Quite early in the century, perhaps before 1700, figures and groups in plain white ware, for the most part attired in the European costume of the day, were exported from China. Many of these grotesque figures may be seen in the great Dresden collection, and a few in the British Museum. Later on it became the fashion for the European merchants at Canton to supply the native enamellers of that city with engravings, to be copied by them in colours on the white ware sent down from King-te-chen. In other cases the captain of a Dutch or English vessel lying in the Canton roads would employ a native artist to decorate a plate or dish with a picture of his good ship.
But the most frequent task given to these Canton enamellers was the reproduction of elaborate coats of arms upon the centre of a plate or dish, or sometimes upon a whole dinner-service. There is in the British Museum a remarkable collection of this armorial china, brought together for the most part by the late Sir A. W. Franks.[105] Orders came not from England alone, but from Holland, Sweden, Germany, and even Russia. Services were thus decorated for Frederick the Great and other royal heads. The practice seems to have been kept up during the whole of the eighteenth century, but we do not know the precise date at which it was introduced. In a few cases—the large Talbot plate in the British Museum is an instance ([Pl. xxi].)—the arms were painted in blue under the glaze, and such decoration was probably executed at King-te-chen. The small plate with the Okeover arms in the same collection was, according to the family tradition, ordered as early as the year 1700, but the decoration in my opinion would undoubtedly point to a later date[106] ([Pl. xii]. 2).
PLATE XXI. CHINESE, BLUE AND WHITE WARE
It is hardly necessary at the present day to mention that this armorial china has nothing to do with Lowestoft. A fictitious interest was, however, long given to this ware by its strange attribution to that town.
Much Chinese porcelain, either plain white or sparely decorated under the glaze with blue, was imported during the eighteenth century, to be daubed over, often in the worst taste, with a profusion of gaudy colours, in Holland, in Germany, and in England. At Venice, too, the plain Oriental ware was at one time elaborately painted with a black enamel.
More interest attaches to the porcelain enamelled at Canton for the Indian market. The Chinese seem in some way to have associated the yang-tsai or ‘foreign colours’ with the enamels made in the south of India, especially at Calicut, and it is possible that Indian patterns and schemes of colour may have influenced some of the developments of the famille rose. The Canton enamellers must at the same time have been working on the richly decorated ware for the Siamese market, but it is on their enamel paintings on copper that the Indo-Siamese influence is chiefly seen (see next chapter).
Nor were these exotic schemes of decoration confined to the Canton enamellers. At more than one time there was something like a rage for copying foreign designs—Japanese, among others—at King-te-chen, and that not for trade purposes alone, for as we have mentioned already, both Kang-he and Kien-lung seem to have taken a passing interest in the strange productions of the outer barbarian.
Of the many kinds of ceramic wares made in different parts of China which from the opacity of the paste we cannot class as porcelain, we can only mention two, both of which would probably come under the head of our kaolinic stoneware:—1. The Yi-hsing yao, made at a place of that name not far from Shanghai, which includes the red unglazed ware, esteemed by the Chinese for the brewing of tea. This is the so-called Boccaro successfully copied by Böttger. Sometimes we find this stoneware painted with enamel colours thickly laid on, and the design is often accentuated by ridges or cloisons. 2. The Kuang yao, of which there are two classes. The ware made near Amoy is a yellowish to brownish stoneware, thickly glazed and rudely decorated. This coarse pottery is much in favour with the Chinese colonists in America and elsewhere. Again in the south of the province of Kuang-tung, at Yang-chiang-hsien, a reddish stoneware has long been made. It is covered with a thick glaze, often mottled, more or less blue, and sometimes resembling the flambé glazes of King-te-chen. Indeed this Kuang yao at one time was copied at the latter place.[107] It is often stated that true porcelain was made in Kuang-tung, but the evidence on the whole is against this. We will quote, however, what the Abbé Raynal says (Histoire du Commerce des Européens dans les Deux Indes, 1770). He states that competition with King-te-chen had been abandoned ‘excepté au voisinage de Canton, où on fabrique la porcelaine connue sous le nom de porcelaine des Indes. La pâte en est longue et facile; mais en général les couleurs sont très inférieures. Toutes les couleurs, excepté le bleu, y relèvent en bosse et sont communément mal appliquées. La plupart des tasses, des assiettes et des autres vases que portent nos négocians, sortent de cette manufacture, moins estimée à la Chine que ne le sont dans nos contrées celles de fayence.‘[108] Compare with this what we have said about the rough porcelain exported to India in the seventeenth century (p. 85).