of it inland, perhaps as far as the Upper Niger
region of
as in the Philippines
West Africa. Here,
and Borneo,
foreign wares
to the Zam
From
Horn
made
the
of
Africa
displaced
locally
crockery.
some
access
to Chinese
fortune
their
bezi,
forty ports measured
good
by
a
town
ruin
the
of
north of
pottery. A Swahili
poet thus lamented
now
"Where once the porcelain
stood in the wall niches,
wild birds nestle their fledgings."76
Shards of porcelain,
earth
along with pieces of Chinese-influenced
enware from the Middle
carved coral deco
East, replaced elaborately
ration on Muslim
tombs and holy places.77 At many
sacred sites
associated with ancestors
and honored
dead, such as caves and rock
and members
of other faiths left porcelain
vessels as
shelters, Muslims
serve
as
to
to
for answered
recompense
spirits and
propitiate
offerings
Mombasa:
in the mid-fifteenth
of blue-and-white
porcelain
to employ
it as decoration
in the vaults of
worshipers
as in spandrels and architraves
of mihrabs.78 Muslims
mosques,
decorated
the fa?ade of a large domed
tomb on Pate Island (now in
northern
Chinese
and Middle
Kenya) with pieces of blue-and-white
in the roof of a fif
Eastern wares, and they set blue-and-white
pottery
in Kilwa,
south of Dar es Salaam.79 Porcelain
teenth-century
building
the base of the Great Pillar of Malindi,
and a frieze of
pieces encircled
The
prayers.
century
Ming
arrival
impelled
as well
bowls
topped
the Great
Pillar
of Mambrui,
north
of Malindi.
75See Neville
"East Africa
and the Orient:
Ports and Trade before the Arrival
Chittick,
in Historical
Relations across the Indian Ocean
of the Portuguese,"
(Ghent: UNESCO,
1980),
p. 13.
76Peter S.
in the Dating
"The Value of Imported Ceramics
and Interpretation
Garlake,
of the Rhodesian
Iron Age," Journal of African History
9 (1968):
13-33; J- J- L. Duyvendak,
China's Discovery
Sassoon,
(London: Arthur
Probsthain,
1949), pp. 5-26; Caroline
of Africa
Chinese
Sites in Kenya: Aspects
Porcelain Marks
of Trade in the Indian Ocean,
from Coastal
is quoted
X?V-X?X Centuries
Series,
(Oxford: BAR International
1978), pp. 1-7. The poem
in East Africa
in Gervase Mathew,
Porcelain
and on the Coast of South Arabia,"
"Chinese
2 (1956): 54.
Sheriff, Slaves,
Empire into theWorld
Oriental Art
77Abdul
Spices, and Ivory in Zanzibar:
Integration of an East African Com
(London:
1770-1873
1987), p. 15. On
Economy,
James Currey,
the Middle
Al-Hind:
connections
The Making
with
East, see Andr? Wink,
of
Cen
India and the Expansion
the Indo-Islamic World,
vol. 1, Early Medieval
of Islam, jth-nth
turies (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), pp. 25-33.
78Peter S.
The Early Islamic Architecture
Garlake,
(Nairobi:
of the East African Coast
mercial
East African
Oxford
Press, 1966), pp. 36, 47, 62-63.
University
79
H. Okello
"Islam on the Kenyan Coast: An Overview
of the Ken
Abungu,
George
in Sacred Sites, Sacred Places,
L. Carmichael,
ed. David
Sacred
Sites,"
yan Coastal
Jane
Schanche
Brian Reeves,
and Audhild
Hubert,
(London: Routledge,
1994), pp. 159-60;
2
on
vols. (Nairobi:
Kilwa: An Islamic Trading City
the East African Coast,
Neville
Chittick,
in Eastern Africa,
British
Institute
1:306-309.
1974),
The
Finlay:
Culture
of Porcelain
inWorld
165
History
Broken Chinese
century adorned the bases of
pots of the seventeenth
inMombasa.
In the sixteenth
Pillar and a nearby mosque
the Mbaraki
were
set into the
imitations
of
Chinese
century, Portuguese
porcelain
a town between Malindi
at Mnarani,
and
walls of the Small Mosque
on Muslim
as ornamentation
Mombasa.80
This use of ceramics
holy
places may have come to East Africa with pilgrims from India, after
it became
which
imbued with local occult notions.81
in
East Africa
and its
both
and the archipelago,
Clearly,
porcelain
in
imitations permeated
In
life.
the
Middle
contrast,
porcelain
spiritual
to religion, employed
East and Europe remained marginal
only as an
on mosques
material
and churches,
apparently
connotations
of
power. Chinese
por
by
supernatural
unaccompanied
after 1500 had an impact similar to what it had had
celain in the West
centuries
earlier in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.
It profoundly
reshaped
ceramic traditions and entered cultural life as an exotic manifestation
occasional
of high
The Rise
decorative
civilization.
of Chinese
Porcelain
in the West
on tin-glazed
innovation
Middle
Eastern
of painted
decoration
at both poles of the
ceramic
earthenware
revolutionized
traditions
ecumene.
In China,
it led to the creation of blue-and-white
porcelain,
in the West,
it transformed
while
the coarse brown earthenware
that
had been virtually
the only pottery made
there since the fall of the
The
Roman empire.82 From the thirteenth
Eastern tin-glaz
century Middle
to
in
and
decoration
ing
inspired potters
painted
Europe
reconceptualize
to
their craft, to turn from producing mundane,
utilitarian
crockery
vessels
with
vivid
colors
and
Western
decoration.
making
imaginative
a level of mastery
it possible
that made
for
potters
thereby achieved
of copying Chinese
them to take on the challenge
after
porcelain
1500.
The
80
Middle
Eastern
techniques
reached M?laga
in Andaluc?a
in
"The Great Pillars of Malindi
and Mambrui,"
Oriental Art 4 (1958):
James Kirkman,
"Islam on the Kenyan Coast,"
p. 155; Garlake,
Early Islamic Architecture,
55-67; Abungu,
p. 56.
81
See Klaus
"Citations
and Copies
of Islamic and Buddhist
in
Fischer,
Columns,"
in Honour
and Connoisseur
ed. John Guy
Barrett,
(New
ship: Essays
of Douglas
Delhi:
National
Centre
for the Arts,
Indira Gandhi
1995), pp. 263-75.
82
On the Greco-Roman
for glass over pottery
see
for high-grade
tableware,
preference
S. A. M. Adshead,
in Europe and China,
Material Culture
The Rise of Consumer
1400-1800:
ism (New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1997), pp. 163-64.
Indian Art
i66
JOURNAL
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
1998
the thirteenth
century, probably carried there by potters from Fatimid
in Valencia
of the methods
Egypt. Knowledge
spread north to Manises
next
the
and
the
fifteenth
merchants
century,
century
by
during
early
to Italy large quantities
in "His
there exported
of earthenware
vessels
were
In
of
fact,
parts
pano-Moresque"
style.83
Italy already
acquainted
with
earthenware
because
of imports from Egypt, North
tin-glazed
a
custom
reminiscent
and Andalucian
In
of the warrior
Africa,
Spain.
columns of Borneo and the Islamic pillars of the Swahili coast, Italians
decorated
the walls of churches
and civic monuments
with
lustrous
ceramics
from
realms.84
(called bacini)
foreign
of tin
imports stimulated widespread
Hispano-Moresque
adoption
in
In
and
Italian
Umbria,
however,
potters added
Tuscany
Italy.
glazing
vivid colors?rich
the floral patterns
and oranges?when
greens, yellows,
they copied
and arabesques
of the Spanish
vessels. From the
conven
century
they also used Renaissance
early sixteenth
pictorial
scenes on
tions drawn from paintings
and engravings
for decorative
new
istoriato (story-painted)
elevated
the
ceramics.85 The
pottery
in
who
of
the
of
earthenware
eyes
patrons,
sophisticated
respectability
came to regard clay as a noble substance, worthy of admittance
to the
realm of art. In I tre libri delVarte del vasaio (1557), the first major Euro
assures his
pean treatise on the art of pottery, Cipriano
Piccolpasso
..
.
not
of earthen
will
diminish
the
readers that "the making
pots
greatness and worth" of princes.86
in
The Italian tradition of tin-glazed earthenware
reached Antwerp
Guido
di
the early sixteenth
carried
there
Savino
(known
century,
by
83
Rossell?
"The
Tin-Glaze
82; Guillermo
pp. 53-72,
Bordoy,
Caiger-Smith,
Pottery,
in Al-Andalus:
The Art of Islamic Spain (exh. cat.), ed. Jerrilynn D.
of al-Andalus,"
Ceramics
of Art,
earthen
Museum
Dodds
(New York: Metropolitan
1992), pp. 191-205.
Tin-glazed
as maiolica
ware is known
in France, and delftware
in Holland
in Spain and Italy, faience
are only relatively minor
differences
and England. There
among these types.
84H.
en M?diterran?e
occi
"The 'Bacini' of North
Blake,
Italy," La c?ramique m?di?vale
de la Recherche
si?cle (Paris: Centre National
dentale: Xe-XVe
1980), pp. 93
Scientifique,
Ceramiche
imp?rtate dalla Spagna nell'area pisana
Tongiorgi,
del Giglio,
"The Pisan
(Florence: AlPinsegna
1985); David Abulafia,
in Papers in
A Historian's
Mediterranean
Bacini and the Medieval
Viewpoint,"
Economy:
Interna
Malone
and Simon
Stoddart
Italian Archaeology
IV, ed. Caroline
(Oxford: BAR
111; Grazieila
dal XII al XV
Berti
and Liana
secoh
tional
Series,
1985), pp. 287-302.
85See
Ceramic Art of the Renaissance
(exh. cat.) (Austin: University
Timothy Wilson,
La majolique de la Renaissance
of Texas Press, 1987); Jeane Giacomotti,
(Paris: Presses Uni
versitaires
de France,
1961).
86
The Three Books of the Potter's Art, ed. and trans. Ronald
Cipriano
Light
Piccolpasso,
2 vols. (London: Scolar Press, 1980), 2:105. On
increased use
bown and A, Caiger-Smith,
"Mantua
and Urbino:
of earthenware
Gonzaga
by the Italian elite, see J. V. G. Mallet,
of Maiolica,"
113 (1981):
162-69;
Apollo
Patronage
Interior (New York: Abrams,
1991), pp. 105-107.
Peter Thornton,
The
Italian Renaissance
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
also as Andries),
identified
in Flanders
167
as a "Venetian
potter" (veneeu
known only drab
Europeans had previously
sienpotbacker) ,87Northern
so they quickly embraced
the vibrant colors made possi
earthenware,
French potters came to Flanders
ble by the technique
of tin-glazing.
in the
and carried the skill back home. When
troops sacked Antwerp
sons fled to England,
infamous Spanish Fury of 1576, three of Guido's
to potteries
in London
and Nor
they introduced
tin-glazing
son
enriched
with
Italian
another
the
and
Flemish
wich;
craft,
brought
variations
in design and color, to the Iberian peninsula.88
After
150 years, then, the Hispano-Moresque
roughly
legacy had
come full circle. Things had changed
in the meantime,
however. The
to Europe
since the voyage of Vasco
of porcelain
da Gama
coming
meant
its
that the new art of tin-glazed
for
all
earthenware,
vitality
was destined
and originality,
for obliteration.
The potters of Lisbon
III with
who greeted Philip
their imitations
of porcelain were on the
where
their craft displaced by the real thing.
verge of having
in Europe,
massive
the
for porcelain
market
however,
Despite
a
not
did
until
after
the
voyage of
century
quantities
begin arriving
came
in
Vasco da Gama,
and when
Dutch
rather
than
they did, they
nor
crown
its
the
Neither
merchants
ob
Portuguese
ships.
Portuguese
or spread it far beyond
of porcelain
tained very large amounts
the
a conse
Iberian peninsula.89 The failure of the Portuguese was mainly
a
coun
at
in
time
of
their
luck
China
bad
that
when
quence
reaching
maritime
looked
merchants
and
trade
upon foreign
try's government
with exceptional
That
with
the
hostility.
policy originated
Hongwu
the founder of the Ming
(r. 1368-98),
emperor
dynasty, who over
to seaborne com
threw the Mongols
and reversed
the commitment
merce
which
China
had
thrived
the
upon
Song and Yuan
during
coast in 1517, it
their
reached
the
Chinese
dynasties.90 Although
ships
87Marcel
"Guido di Savino
and the Earthenware
of Antwerp,"
Laurent,
Burlington
Alver?
Bortolotto
and Claire
"Les
41 (1922):
Dumortier,
288-97;
Angelica
anversoises
'? la fa?on de venise' de la premi?re moiti?
du XVIe
si?cle," Revue
et d'histoire de l'art 59 (1990): 55-74.
belge d'arch?ologie
88
Tin-Glaze
(London:
Pottery, p. 103; Frank Britton, London Delftware
Caiger-Smith,
at Delft,
Faience Production
1987), pp. 18-21; H. P. Fourest, Delftware:
Jonathan Horne,
trans. Katherine Watson
(New York: Rizzoli,
1980), pp. 182-83.
89
see James C. Boya
On
the small quantities
of porcelain
shipped by the Portuguese,
(Baltimore:
jian, Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Habsburgs,
1580-1640
Johns Hopkins
Press, 1993), pp. 48-49,
324.
University
90On
see Edward Dreyer,
the emperor's
of commercial
isolation,
policy
Early Ming
China: A Political History,
(Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1982), pp. 102,
1355-1435
see Robert
of the emperor's policy,
115, 121-22. On consequences
Finlay, "The Maritime
Magazine
majoliques
of Zheng He:
State Power,
and Overseas
Expeditions
Ideology,
Studies inMedieval
and Renaissance History
(forthcoming).
Trade
in Ming
China,"
i68
JOURNAL
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
1998
was
in 1557 that the Portuguese
received
from
permission
only
a
to
the
government
occupy
settlement,
permanent
port
imperial
that became Macao.
The golden age of Portuguese
trade in Asia
fol
became
the commercial
between
lowed, for Macao
China,
linchpin
a generation,
however,
Japan, and the West.91 Within
ships of the
the
or
Dutch East India Company
(Vereenigte Oost-Indische
Compagnie,
in
1602
from
In
Asian
the
trade
VOC) wrested
Portuguese.
leadership
and 1603, Dutch
admirals captured Portuguese
carracks sailing from
Macao with cargoes of lacquer, silk, and porcelain. The auction of the
in Holland
sensation and convinced
caused an international
porcelain
a bow to Portuguese
to begin purchasing
it in China.92 With
the VOC
term kraakporselein
in
the
the
Dutch
coined
the
trade,
precedence
mania
for the imports.93 The Western
for porcelain
(carrack-china)
had begun.
to the end of the
From the beginning
of the seventeenth
century
million
the
VOC
about
43
pieces of porcelain,
eighteenth,
imported
East
while
the English,
and
Danish
Indies Compa
French, Swedish,
were
nies shipped at least 30 million.
mil
There
additional
certainly
were
in official
sizable:
lions not recorded
Individual
cargos
ledgers.94
East India Company,
sank in
the G?teborg,
sailing for the Swedish
near
its
of
home
with
about
thousand
700
1745
port
pieces
porcelain.95
turned out hundreds
of millions
of
In addition,
potteries
European
now
in
imitation
of
all
blue
of
almost
earthenware,
pieces
tin-glazed
rather than in the tradition of Italian polychrome
and-white
porcelain
91
in Asia,
A Political and
The Portuguese
1500-1700:
Empire
Sanjay Subrahmanyam,
Charles
R. Boxer, The Great
Economic History
(London:
1993), pp. 101-105;
Longman,
and the Old Japan Trade,
Annals
(Lisbon: CEHU,
1555-1640
of Macau
Ship from Amacon:
see T'ien-tse
between
the Chinese
and Portuguese,
and conflict
1963). On early contacts
Trade from 1514 to 1644 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), pp. 47-53,
71, 83.
Sino-Portuguese
Chang,
92T.
as Recorded
in the Dagh-Registers
Volker, Porcelain and the Dutch East India Company
Powers
and Other Contemporary
and Deshima
(Leiden: E. J.
of Batavia Castle, Those ofHirado
see
of the VOC,
Trade, p. 112. On creation
Brill,
Sino-Portuguese
1954), p. 22; Chang,
inWorld Trade,
I. Israel, Dutch Primacy
Press,
(Oxford: Clarendon
1585-1740
Jonathan
1989), pp. 67-73.
93See Maura
in theHistory
Kraak Porcelain: A Moment
of Trade (London: Bam
1989), pp. 60-61.
about 5% of all
which
annual profits of 80%-100%,
yielded
represented
In terms of care, concern,
and steady profit,
from Asia during the period.
to the company.
of porcelain
See C. J. A.
that does not reflect the importance
however,
1982), pp. 93, 149, 193.
J?rg, Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade (The Hague: M. Nijhoff,
about 2% of the value of the Asian
After
1717 porcelain
imports of the English
represented
Rinaldi,
boo Publications,
94
Porcelain,
VOC
shipments
See Chinese Export Art and Design
India Company.
(Lon
(exh. cat.), ed. Craig Clunas
and Albert Museum,
don: Victoria
1987), p. 16.
95
(Goteburg:
Imported by the Swedish East India Company
Stig Roth, Chinese Ceramics
12.
Historical
Museum,
1965)^.
Gothenburg
East
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
169
In fact, European
had
for several generations
decoration.96
potters
from Italian copybooks
and engravings,
been taking designs
thereby
to the visual culture of
for the task of responding
themselves
preparing
the Chinese.97
in places as
for blue-and-white
porcelain
Judging by the enthusiasm
as Japan, Borneo, Mombasa,
and
the
different
Istanbul,
Amsterdam,
enormous
ceramic had an intrinsic,
universal
Its
virtually
appeal.98
in the West,
in dining
also stemmed from changes
however,
a population
in
of some 100 million
and elite taste. With
an
offered
market
for
1700, Europe
receptive
high-qual
exceptionally
century most people still used trenchers of
ity pottery. In the sixteenth
from horn and ash
wood
and bread, as well as drinking
cups made
wood.
In England,
earthenware
mugs replaced "black jacks,"
unglazed
from
leather
coated
with
tankards made
pitch, only in the late six
of the early seventeenth
such as
teenth century.99 Paintings
century,
popularity
conventions
tavern scenes, suggest the wretched
and Dutch
Spanish
quality of the
on
most
tables.100
crockery
In fifteenth-century
earthenware
became
fashion
Italy, tin-glazed
able among the increasingly
rank of people who
prosperous middling
could not afford expensive
pewter and silver plate but who desired
the seventeenth
something better than terra-cotta and wood.101 During
in northern
those social classes grew considerably
century
Europe,
in the Dutch
In part because of that,
especially
republic and England.
in ways
and etiquette
food conventions
that
changed
dramatically
for tableware
and kitchen
created novel
demands
utensils.
Recipe
books included greater varieties
of meats,
and fresh fruit;
vegetables,
and salads became part of the
shallots, mushrooms,
butter, rice, maize,
96On
see Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude,
at Delft,
the huge amounts
produced
The First Modem
Success, Failure, and Perseverance
1500
Economy:
of the Dutch Economy,
Press, 1997), p. 309.
1815 (Cambridge:
University
Cambridge
97
"The Variety
of Decora
Tin-Glaze
Pottery, p. 129; Frits T. Sch?lten,
Caiger-Smith,
tion on Dutch Delft,
147 (1995):
194-203.
1625-1675,"
Magazine
Antiques
98For
on the color blue as one source of that appeal,
see Philip Rawson,
speculation
Ceramics
of Pennsylvania
Press, 1984), pp. 139-41.
University
(Philadelphia:
99Sara
The Art of Dining: A History
and Eating
Paston-Williams,
(London:
of Cooking
National
See also Lorna Weatherhill,
The Growth
Trust,
1993), pp. 75-76.
of the Pottery
(New York: Garland
Industry in England,
1660-1815
Publishing,
1986), pp. 90-91.
100See the illustrations
in Seville (exh. cat.), ed. Michael
in Velazquez
Clarke
(Edin
of the National
of Scotland,
1996), pp. 132-53; Masterpieces
burgh: Trustees
Gallery
of Sev
ed. Jane Iandola Watkins
Dutch Genre Painting,
Philadel
enteenth-Century
(Philadelphia:
of Art,
27-29.
1984), plates 22-25,
phia Museum
101
of Renaissance
Richard Goldthwaite,
"The Economic
and Social World
Maiolica,"
Renaissance Quarterly
42 (1989):
17-18.
JOURNAL
170
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
1998
diet of the well-to-do.102
Spices poured in from Asia and sugar from the
of
the
Caribbean
and Brazil. Tea, coffee, and choco
great plantations
were
hot
that
best
late,
beverages
prepared and served with porcelain
became
utensils,
popular
in homes
and
taverns,
especially
after
the
1650s.103
the seventeenth
had a commu
century eating in the West
with
and
around
the table.
spoons, platters,
mugs passed
aspect,
in
southern
the
essayist Montaigne
Germany
1580,
Traveling
through
that when
noted with disdain
soup was served in taverns, "everyone
fishes together, for there is no individual
serving."104 "Let the dishes be
... it is all the same to me," he de
or earthenware
of pewter, wood,
clared, but "I no more like drinking out of a common
cup than Iwould
like eating out of common
A
the elite no
later
century
fingers."105
was
endured
communal
meals.
That
the
of a
consequence
longer
partly
Before
nal
consumer
revolution
that swept Europe, with ceramics
leading the way
in catering to the expanding
domestic needs of the individual.106 With
and most highly devel
the most
homes,
ample diet, best appointed
arts
in Europe,
the Dutch
for the decorative
and applied
oped market
new
of the Delft pot
led the way in providing
Inventories
tableware.
teries
increased
enormously
during
the seventeenth
century.107
In 1729
102
All Manners
of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from
Stephen Mennell,
to the Present
T. Sarah Peterson,
the Middle Ages
(Oxford: Blackwell,
1985), pp. 62-101;
Taste: The French Origins
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
Acquired
of Modern
Cooking
University
See also Carole
"The Eighteenth-Century
Press,
Shammas,
1994), pp. 163-208.
English
21 (1984): 254-69.
in Economic History
Diet and Economic
Change,"
Explorations
103
Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar inModern History
(New
Sidney W Mintz,
The Trading World
York: Viking
Press, 1985), pp. 45, 113-14,
147-48; K. N. Chaudhuri,
of
and the English East India Company,
Cambridge
1660-1760
University
(Cambridge:
in
and Asian
Production
Press, 1978), p. 406; John E. Wills,
Jr., "European Consumption
in Consumption
and theWorld
and Eighteenth
ed.
the Seventeenth
Centuries,"
of Goods,
(London: Routledge,
John Bewer and Roy Porter
1993), pp. 140-46.
104
trans. Donald
M. Frame
Point
Travel Journal,
North
(San Francisco:
Montaigne's
Asia
Press,
1983), p. 27.
105
The Comp?ete Essays,
ed. and trans. M. A. Screech
de Montaigne,
Michel
(London:
Books,
Penguin
1993), pp. 1114, 1230-31.
106See
in The Birth of a
and the Economy,"
"Commercialization
Neil McKendrick,
ed. Neil McKen
Consumer
Society: The Commercialization
England,
of Eighteenth-Century
Indiana University
Press, 1982), pp. 9
drick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb
(Bloomington:
in England and America
The Pre-Industrial
Consumer
(Oxford: Oxford
33; Carole
Shammas,
Press, 1990), pp. 181-93.
University
107
van Dam,
in Dutch Tiles
in the Philadelphia
"A Survey
of Dutch
Tiles,"
Jan Daniel
of Pennsylvania
Museum
Press, 1984), p. 27; John Michael
University
of Art (Philadelphia:
in Delft: A Socio-economic
Artists
and Artisans
Montias,
Study of the Seventeenth
Century
On
the superiority
of Dutch
Princeton
Press,
(Princeton:
University
1982), pp. 293-313.
The Embarrassment
and arts, see Simon Schama,
diet, homes,
of Riches: An Interpretation of
in the Golden Age (Berkeley: University
of California
Dutch Culture
Press, 1988), pp. 174
88, 304-19.
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
171
the VOC opened an office in Guangzhou and gave the Jingdezhen
to copy into
models
of earthenwares
and wooden
that recently had
included a wide range of utensils
crowded into Dutch cupboards, such as soup tureens, radish saucers, salt
butter coolers,
cellars, sauceboats,
juice pourers, and mustard pots.108
in individualized
The ultimate
dining was the dinner service, with
a complete
and the English East
setting for each person. The VOC
potters
drawings
These
porcelain.
dinner services in the early
India Company
started importing porcelain
(in response) began manufacturing
century, while Meissen
eighteenth
around the same time. In the course of the eighteenth
large quantities
ten
century English families that could afford the extra expense?some
times the price of ordinary settings?commissioned
from China
4,000
services with their coats of arms.109 In fact, Chinese
dinner services had
an impact that extends
to the present day. The West was (so to speak)
on blue-and-white
in the early modern
pottery
period,
imprinted
sets
of
of
the
introduction
before
tableware;
thus, the configu
shortly
a flat, white
ration of the modern
surface
dinner plate?essentially
a
embellished
with a border design and a central pictorial
emblem?is
of
of
the
the
Ming dynasty.110
legacy
porcelain
a receptive
for high-quality
market
however,
pottery,
Beyond
accounts
aristocratic
and
enthusiasm
for
for the
porcelain
princely
enormous popularity
in the European
of the product. Changes
dietary
the Middle Ages
that fervor. During
the high cost of
use
to
the
their
cinnamon,
spices naturally
wealthy. Ginger,
of social discrimination,
and nutmeg
functioned
primarily as markers
regime
increased
restricted
as condiments
to disguise tainted meat; they set off the aristocracy
feasts of roast swan
from lower social ranks as surely as Pantagruelian
and stewed boar. When
became
from the sixteenth
abundant,
spices
abandoned
them
the
elite
and
century,
gradually
adopted new social
culture
of
the
The
rich
and
well born began
gastronomic
signifiers.111
as
were
as soups and
what
"natural"
such
foods,
regarded
emphasizing
not
108
in the Seventeenth
in The Porce
C. J. A. J?rg, "Porcelain
for the Dutch
Century,"
lains of Jingdezhen, p. 187.
109
and John Ayers, Masterpieces
David Howard
of Chinese Export Porcelain from theMot
in the Virginia Museum
tahedeh Collection
Parke Bernet,
(London: Sotheby
1980), pp. 18-19;
D. S. Howard,
Chinese Armorial
Porcelain
(London: Faber and Faber, 1974), p. 68; Meister
and Reber, European Porcelain of the 18th Century,
pp. 101-102.
110
Chinese Ornament:
The Lotus and the Dragon
British
(London:
Jessica Rawson,
Museum
Persian
Publications,
1984), p. 11; see Marina D. Whitman,
"Sixteenth-Century
Blue-and-White
14 (1983): 27-28.
Dish," Orientations
111
Massimo Montanari,
The Culture of Food, trans. Carl Ipsen (Oxford: Blackwell,
1994),
pp. 59,
Foodways
119; Bruno Laurioux,
1 ( 1985 ) : 52-61.
"Spices
in the Medieval
Diet:
A New
Approach,"
Food
and
JOURNAL
172
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
1998
meats
seasoned with herbs. Modern
became
fashion
dining protocols
correct
the
elite
with
from
their
inferiors
the
able,
distinguished
by
of
and
serviettes.112
employment
fourchettes
as
of expensive
tableware served the same social function,
Displays
to the new alimentary
well as being essential
and
sensibility
genteel
conventions.
Ceremonial
took the form of
feasting in the Middle Ages
a lavishly dressed
carcass on the
with
"potlatch"-style
gatherings,
or spinach juice, exhibited with theatrical
cinnamon
and
consumed
before a crowd of spectators. By the
panache,
festively
aristocratic
in dining
fashion
mid-seventeenth
shifted to the
century
vessels
that accompanied
the relatively
unadorned
food, to table ser
vices whose magnificence
and ostentation
the lofty status
reflected
taste
and sophisticated
of the host. Pyramids of sweetmeats
and song
birds were exiled from the center of the table, replaced with prancing
table,
tinted with
of splendor and privilege.113
figurines, Lilliputian models
to the tsars of Russia,
the kings of Portugal
the princes of
Like palaces and ermine robes, massed dis
Europe collected
porcelain.
as assertions
functioned
of power and magnifi
plays of the ceramic
cence. Porcelain
became
the currency of social emulation
among the
porcelain
From
of every nation
and spread down the social ladder to pros
aristocracy
perous burghers and country gentry. Henry VIII of England
(r. 1509
a
I
have
owned
while
Elizabeth
may
vessel,
(r.
1558
47)
porcelain
several. James I (r. 1603-25) may have received a gift
1603) possessed
in
of Aceh
of eight porcelain
dishes
from Sultan
Iskandar Muda
II had a larger collection,
Sumatra. Charles
after he married
especially
in 1662, whose dowry included many
Catherine
Braganza of Portugal
wares.114 After
the Glorious
of 1688, William
III
Chinese
Revolution
II brought
and Mary
several hundred
from the
pieces of porcelain
Dutch
fashion. The
along with a new continental
republic to England,
of porcelain
Europe stemmed not only from its
throughout
popularity
use in dining but also from its incorporation
into the new consumer
a trend that grew as the elite built
for interior decoration,
vogue
increasingly
spacious
homes.115
According
to Daniel
Defoe
(1660
112
and Mean
Margaret Visser, The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities,
Press, 1991), pp. 163-66,
(New York: Grove
ing of Table Manners
189-90.
113See
Rawson,
Ceramics,
p. 200; Visser, The Rituals of Dinner,
pp. 161-62. On feasts in
see Mennell,
the Middle Ages,
Ail Manners
of Food, pp. 40-61.
114
in Early European
Chinese
and Japanese Porcelain
Col
Jean Martin,
"Identifying
lections," Orientations
23 (1992): 68; The Voyage of Thomas Best to the East Indies, 1612-14,
Foster (London: Hakluyt
ed. William
Society,
1934), p. 213.
115See Anne
in the English
"The Nonfunctional
Use
of Ceramics
Somers Cocks,
in The Fashioning
House
the Eighteenth
and Functioning
Country
Century,"
during
of the
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
173
to
at Hampton
the English
Court
introduced
Queen
Mary
^?1)*
the tops of cabinets,
the "fatal excess" of "piling their china upon
to the tops of the ceilings,
and
scrutores, and every chymney-piece,
even setting up shelves for their china-ware,
where
wanted
such
they
in the expence of it, and even injuri
places, till it became a grievance
ous to their families and estates."116
As the great dynasty of the Dutch
republic and an investor in the
to spread the fashion
did much
the house of Orange
VOC,
naturally
around Europe. William
Ill's aunt, Louise Henriette,
for porcelain
Palace around
married Frederick of Prussia, who built the Oranienburg
mar
1688 to house porcelain,
while
another aunt, Albertina
Agnes,
of Nassau-Dietz,
ried William
Frederick
in 1683 for the same purpose.117
Palace
a mirrored Porzellankabinett
established
near
Berlin for his collection
lottenburg
Tsar Peter
enced by his visit to Holland,
who
built
the Oranienstein
I of Prussia
Frederick William
in 1702 in his palace at Char
of 400 Chinese
Influ
pieces.
1682
of
Russia
(the Great)
(r.
near
in his palace of Monplaisir
chamber
1725) set up a porcelain
Ill's great enemy, Louis XIV of France
Peterhof.118 William
(r. 1643
the
1715), the arbiter of culture for European
royalty, also promoted
fashion for porcelain.
inherited
He
several hundred
pieces from his
Marie
de' Medici
and from Cardinal
(15 73-1642)
grandmother
Mazarin
In the 1680s he received a gift of over 1,000 por
(1602-61).
after which
vessels from Siamese
the Sun King often
embassies,
en porcelaine at Versailles.
In the next decade dozens of shops
wares opened
in Chinese
in Paris.119
dealing
their own por
European princes, however,
aspired to manufacture
it
from China. A crucial stumbling block
celain rather than purchase
was to determine
sort of material
to use. According
to Marco
what
celain
dined
British Country House,
ed. Gervase
Gordon
Lena Cowen Orlin,
J. Schochet,
Jackson-Stops,
Elisabeth
Blair MacDougall
Press of New England,
(Hanover, N.H.: University
1989), pp.
195-215
116
Daniel Defoe, A Tour through theWhole
Island of Great Britain, ed. P. N. Furbank and
see
W. R. Owens
Yale University
(New Haven:
Press, 1991), p. 65. On Hampton
Court,
"A Phenomenon
of Taste: The China Ware
of Queen
II," Apollo
Joan Wilson,
96
Mary
116-23.
(1972):
117
in Porcelain for Palaces, p. 59.
Oliver
for Palaces,"
Impey, "Porcelain
118
Meister
and Reber, European Porcelain of the 18th Century,
B.
p. 18. See also Tatiana
"The Double-headed
Porcelain:
for Imperial
Arapova,
Eagle on Chinese
Export Wares
Russia," Apollo
135 (1992): 21-26.
119
D. F. Lunsingh
Chinese Export Porcelain: Chine de Commande
Scheurleer,
(London:
Faber and Faber, 1974), p. 113; F. J. B. Watson
and Gillian Wilson,
Mounted Oriental Porce
lain in the]. Paul Getty Museum
(Malibu, Calif.:
J. Paul Getty Museum,
1982), pp. 6-8. On
Le go?t chinois en France au temps de Louis
the Siamese
gifts, see H. Belevitch-Stankevitch,
XIV
(Paris: Jouve,
1910),
pp.
10-48,
256-62.
174
JOURNAL
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
I998
a kind of earth or mud and left it to age in
mined
Polo, the Chinese
the open air for a generation
it into shiny, beautiful
before shaping
a description
bowls tinted the color of azure?surely
of the qingbai of
a
Duarte
in 1516
writer, claimed
Barbosa,
Jingdezhen.120
Portuguese
that porcelain was made from "fish ground fine, from eggshells and the
of eggs and other materials,"
all of which was seasoned under
a
to
most early investigators
for
sensi
up
ground
century.121 Although
was
concluded
that
made from clay, they also agreed that
bly
porcelain
itmust be of a recondite
sort, closer to precious
stones, the chambered
white
rock crystal, and rhinoceros
horn
than to common
earth.
nautilus,
Fashionable
cabinets
of curiosities
included
vessels
porcelain
along
with such treasures, for they seemed to focus and fuse the qualities
of
the exotic, the natural, and the artificial.122 The aristocracies
of Europe
and the headhunters
of Borneo
shared some similar views
evidently
nature of porcelain.
about the marvelous
Alchemists
took up the task of discovering
the secret of porcelain,
a Venetian
the new "white gold" (weissener geld).123 Maestro Antonio,
in the late fifteenth
tried to create porcelain
alchemist,
century, per
in the treasury of the Basilica
of San
haps inspired by some vessels
I de' Medici,
but he produced
the
Marco,
only milky
glass. Francesco
and a fervent patron of alchemy,
(r. 1574-87)
grand duke of Tuscany
poured a fortune into trying to create porcelain
ground
by combining
his product was as
glass, powdered
crystal, and Vicenza
clay. Although
as porcelain,
to fire, carve, or
it proved
white
virtually
impossible
near Paris in 1698 apparently
at Saint-Cloud
mold. Researchers
pro
duced something
survive from the
similar, but no vessels or documents
sent samples of kaolin
in China
to Europe
experiments.124 Merchants
to be analyzed, perhaps as early as the 1520s. In 1712 P?re d'Entre
in a letter to
colles described
the manufacturing
process at Jingdezhen
a sample of porcelain
France and dispatched
paste to be examined
by
Ren?
A.
Reaumur
a well-known
F. de Reaumur,
French chemist. Although
de
identified
the essential constituents
of the material,
correctly
120
Carswell,
121The Book
in China,"
Porcelain
"Blue-and-White
p. 16.
2 vols.
ed. Mansel
Dames,
(London: Hak
of Duarte Barbosa,
Longworth
1921), 2:213-14."
luyt Society,
122See Martin
the Artificial,
the
Kemp,
'Wrought by No Artist's Hand': The Natural,
in Some Artefacts
and the Scientific
from the Renaissance,"
in Reframing
the
Exotic,
in Europe and Latin America,
Renaissance:
Visual Culture
ed. Claire Farago (New
1450-1650,
Haven:
Yale University
Press, 1995), pp. 176-96.
123
Claire Le Corbeiller,
"German Porcelain
of the Eighteenth
The Metropoli
Century,"
tanMuseum
of Art Bulletin 47 (1990): 6.
124
and Vandiver,
Ceramic Masterpieces,
pp. 13-14,
135-47; Claire Le Corbeiller,
Kingery
"A Medici
Porcelain
Paul Getty Museum
Journal 16 (1988):
Pilgrim Flask,"/.
119-26.
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
the secret of porcelain manufacture
actually had been discovered
few years earlier by the alchemist
Johann Friedrich B?ttger.125
175
just a
In 1701 B?ttger fled Prussia when he angered King Frederick I by
to turn base metals
into gold. Seized by Augustus
of Saxony and
on creating porcelain
in the dungeons
of the Jungfern
to his labo
bastei in Dresden,
B?ttger bitterly wrote over the entrance
a
an
out
of
alchemist."126
has
made
Creator
that
"God
the
potter
ratory
to house
in Dresden
built a palace
Obsessed
with porcelain, Augustus
of some 10,000 pieces, and he even fantasized having
his collection
failing
forced
to work
In 1717 he traded 600 Saxon
from the ceramic.
to King Freder
into
the
Porcelain
formed
(later
Regiment)
dragoons
I of Prussia in exchange
for 151 large Ming vases.127
ickWilliam
and his associates
arguably formed the first research and
B?ttger
in
enterprise
history, driven by visions of enormous profit
development
tables and chairs made
labor,
by fears of industrial espionage. After considerable
in January 1708, and a
B?ttger produced his first piece of porcelain
at
year later, Augustus
opened the Royal Saxon Porcelain Manufactory
But
draconian
methods
of
of
Dresden.128
northeast
Meissen,
despite
such as imprisoning his own crafts
guarding against spies and betrayal,
and haunted
failed to keep the secret of porcelain
men, Augustus
manufacture,
a few years workers
as
for himself. Within
known
the arcanum,
and
informa
and peddled
"arcanists" escaped from Meissen
the precious
in constructing
tion to other European
princes. Problems
high-firing
kilns and in locating sources of kaolin delayed Meissen's
rivals, but in a
In the
dotted the map of Europe.
few decades porcelain manufactories
century Duke Karl Eugen of W?rttemberg
mid-eighteenth
expressed a
in declaring
that a porcelain
factory was "an indispens
commonplace
to splendor and magnificence."129
able accompaniment
Of course, the Chinese
suffered a great deal more
than
eventually
the Strong
from the spread of the secret. They
lost their
Augustus
of porcelain,
their longest and most dearly held treasure.
monopoly
125"The Letters
of P?re d'Entrecolles,"
and Vandiver,
Ceramic Master
p. 67; Kingery
p. 15.
126
inWorld Ceramics,
in S. Ducret,
"German Hard-Paste
Porcelain,"
pp. 217-18.
Quoted
127
in
Meissen
Porcelain,
pp. 128-29; Gerald Heres, Dresdener Kunstsammlungen
Walcha,
see Herman
18. Jahrhunderts
Schreiber,
1991). On Augustus,
(Leipzig: E. A. Seeman,
1986).
August der Starke, Kurf?rst von Sachsen, K?nig von Polen (Munich: W Heyne,
128
Meissen
of the discovery
Porcelain,
Walcha,
pp. 16-19, 44~45- F?r an early account
see the reprint of an 1810 edition
at
of Meissen
and development
porcelain,
published
Meissen:
C. B. Kenzelmann,
Historische Nachrichten
?ber die K?nigliche Porzellan-Manufaktur
und deren Stifter Johann Friedrich Freiherrn von B?ttger (Leipzig: Zentralantiquar
zu Meissen,
pieces,
iat der Deutschen
Demokratischen
Republik,
129
in Rawson,
Ceramics,
p. 64.
Quoted
1977).
JOURNAL
176
OF WORLD
is a certain
irony in the consideration
the
consequence
expansion
triumphal
into the new, predatory marketplace
pottery
There
of
Porcelain
and Cross-Cultural
Exchange
HISTORY,
FALL
I998
that they did so as a direct
trade in
of their ancient
of Europe.
in the
Ecumene
ran a
From the early centuries of the Common
Era, porcelain
generally
western
to
Asia.130 Por
third behind
distant
imports of spices and silk
an
in
cross-cultural
role
celain, however,
exchange
exceptional
played
a role that other commodities
and the rest of Asia,
between
China
could not perform.
Spices not only came from various
intrinsically
were
intended for immediate use and con
parts of Asia,
they naturally
as possessing
were
seen
and
pharmacological
although
sumption;
they
were
and were
such meanings
social significance,
imposed by consumers
not intrinsic to the nutmeg,
and pepper.131 Silk was regarded
cinnamon,
in religious ritual
as indispensable
for elite apparel and for employment
lost its silk monopoly
but China
in Roman
and Byzantine Christianity,
of
the technology
obtained
by the sixth century, when other countries
silk exported from China was often plain and in
sericulture. Moreover,
silks with embroidered
the form of yarn.132 Chinese
designs conveyed
were
unwoven
sometimes
but
about
Chinese
culture,
they
something
and recycled, and like all textiles they were subject to relatively
rapid
and shrines.133
if not kept in tombs, reliquaries,
deterioration
was a Chinese
that was always
In contrast,
monopoly
porcelain
not be recycled. Easy to break yet
in
and
could
form
finished
exported
even
its color and decoration
it retained
hard to destroy,
perfectly,
cul
at the bottom of the sea.134 It invariably conveyed
after centuries
130See Michael
in the First Seven
Trade
of World
Loewe,
"Spices and Silk: Aspects
of the Christian
Centuries
Era," Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society of Great Britain and Ire
East in the
and the Near
China
land 2 (1971 ): 166-79; A. D. H. Bivar, "Trade between
in T'ang China,
in Pottery and Metalwork
and Early Muslim
Sasanian
pp. 1-11.
Periods,"
131
of spices, see J. Innes Miller, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire
On the significance
Tastes of Paradise: A
Schivelbusch,
Press,
(Oxford: Oxford
1969); Wolfgang
University
trans. David
and Intoxicants,
Social History
(New York: Ran
Jacobson
of Spices, Stimulants,
dom House,
1993).
132Liu
in Eurasia, c. A.D. 600-1200,"
"Silks and Religion
Journal ofWorld History
Xinru,
6 (1995): 25-48.
133See Hattie Mae Nixon
in the
Textiles
and Ellen Johnston Laing, "Recycled Chinese
of Art," Orientations
of Oregon Museum
14 (1983): 25-37.
University
134
see Carswell,
Porce
"Blue-and-White
of porcelain,
the fragility and durability
On
in excellent
condition
recovered
190,000
lain," p. 22. Some
plates and bowls
porcelain
in London
for about
auctioned
of c. 1645 and c. 1752 were
from Dutch
shipwrecks
Porcelain
The Hatcher
in the 1980s. See Colin
Sheaf and Richard
Kilburn,
?10,000,000
Cargoes:
The Complete
Record
(Oxford:
Phaidon,
1988),
pp. 7-11.
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
177
in its shapes and decoration,
often this was
although
strik
(if
creatively)
by foreign patrons, most
confusedly
apprehended
case
in
maritime
of
Asia.
of
Southeast
the
the
Moreover,
ingly
peoples
journey, from east to west, at the
spices and silk went on a one-way
and the silks frayed, faded, and
end of which
the spices were consumed
not
vanished.
Porcelain,
however,
only endured but also played
finally
a central part in reciprocal
influence
the ecu
cultural
throughout
tural meaning
for the assimilation
and
It was the principal material
vehicle
immense
transmission
distances.
of cultural
themes across
Chinese
artists often adapted alien forms and decoration
for their
porcelain
were
to
then
the
realms
where
which
very foreign
products,
exported
had originated
before.
those forms and decoration
Thus, a
generations
version of foreign artistic motifs would be imitated by crafts
Sinicized
men half a world away, who had no suspicion
that they were heirs
of the cultural
that had first inspired what
tradition
they were now
mene.135
emulating.
The history of the lotus design illustrates this remarkable circuit of
cross-cultural
potters of the Il-Khanid
exchange.136 Persian earthenware
scolls
from the borders of
lotus
copied undulating
period (1258-1353)
was
a
unaware
mutation
the
of acanthus
Chinese
that
foliage
plates,
on
vine
and
scrolls
classical
of
the
Middle
East
carved
patterns
temples
in the Hellenistic
The
acanthus
and vine
b.c.e.).
period
(323-30
in
motifs had been transferred
Sassanian
Persia (224-651
from
ce.)
the Greek
then traded east
temples to silver vessels, which merchants
on the caravan route,
ward along the silk road. In oasis communities
artistic themes that had
the Hellenistic
designs merged with Buddhist
from India since their origin there hundreds
of years earlier.
migrated
the distinctive
lotus design resulting
from this
By the sixth century
cave temples
encounter
in Buddhist
appeared as sculpted decoration
at Yungang
in Shanxi Province,
northern China.137 Generations
later,
135
as a framework
see
of the ecumene
On the significance
for cross-cultural
exchange,
G. S. Hodgson,
Marshall
Islam, and World His
Essays on Europe,
Rethinking World History:
Press, 1993), p. 17.
tory, ed. Edmund Burke III (Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
136
see Rawson,
On
also Alois
the following,
Chinese Ornament,
pp. 33-88;
Riegel,
trans. Evelyn Kain
Problems of Style: Foundations
(Princeton:
for a History
of Ornament,
Princeton
University
137
On connections
Press, 1992), pp. 187-206.
Persia and China,
between
among the Figurines of the T'ang Dynasty
of China
Estremo Oriente,
1959), pp. 13-20. On the caves,
Caves
Buddhas: Chinese Art from
of the Thousand
of the lotus in
the significance
Press, 1990). On
Goody, The Culture
335? 354
of Flowers
(Cambridge:
see Jane Gaston Mahler,
The Westerners
Italiano per ilMedio
ed
(Rome: Instituto
see Roderick Whitfield
and Anne
Farrer,
the Silk Route (London: British Museum
see Jack
Indian and Chinese
Buddhism,
Cambridge
University
Press,
1993),
pp. 326-27,
178
JOURNAL
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
1998
in
craftsmen
Chinese
the design for ornamentation
of vessels
adopted
silver and then ceramics. When
merchants
pieces
exported porcelain
to Persia in the fourteenth
with lotus decoration
century, potters there
onto
earthenware.
the
their
Two
hundred
years later the
copied
foliage
so often on Chinese
in Europe
lotus appeared
blue-and-white
vessels
that botanists
flower."138
referred to it as the "porcelain
a central
of a
thus played
role in the transmission
artistic theme from region to region (from the Middle
East
to medium
and back again) and from medium
archi
(from
to sculpture
to silverwork
tecture to silverwork
to porcelain
to earth
once
Nor
did
the
motif's
for
Persian
enware).
stop there,
pilgrimage
a
or
onto
the
had
lotus
craftsmen
bowl,
potters
painted
design
plate
on textiles and buildings. Because ceramic
it as ornamentation
adopted
trans
in Persia (as well as in Europe) were mainly
workers
tilemakers,
was commonplace.
to architecture
fer of a design from utensils
Thus,
Porcelain
renowned
to China
a sixteenth-century
tiles on the Masjid-i-Jami,
mosque
potters decorated
in Kirman,
with patterns
of lotus blossoms
and Chinese
(or
plum
prunus) branches.139
and malleable
served
Since clay is an abundant
substance, pottery
as an inexpensive,
medium
for
assimilation
of
the
techni
ubiquitous
vessels often
ques and designs from work in other materials.140 Ceramic
as down-market
substitutes
for wares made of gold, silver,
functioned
in the Zhou period
in
In China,
and bronze.
burial pottery emerged
imitation
of costly bronze pieces,
and in the Han period families of
to resem
used earthenware
vessels painted
rank increasingly
middling
ble bronze and lacquer as funerary goods.141 In the Tang dynasty pot
ters imitated
Asiatic
and glass
forms derived
from western
metal
in
in
the shape
the
fashioned
vessels
and
imports,
Song they
porcelain
of precious
silverwork
from Persia.142 In fourteenth-century
Japan, Long
138Donald
in theMaking
F. Lach, Asia
of Europe, vol. 2, A Century
ofWonder
(Chicago:
of Chicago
Press, 1970), p. 23.
University
139
"The Technical
"Persian Blue-and-White
Ceramics,"
1:125; Hodges,
Whitman,
in Tin Glaze,"
Porcelains
of Copying
Chinese
Problems
p. 82.
140
in Ceramics,"
TOCS
and Innovation
Alan Caiger-Smith,
58 (1993
"Continuity
see an eighteenth-century
Chinese
connoisseur's
94): 59. On pottery's facility for imitation,
comment
in Bushell, Description
of Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, p. 6.
141
and
E. Scott,
"Archaism
Chinese
p. 36; Rosemary
Vainker,
Pottery and Porcelain,
in New Perspec
in the Ming
and Qing Dynasties,"
of Ceramic
Invention:
Sources
Design
in China,
Los Angeles
tives on the Art of Ceramics
ed. George
(Los Angeles:
Kuwayama
see Albert
E. Dien,
"Chinese
of Art,
County Museum
1992), p. 88. On burial and pottery,
in The Quest
in the Afterworld,"
Sculptures from the
for Eternity: Chinese Ceramic
of Art,
Los Angeles
Museum
(Los Angeles:
(exh. cat.)
County
People's Republic of China
1987), pp. 1-15.
142
in The British Museum
Book of Chinese Art, p. 231;
for Use,"
"Ceramics
Vainker,
on Chinese
Silver of the Tang Dynasty
The Ornament
(A.D. 618-906)
(Lon
Jessica Rawson,
Occasional
don: British Museum
1982), p. 23.
Papers,
Beliefs
Finlay:
The
Culture
of Porcelain
inWorld
179
History
a Japanese monk
quan greenwares
replaced bronze vessels, prompting
are
to declare,
loved. Their
lus
of heaven
"These products
deeply
to that of jade. With
trous and glossy appearance
is comparable
incense
those big bronze
green censers
by our sides, who needs
tripods?"143
elite came to regard gold
the Song period
the Chinese
During
the natural flavor of food, and they increasingly
vessels as impairing
tradition condemned
those
used porcelain
copies at meals.144 Koranic
wares served as an
who ate and drank from silver and gold, so Chinese
in Islamic lands. The throne room of S?leyman
the
elegant substitute
was
with
of
the
Ottoman
embellished
(r.
empire
Magnificent
1520-66)
from wooden
yet the sultan and his viziers dined
precious metals,
In
when
Pius
IV asked
spoons and blue-and-white
1563,
porcelain.145
to contribute
their silver table services to fund defense of
his cardinals
to pur
cleric urged his colleagues
Italy against the Turks, a Portuguese
"as blue as sapphire and as white as ala
chase porcelain
from Lisbon,
aristocratic
fami
baster."146 During
the English Civil War
(1642-49)
lies melted
down a great deal of their silver plate, and when peace
came with the Restoration,
imi
they replaced their services with Delft
to the Duc de Saint-Simon,
tations of porcelain.147 According
when
to turn over their silver
his aristocrats
Louis XIV in 1709 commanded
to
of
the
the
War
the
Succession
army during
support
plate
Spanish
to
imitations
rushed
for
of their
( 1701-14),
they
tin-glazed
boutiques
accustomed
porcelain
table settings. This paved
a few decades.148
within
the way
for their conversion
to
143
in Jessica Harrison-Hall,
The Making
Quoted
"Representational
Longquan Ware:
and Function
of Yuan and Ming Dynasty Ceramics,"
145 (1997): 33.
Apollo
144
and Historical
Michael
Freeman,
"Sung," in Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological
ed. K. C. Chang
Yale University
(New Haven:
Press, 1977), p. 173.
Perspectives,
145
see Richard
Near
Eastern
On
Koranic
Medieval
condemnation,
Ettinghausen,
in the Freer Gallery
D.C.: Smithsonian
Ceramics
Institution,
of Art (Washington,
i960), p.
see Julian Raby and Unsal
at the
"Chinese
Porcelain
4. On S?leyman's
Yiicel,
porcelain,
in the Topkapi
in Chinese
Ceramics
Ottoman
ed. John
Court,"
Istanbul,
Saray Museum,
Publications,
Ayers,
catalogue
by Regina Krahl, 3 vols. (London: Sotheby's
1986), 1:27-54.
see Corneille
On S?leyman's
and wooden
de Schepper,
"Mis
utensils,
opulence
Duplicius
sions diplomatiques
de Corneille
De Schepper
ed. Baron de Saint
Duplicius
(1533-34),"
and G. ?. Yssel de Schepper, M?moires
de l'Acad?mie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres
G?nois
et des Beaux-Arts
de Belgique 30 (1857):
170, 172.
146
in Charles
R. Boxer, "Carreira and Cabotagen:
Some Aspects
of Portuguese
Quoted
and the China
Renaissance
and Modem
Studies
Trade in the Indian Ocean
Sea, 1500-1650,"
30
(1986): 46.
147
The Art of Dining,
p. 189.
Paston-Williams,
148
M?moires
du Duc de Saint-Simon,
ed. M. Ch?ruel,
14 vols.
complets et authentiques
translation
of Saint-Simon,
(Paris: Hachette,
1856), 7:226. In the principal
English
faience,
in 1709, is rendered as "porcelain"
the term for the tin-glazed
earthenware
and
purchased
les boutiques as "china shops"; see Historical Memoirs
3 vols. (London: Hamish Hamilton,
Lucy Norton,
of theDuc de Saint-Simon,
1967), 1:441.
ed. and trans.
i8o
JOURNAL
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
I998
Ceramics
artistic
and transmitted
and
themes,
adopted
symbols,
from
other
all
metal
media,
shapes
especially
jade, lacquer, sculpture,
work, coins, textiles, engravings, woodblock
prints, and painting. Dec
to medium,
orative patterns
and shapes journeyed from medium
from
were
on
to
to
innova
took
different
cultures,
country
country,
adapted
tive
and promiscuously
cultural
readings,
mingled
symbols. While
and its porcelain
had a dominant
role in this far-reaching
as a whole
in the creation
the ecumene
collaborated
of a
exchange,
ceramic culture and visual language that in some measure
transcended
regions and peoples.
China
Two
kinds of flasks illustrate
the remarkable
fusion of influences
a
is
of
this
Kendi
word
from the Indian
process.
typical
Malay
deriving
a metallic
kundika (water pot) and denoting
vessel used for ritual ablu
a bulbous body
tion and drinking
since the third century b.c.e. With
so that it would not
and a long, narrow neck,
the flask was designed
asso
with other ritual paraphernalia
the drinker's
lips. Along
it
into
mainland
South
and Buddhism,
ciated with Hinduism
spread
east Asia by the early centuries
Era.149 Potters
of the Common
first
in Tang China, where Confucian
scholars
copied kendi into porcelain
as water-droppers
in calligraphy.
used the vessels
Merchants
sold
touch
in the Philippines
of the ware
and Java,
where
tribes incorporated
them in marriage
burial rites,
ceremonies,
to Malaysia
in the six
A Chinese
and folk divination.
kendi exported
of Buddhist
teenth century carried decoration
auspicious
symbols and
in fanciful
also exported
Islamic
kendi, often
inscriptions.150 China
western
to
animal forms,
Asia, where artisans copied them
Japan and
in earthenware
in the seventeenth
century. German
potters also repli
ver
embellished
with Dutch
cated the zoomorphic
kendi, sometimes
miniature
Chinese
versions
sions of Chinese
of the Ottoman
collection
designs.151 The porcelain
seven Ming
kendi equipped with
sultans included
silver-gilt
elephant
mounts.
I (r. 1588-1629)
of the Safavid dynasty of Persia
Shah Abbas
149
and Its
and F. S. Kershaw,
"A Chinese
Vessel
A. K. Coomaraswamy
Buddhist Water
Artibus Asiae
the spread of Indian religious
3 (1928-29):
122-41. On
Prototype,"
see Himanshu
to Southeast
P. Ray, The Winds
artistic
Asia
and China,
influence
of
Indian
and
Change: Buddhism and theMaritime Links of Early SouthAsia (Delhi: Oxford University
Press,
pp. 87-161.
in the University
of Malaya Collection
(Singapore:
Joo EE, Kendi: Pouring Vessels
Oxford University
Press, 1991), pp. 21-26; Treasures from theNational Museum,
Singapore,
ed. Eng-Lee
National
Seok Chee
Museum,
Singapore
1987), pp. 116-17.
(Singapore:
151
in Singapore?II,"
Art 4
Oriental
"Chinese
Porcelain
Michael
Sullivan,
Export
in the Seven
and China
18-21; Yolande Crowe,
(1958):
"Aspects of Persian Blue and White
teenth Century,"
TOCS
18; J. G. Lee, "Kraak and Kendi," Brooklyn Museum
44 (1979-80):
1994),
150Khoo
Bulletin
19 (1958):
9-11.
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
collected
and decorated
potters
sorts of kendi,
with carnations.
several
translated
the vessel
181
including one shaped like an elephant
In the seventeenth
century Persian
a
or
into
hookah
smoking pipe (kendi
qalian) for tobacco.152 In the course of this remarkable peregrination,
with Indian religious ritual and became
the kendi shed all connections
instead a utensil and curio for the elite of various cultures.
as the "pilgrim flask"
The
vessel known
(or bianhu, "flattened
in Chinese)
traced a similarly wide circuit. An
early version
in
in
in
the second
in
Petra
Nabatean
(now
pottery
Jordan)
appeared
and
neck
and
the
b.c.e.,
century
tapering
compressed moon
shape?a
in
Roman
and
pottery. Early
Mesopotamian
shaped body?resurfaced
small replicas for carrying holy water and
Christian
pilgrims employed
flask,"
into
Asia
sanctuary
traveling
through Central
lamp oil. Merchants
in the Tang period sold Persian metalwork
with
flasks
China
pilgrim
Hellenistic
decoration,
including acanthus patterns, dancing girls, and
in porcelain.
the flasks
craftsmen
piping boys. Chinese
replicated
and Persia, they became pres
with designs from Greece
Embellished
tige items as funerary goods in the Song period.153
to
In later centuries pilgrim flasks made their way back from China
western
in the sixteenth
century decorated
potters
Jingdezhen
to
in India, with a
order
for
Christians
made
one, probably
Portuguese
a blue-and
at
Persian
of
Bethlehem.154
choir
potters produced
angels
a
in
from
white earthenware
Chinese
flask
1523, copied
pilgrim flask
on a rosebush,
it with a nightingale
of a century earlier; they adorned
on a plum branch. Mer
of a Chinese
phoenix
perhaps an adaptation
Asia.
chants traded Middle
Eastern copies of Chinese
flasks by way of Otto
man Anatolia
to central
in sixteenth-century
potters
Italy, where
in
earthenware.155 Count John
Umbria
blue-and-white
reproduced them
in
flask made for him at N?mes
Casimir of Bavaria had an earthenware
arms
coat
of
and anti-Catholic
caricatures,
1581, decorated with his
vestments.
in ecclesiastical
including monkeys
Philip II of Spain ordered
to commission
inManila
officials
several blue-and-white
pilgrim flasks
in Jingdezhen painted
for his porcelain
collection:
them with a
potters
152
at Topkapi,"
62 (1991):
"Blue and White
70;
Antique Collector
Julian Thompson,
"Persian Blue-and-White
Whitman,
Ceramics,"
1:195-203.
153
in Pottery and Metal
"Near Eastern Wares
Geza Fehervari,
under Chinese
Influence,"
work in T'ang China, p. 29; Willetts,
Chinese Art, 2:472-73; William
Watson,
Tang and Liao
Ceramics
(New York: Rizzoli,
1984), pp. 145-47.
154Basil
to India," TOCS
Porcelain
"The Export of Chinese
30;
36 (1964-66):
Gray,
"A New
Look at the Development
of Chinese
Orientations
Ceramics,"
23
Krahl,
Regina
(1992): 68.
155
Whitman,
Porcelain
Pilgrim
"Persian
Flask,"
Blue-and-White
pp.
119-26.
Ceramics,"
1:90-92;
Le Corbeiller,
"A Medici
l82
JOURNAL
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
1998
a border of lotus scrolls, and a central
sage in a landscape,
with
and Le?n, probably
the royal coat of arms of Castile
a
coin.
in the
the
Meissen
from
Spanish
Finally,
manufactory
copied
Chi
with
decorated
century produced
early eighteenth
pilgerflaschen,
scenes
nese floral designs
and with
from
Japanese
landscape
copied
Chinese
medallion
lacquerwork.156
The history
lend themselves
of kendi and pilgrim flasks suggests how ceramic vessels
to a bewildering
cross-fertilization
of influences. Styles,
as freely and as far as any
themes wandered
shapes, and decorative
or Muslim
them generally
Buddhist
informing
pilgrim. The concepts
for material
traveled more
remained
behind, however,
objects
easily
across cultural frontiers than abstractions.
Potters appropriated
styles
with little regard for the indigenous
and motifs heedlessly,
significance
In the Chinese
of the exotic vessel or emblem.
tradition, multivalent
around symbols; for example,
ideas of spiritual at
clustered
meanings
were
focused respec
female sexuality, and dynastic
tainment,
loyalty
In the West,
plum.
tively on the lotus, peony, and winter-flowering
severed from their roots, these plant forms generally were reduced to
mere embellishment.157
treatment of Chinese
The Dutch
compositions
of Chinese
merchandise
this process.
VOC
purchases
in the 1640s as a result of war between
the Ming
and the
from
tile
manufactur
the
Delft
shifted
Manchu;
potteries
accordingly,
of
of porcelain,
with renderings
facsimiles
ing to producing
complete
a
marks
the
Dutch
Chinese
(nianhao),
potters
practice
reign
dynastic
to
imitations
because
from Persian
of porcelain
they wanted
adopted
in the Middle
East.158 They
also painted
them with
sell their wares
so
such as the lotus and peony,
fanciful versions
of Chinese
themes,
the appeal of the foreign
that the porcelyn (as they called it) mimicked
a make-believe
Chinese
thus developed
potters
product. The Delft
illustrates
declined
style
that proved
so popular
that
Jingdezhen
craftsmen
of the Qing
156
to Porcelain,"
106 (1977): 358
"Faience?Prelude
Hunter-Stiebel,
Apollo
Penelope
Meissen
Por
and Ayers, Masterpieces
Howard
p. 34; Walcha,
63;
of Chinese Export Porcelain,
The Vision of Cathay
Chinoiserie:
(London:
celain, pp. 38-39; Hugh Honour,
John Murray,
1961), p. 104.
157See
Chinese Ornament,
pp. 31-32; Goody, The Culture
Rawson,
of Flowers, pp. 370
see Jan Stuart,
in
in Chinese
71. On multiple
decoration,
"Layers of Meaning,"
meanings
in Chinese
in the
and Meaning
Porcelain: Ceramics
Joined Colors: Decoration
from Collectors
Cort and Jan Stuart (Washington,
Society, Hong Kong (exh. cat.), ed. Louise Allison
Smithsonian
Institution,
1993), pp. 33-61.
158
Porcelain and the Dutch East India Company,
Lane, Later Islamic
Volker,
pp. 66-67;
see
trade in the seventeenth
with Chinese
century,
p. 89. On VOC
Pottery,
problems
to China:
and the Changing
East India Company
The Dutch
"No Boats
Leonard Bluss?,
Modern Asian Studies 30 (1996): 51-76.
Sea Trade,
Pattern of the China
1635-1690,"
Min Chiu
D.C.:
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
dynasty
(1644-1911)
when
their porcelain
in the late seventeenth
later
imitated
183
the novel
reentered Western
"chinoiserie"
and Middle
Eastern
patterns
markets
century.159
was a creative
In effect, the end result of this cultural encounter
a
it. Chi
of
of
and
China,
way
imagining
domesticating
assimilating
noiserie designs, especially
those with figurai and landscape elements,
of Chinese
visual culture
acted as filters that reduced the complexity
to stereotyped
it
and acces
constituents,
picturesque
thereby rendering
in pseudo-Chinese
sible rather than potent and enigmatic.
Painted
style
in a European
the
lotus
retreated from Bud
and planted
perspective,
the peony
lost its sexual charge, and the flowering
dhism,
plum shed
its links to political
In like fashion,
Confucians
alienation.
imperious
turned into quaint mandarins,
became affable gentle
solitary Daoists
and the Bodhisattva
assumed
men,
(as an icon of fertility)
Guanyin
the guise of the Madonna
with Child.160 Chinese
this
potters reinforced
own
their
culture when
the
reductive
image of
benign,
they replicated
Western
exports. In the end, some
fantasy of China on their porcelain
ex
thing was gained as well as lost, for the circuit of cross-cultural
innovation
Immense simplifi
both
and misreading.
change promoted
cation
took place when
craftsmen
reformulated
foreign
inevitably
artistic
of Chinese
culture, but that very simplifica
representations
in the creation
inter
of new decorative
resulted
patterns with
national
currency. The world
grew closer together
through mutual
tion
misunderstanding.
and
Porcelain
played a primary role in cross-cultural
because potteries
exchange
pursued the strategy of replicating
foreign
in remote markets.
artistic forms to win customers
From the seventh
ran between
the principal circuit of exchange
century to the sixteenth,
to encom
China
and the Middle
East; the circuit thereafter expanded
pass
the West,
its imitations
including
European
settlements
in the Americas
and
159C.
between
Oriental
Porcelain
and Dutch
Delft
J. A.
J?rg, "The Interaction
S. Kilburn, Transitional Wares and Their Fore
ware," Orientations
14 (1983):
10-15; Richard
runners (exh. cat.) (Hong Kong: Oriental
Ceramic
of Hong Kong,
Society
1980). On Jing
see Stephen
in Seventeenth
dezhen
and foreign markets,
"Economic
Little,
Change
at the Jingdezhen
26 (1996): 47-54.
China
and Innovations
Kilns," Ars Orientalis
Century
as manifest
is an artistic
in fanciful
Chinoiserie
influence
repre
style reflecting Chinese
sentations
in the use of elaborate
of Chinese
and intricate
decoration
culture,
especially
patterns.
160por
orative Art,
see Madeleine
Chinese
illustrations,
Jarry, Chinoiserie:
Influence on European Dec
(New York: Vend?me
Press, 1981); Honour,
Chinoiserie;
17th and 18th Centuries
on Staffordshire
Howard
Decoration
Chinoiserie:
Davis,
Porcelain,
Polychrome
17QO-1850
Press, 1991).
(London: Rubicon
i84
JOURNAL
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
I998
Africa.161
in
Chinese
potters copied lotus scrolls and Persian silverwork
screens
the eighth century, Arabic
in
and
Islamic
prayer
calligraphy
the fourteenth,
biblical
in
illustrations
and Dutch
the
flagons
eigh
teenth. Just as enterprising, Middle
Eastern and Western
potters repro
duced the Chinese
decorative
and even devised
their own
repertoire
versions
of it to compete
with Chinese
the
imports. Completing
to
chinoiserie
the
craftsmen
where
circuit,
China,
patterns migrated
in the Middle
East and Europe. Global
copied them for marketplaces
of
trade
thus
fostered
the
of cultural fantasies,
the
patterns
recycling
creation
of hybrid wares,
and the emergence
of a common
visual
language.
Turkish
in the early sixteenth
potters at Iznik (east of Istanbul)
court designs,
combined
Chinese
Ottoman
and
century
decoration,
wares
to
to cus
silverwork
models
that appealed
European
produce
tomers
Venetian
the Mediterranean.162
potters
throughout
adopted
floral patterns
from Iznik pottery and designs alia porcellana from Chi
nese vessels, while Chinese
craftsmen
replicated Venetian
glass vases
a pilgrim flask with a gro
in porcelain.163 Potters in Florence decorated
from ancient Rome
and tulips from Iznik ware. At
the
tesque mask
same time, Italian earthenware
some
influenced
Iznik pottery, which
times
in Renaissance
medallion
portraits
from the Ottoman
derived
sultan's
combined
istoriato style with
spiral scrolls
imperial monogram
(or tug/ira).164 From the late sixteenth
century Spanish galleons carried
tens of thousands of porcelain
to Acapulco,
pieces from Manila
inspir
own
to
in
Puebla
their
blue
distinctive
potters
ing Mexican
produce
in order
earthenwares
and-white
(as an eighteenth-century
priest
"to emulate
and equal the beauty of the wares of China."165
boasted)
161See Carl
Robert Quellmalz,
"Chinese
Porcelain
Excavated
from North
American
Coast
"Chinese
Sites," Oriental Art 18 (1972):
148-54;
Julia B. Curtis,
Export Por
in Eighteenth-Century
Tidewater
Studies in Eighteenth-Century
celain
Culture
17
Virginia,"
"Excavated Oriental
Ceramics
from the Cape of Good Hope,
119-44;
Jane Klose,
(1987):
TOCS
57 (1992-93):
69-80.
1630-1830,"
162 A.
on Iznik Pottery: A Re-Examination
Influence
of an Old Prob
J.
Pope, "Chinese
Museum
lem," in Islamic Art in theMetropolitan
(New York: Met
of Art, ed. R. Ettinghausen
Pacific
of Art,
Nurhan
and Julian Raby, I^nzk: The
1972), pp. 99-124;
Atasoy
ropolitan Museum
Press, 1994).
Pottery of Ottoman
Turkey (London: Alexandria
163
to the
Earthenware
Faience and Delftware
Tin-Glazed
Carnegy,
Daphne
from Maiolica,
and Charles
"The
(London: Adam
Black,
Tidswell,
Contemporary
1993), p. 33; T. Harrison
on Western
110 (1979): 212.
Influence
of Oriental
Porcelain
Ceramics,"
Apollo
164
Catherine
Italian Maiolica:
Hess,
(Malibu, Calif.:
J. Paul
Catalogue
of the Collections
Islamic Ceramics
(Oxford: Ashmolean
1988), pp. 120-23;
James W Allan,
Getty Museum,
Museum,
1991), p. 68.
165
in Mudge,
in the Chinese
Blue-and-White
Faience
Quoted
"Hispanic
Style," p. 53.
see Edwin A. Barber, Mexican
in the Collection
Maiolica
On Puebla ware,
of the Hispanic
Finlay:
The
Culture
of Porcelain
inWorld
History
185
in the seventeenth
blue-and-white
century decorated
Japanese potters
versions of Chinese
market with Dutch
beer mugs for the Amsterdam
lotus scrolls and with human
traveling
figures drawn from Japanese
and
shows, while
puppet
Japanese officials placed orders with Delft
of the wares
wooden
models
Chinese
potteries,
providing
they de
ewer
sired.166 In the late seventeenth
century a French earthenware
derived from Middle
from a Nevers
pottery had a shape that ultimately
a color scheme
Eastern metalwork,
from China,
and
(blue-and-white)
ornamentation
from diverse
classical
sources,
(a
antiquity
including
coiled serpent), early Christianity
(a winged angel), and China
(exotic
birds).16?
craftsmen
Jingdezhen
of a tax riot in Rotterdam,
in 1690 made a plate decorated with
commemorative
copied from a Dutch
a scene
coin,
the
of
of
Precious
Buddhism
around
representations
Objects
Eight
the central medallion.
Chinese
by Dutch
plates of 1722, commissioned
of the South Sea Bubble,
satirized the financial
debacle
merchants,
for Delft earthenware
and with human
accompanied
by advertisements
a
the
Italian
Commedia
derived
from
fashion copied
delVarte,
figures
on
a
from Meissen
Decoration
earthenware
tin-glazed
porcelain.
platter
with
in 1736 included a scene of Venus
from N?mes
and Adonis,
repro
duced from a French engraving,
circled by a border of Chinese
pome
in
for Dutch merchants
taken from cottons
granate vines
printed
at Chelsea
in England
in the early eigh
India.168 Pottery produced
teenth
imitated
Dutch
imitated Meissen
themselves
wares, which
porcelain
imitations
of
Chinese
vessels.169
Chinese
Japanese
copies of
wares
a
included marks
Delft
while
manufacture,
signifying
century
of America,
the Manila
(New York: Hispanic
Society of America
Society
1915). On
see William
trade route,
Galleon
(New York: E. P.
Lytle Schurz, The Manila
Acapulco
was transported
to Veracruz
overland
from Acapulco
Dutton,
1939)- The porcelain
by way
of Mexico
of Puebla,
southeast
City.
166
f. Volker,
"Two Early Blue-and-White
Japanese Jugs," Oriental Art 1 (1955): 3-5; C.
in Japan?Japanese
in Dutch Ceramics
Interest
and Other Curiosi
J. A. J?rg, "Exoticism
Period:
11; Stephen
ties," TOCS
Little, Chinese Ceramics
58 (1993-94):
of the Transitional
in America,
House
Institute
China
(New York: China
(exh. cat.)
1620-1683
Gallery,
P- 7
167
and Alice M. Zrebiac,
Arts during
"French Decorative
Olga Ruggio, Clare Vincent,
the Reign of Louis XIV, 1654-1715,"
Museum
Metropolitan
of Art Bulletin 46 (1989): 41.
168
"The Helena Woolworth
McCann
of Chinese
Makiko
Trade
Collection
Ichiura,
at the Metropolitan
Porcelain
Museum
of Art," Arts of Asia 5 (1975): 42; Hunter-Stiebel,
to Porcelain,"
"Faience?Prelude
pp. 361-63.
169
on European
Oliver
Impey, "Japanese Export Art of the Edo Period and Its Influence
use of Japanese models,
see
18 (1984):
Asian
Studies
Art," Modern
695. On Meissen's
im sogenannten
Masaka
(Kakiemonstil' als Vorbild f?r die
Shono,
Japanisches Aritaporzellan
trans. Richard Rasch and Rainer R?ckert
Meissener
(Munich: Editions
Porzellanmanufaktur,
Schneider
GmbH,
1973), pp. 16-35.
1983),
i86
JOURNAL
OF WORLD
HISTORY,
FALL
I998
Chinese
copy of a Meissen
copy of a Japanese dish came with a forged
Meissen mark.170 A Chinese
of
plate of 1750 decorated with a painting
a knight and his squire, surrounded by Chinese
scenery and birds, rep
it derived from a pattern on aMeissen
resented a four-step adaptation:
a Dutch
in
service of 1742 that replicated
engraving, which
porcelain
turn copied a woodprint
in a French
translation
of Cervantes'
Don
tureen of the late eighteenth
century had a sim
a
was
its
Staffordshire
earthenware
precursor
ilarly tangled genealogy:
on a S?vres porcelain
variation
itself stemmed
from a
vessel, which
in engravings
of the
piece of French silverwork whose
shape originated
A Chinese
Quixote.171
pottery of classical antiquity.172
To be sure, tracing such connections
the exercise conveys
the extent to which
induces
a certain
vertigo, but
and entre
artists, craftsmen,
preneurs around the world during the early modern
period were relay
and generating
cultural
forms. The history
of the
ing, integrating,
to the earlier creation of the lotus
flowering-tree
design, a counterpart
Sometime
after the
this circuit of exchange.173
motif,
exemplifies
in adapting
fifteenth
themes from blue-and
century, Persian painters,
white porcelain,
translated the blossoming
plum (mei hua) into a flower
on Persian
that soon appeared
earthenware
and
ing tree, a theme
Indian cotton fabric. In the seventeenth
century European potters and
it
textile producers adopted the Persian chinoiserie
design, after which
as chintz
into the most characteristic
of the patterns known
mutated
the design back to its
chint, "many colored")(from Hindi
Sending
to produce
commissioned
Indian weavers
source, English merchants
cottons with chintz patterns.
In the eighteenth
century the merchants
even sent drawings of the Indo-European
chinoiserie
fantasy to China
as instructions
artists. The flowering-tree
motif
also sur
for porcelain
of the eighteenth
faced on Japanese and Meissen
century
porcelain
in the famous blue-and-white
the
Willow
and as an element
pattern,
ever devised for tableware.
popular ornamentation
is representative
of ceramic
decoration
The flowering-tree
most
develop
170
on Western
of Oriental
Porcelain
"The Influence
Ceramics,"
pp. 214-15.
Tidswell,
171
and Ayers, Masterpieces
Howard
pp. 27, 49, 55.
of Chinese Export Porcelain,
172
"A Meeting
of East and West:
Print Sources
for Eighteenth
Jessica Harrison-Hall,
Chinese
Trade Porcelain,"
139 (1994): 3-6.
Century
Apollo
173
see John Irwin, "The Chinese
in Indian Chintz,"
in The
Element
On the following,
Snowdin
and Maurice
Westward
Howard,
Influence of the Chinese Arts, pp. 30-32; Michael
since 1450 (New Haven:
A Social History
Yale University
Ornament:
Press, 1996), p. 202;
in Bones of Jade, Soul of
"The Flowering
Plum in the Decorative
Arts,"
Mary Gardner Neill,
Ice: The Flowering Plum in the Decorative Arts, ed. Maggie
Bickford
Yale Uni
(New Haven:
versity Art
Designs
Robert Copland,
Gallery,
1985), pp. 193-244;
the Chinese
(London: Rizzoli,
1980).
after
Spode's Willow
Pattern
and Other
Finlay: The Culture of Porcelain inWorld History
187
in that it sprang from the intersection
of art and commerce,
and
in diverse
craftsmen
from the long-distance
of anonymous
cooperation
to say which
it is impossible
culture was
media. Most
significantly,
ment
since China,
India,
design,
in its thematic
all
roles
East,
played significant
and geographic
expansion.
development
centuries
and eighteenth
Porcelain
sug
artistry of the seventeenth
across
various
of
the
that
the
the countless
ecumene,
gests
regions
in the formation of a common
boundaries
them, collaborated
dividing
cultural tradition. Although
the taste of elites played a role in shaping
it, the tradition stemmed far more from the ingenuity and enterprise of
in China,
the potters themselves,
East, and Europe.
Japan, the Middle
the world had
the
end
of
the
craftsmen
around
century
By
eighteenth
created a collective
visual language, a koine of ceramic art. The potters
as examples
of Lisbon acclaimed
their copies of Chinese
of
porcelain
responsible
the Middle
for creation
of the celebrated
and Europe
of a globally
integrated circuit of aesthetic
the
Given
and imitative nature
peripatetic
status of porce
and intensified by the exemplary
a
common
in long-distance
trade shared
legacy,
"the pilgrim art," products
and commercial
exchange.
of ceramics,
extended
active
lain, potteries
and indiscriminate.
however
The lotus scroll and the flow
provisional
ering tree, kendi and pilgrim flasks, tureens and platters did not repre
sent either high art or monumental
achievement.
At their best, they
a novel
embodied
and creative
cultural
enhanced
synthesis,
by the
a sort
at their worst, they epitomized
charm of surprising associations;
of international
of the tourist art of a later century.
kitsch, a harbinger
case did they engage the attention
In neither
of intellectuals
striving
to comprehend
in the
of a new global consciousness
the emergence
era.174 Nevertheless,
and its imitations provide
porcelain
early modern
the first and most widespread
material
evidence
for sustained cultural
on an ecumenical
encounter
of
scale, perhaps even for intimations
truly global
174See
culture.
Venetian
of the Earth's
"The Sixteenth-Century
Celebration
John M. Headley,
for Renaissance
Issue of the Fully Habitable
The
World
Habitability:
Europe," Journal
8 (1997):
1-27.
ofWorld History
Total