The trade in Chinese armorial porcelain seems to have gradually died out in the nineteenth century, for reasons which are not far to seek. As far as England was concerned, the improvements in the manufacture both of porcelain and fine earthenware changed her position from that of a consumer to that of a producer. In addition to which, a high protective duty must have adversely affected the import trade, for we read[468] in the notes of Enoch Wood, the Staffordshire potter, that alarm was felt in 1803 in the potteries at the “proposed reduction of £59 8s. 6d. per cent. from the duty on the importation of Oriental porcelain, leaving it at 50 per cent.”
Not the least interesting part of the Franks Collection is the section devoted to Chinese porcelain decorated in Europe. In the early years of the eighteenth century a number of enamelling establishments appeared in Holland and in other countries where glass and pottery were decorated in the enamel colours which were then coming into play. As the supply of home-made porcelain was as yet practically non-existent, the enamellers had to look for this material in the Oriental market. Chinese porcelains with slight decoration, plain white wares, or those mainly decorated with incised and carved design under the glaze, and white Fukien porcelain offered the most suitable surface; and these we find treated by Dutch enamellers with the decoration then in vogue among the Delft potters. In the British Museum there are plates with portraits of Dutch celebrities, with designs satirising John Law’s bubble, and even with Japanese and Chinese patterns, especially those which the Delft potters were in the habit of copying from the “old Imari.” Thus we find the curious phenomenon of Chinese porcelain decorated in Europe with Oriental patterns, and, as may be imagined, these pieces have caused much perplexity to collectors. They are, however, to be recognised by the inferior quality of the enamels and the stiff drawing of the copyists. In the case of the Fukien porcelain with relief ornament, the decorators often confined themselves to touching the raised pattern with colour.
As a rule, these added decorations are crude and unsightly, but there were artists of great skill among the German chambrelans (as these unattached enamellers were called), such men as Ignatius Bottengruber and Preussler of Breslau,[469] who flourished about 1720 to 1730. Their designs of figures, mythical subjects, etc., enclosed by baroque scrollwork, were skilfully executed in camaieu red or black, heightened with gilding, and their work, which is very mannered and distinctive, is highly prized at the present day. Occasionally we find the handiwork of the Dutch lapidary on Chinese porcelains, a design of birds and floral scrolls being cut through a dark blue or brown glaze into the white biscuit.
About the middle of the eighteenth century a more legitimate material was found for the European decorator in small quantities of Chinese porcelain sent over “in the white.” Regular supplies in this state must have been forwarded from Ching-tê Chên to Canton for the enamellers there, and, no doubt, the European merchants were able to secure a small amount of this. Thus it was that Chinese porcelain is occasionally found with decoration by artists whose touch is recognised on Chelsea and other wares. It is not necessary to assume that such pieces were painted in the Chelsea factory. That may have been the case, but we know of important enamelling establishments, such as Duesbury’s in London, where Chelsea, Bow and Worcester porcelains obtained in the white were decorated to order. It is probable that the painters trained in this work afterwards passed into the porcelain factories. There are rare examples of Chinese porcelain with transfer prints executed at Battersea or even at Worcester, and apparently one or two pieces have had inscriptions added at Lowestoft; but, after all, this group of decorated Oriental is a very small one, and the specimens painted in the style of any particular English factory except Chelsea could be counted on one’s fingers. No doubt the same proceedings were repeated in various parts of the Continent, and there are certainly specimens decorated in the Meissen style, and in one piece in the Franks Collection the Meissen mark has been added.
But besides this more or less legitimate treatment of Chinese porcelain, there is a large group of hideously disfigured wares known by the expressive name of “clobbered china.” On these pieces Chinese underglaze decoration has been “improved” by the addition of green, yellow, red, and other enamels and gilding, which fill up the white spaces between the Chinese painting and even encroach on the blue designs themselves. This malpractice dates from the early years of the eighteenth century, and we find even choice specimens of K’ang Hsi blue and white among the victims. Possibly there was a reaction at this time against the Chinese blue and white with which the Dutch traders had flooded the country, but it is pitiful to find nowadays a fine vase or bottle of this ware plastered with meaningless daubs of inferior colour.
Strange to say, the clobberer became an established institution, and he was at work in London in the last century, and maybe he is not yet extinct; and, stranger still, his wretched handiwork has been actually taken as a model for decoration in English potteries, even to the ridiculous travesties of Oriental marks which he often added as the last insult to the porcelain he had defaced. As a rule, the clobbered decoration occurs on blue and white and follows more or less the lines of the original, though it is at once betrayed by its clumsiness and the wretched quality of the enamels used. Occasionally the clobberer was more ambitious, as on a bottle in the British Museum decorated with three spirited monsters in underglaze red. Into this admirably spaced design the clobberer has inserted graceless trees and three ridiculous figures in classical dress standing in Jack-the-giant-killer attitudes with brandished swords over the Chinese creatures. The effect is laughable, but it was vandal’s work to deal in this way with choice K’ang Hsi porcelain.