Literature.—The older European works on Chinese porcelain have been superseded by the later books. The following list contains the best recent books:—S.W. Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art (New York, 1897; text separately 1899); Chinese Porcelain before the present Dynasty (Pekin, 1886); Chinese Art, vol. ii., Victoria and Albert Museum Handbooks (1906); Brongniart, Traité des arts céramiques (3rd edition, with valuable supplements by Salvétat, 1877); Dillon, Porcelain (1900); Sir A.W. Franks, Catalogue of Oriental Pottery and Porcelain (1878); Grandidier, La Céramique chinoise (1894); Griggs, Examples of Armorial China (1887); Hippisley, Ceramic Arts in China (Smithsonian Institute, Washington, 1890); Hirth, Ancient Chinese Porcelain (Leipzig, 1888); Julien, Histoire et fabrication de la porcelaine chinoise (Paris, 1856); Meyer, Lung-chuan Yao, oder alter Seladon Porzellan (Berlin, 1889); Monkhouse, History of Chinese Porcelain (1901); O. du Sartel, La Porcelaine de Chine (Paris, 1881); Burton, Porcelain (1906); Bushell and Laffan, The Garland Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of New York (1907).
(W. B.*)
European Porcelain to the end of the 18th Century
Europe can claim no share in the discovery of porcelain, the white and translucent pottery par excellence, for when the first specimens of Chinese porcelain were brought to Europe, perhaps as early as the 11th or 12th century, they excited the greatest wonder and admiration. Cairo was at this time the great mart for the exchange of the products of East and West, and from this centre porcelains were sent into Europe. Nasir i Khosrau, the Persian traveller, who visited Old Cairo in a.d. 1035-1042, was evidently acquainted with Chinese porcelain, and he also speaks of a translucent ware made at Fostat (Old Cairo) which may well have been the progenitor of the glassy porcelains of Persia, as well as of those made in Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries. In a.d. 1171 the famous Saladin sent from Cairo a present of forty pieces of Chinese porcelain to the sultan of Babylon; and from that time onwards we have frequent records of pieces of this exotic pottery finding their way into the treasuries of European princes. With the renewed attention paid to the potter’s art in Europe after the 14th century, it was but natural that efforts should be made to imitate a material so mysterious and beautiful. But knowledge of Chinese materials and methods was nil, and for a further two centuries all that Europe manufactured in the shape of translucent pottery was the artificial porcelain made with glass, which can only be looked upon as a substitute for true porcelain. In Italy during the 16th century, and in France during the century from 1670 to 1770 roughly, this artificial porcelain was made and developed. At Meissen in Saxony the famous Böttger made a true porcelain from materials analogous to the Chinese about 1710-1712, and this manufacture was pursued in Germany, Austria and elsewhere in Europe (even in France, the home of the artificial glassy porcelain, after 1770), so that by the end of the 18th century, when Chinese porcelain had reached and passed its zenith, the manufacture of a similar material was well established in Europe, and the glassy porcelains had been generally abandoned. The only country which offered any departure from this general rule was England. The earliest English porcelains were derived from the French, and, like them, owed their translucence to the use of glass. Efforts were made at Plymouth and at Bristol (1758-1781) to introduce the manufacture of porcelain, like the Chinese and its German counterparts, but these failed and the English potters finally invented a third kind of porcelain, in which calcined ox-bones were added to the clay and ground rock to give a white translucent porcelain capable of receiving any form of decoration. This distinctively English porcelain, perfected about 1800, is not only the principal kind made in England in our own times, but its manufacture has been adopted, to some extent in France, Germany and Sweden, as well as in the United States.
It is impossible to describe these various efforts of European potters without a certain amount of overlapping, for during the 18th century all the three kinds of European porcelain were struggling for supremacy. It is advisable, therefore, to keep clearly in mind which kind of porcelain is in question, for many problems of manufacture and decoration are absolutely determined by the nature of the materials.
| Florentine Potter’s mark. |
If we could trust to documentary evidence alone, the earliest European porcelains were made at Venice in 1470, and again in 1519; while we also read of its manufacture at Ferrara in 1561.[34] Unfortunately, documentary evidence alone is not conclusive, and the first European porcelain, known from actual specimens as well as by documentary evidence, was that made at Florence in the laboratory of Francesco de’ Medici, between 1575 and 1585. Specimens of this rare porcelain are to be found only in great museums and private collections, where they rank among our chief ceramic treasures. They show clearly that the Florentine potters never fully mastered their difficult material, for the ware is always imperfect and compares indifferently in whiteness and translucence with fine porcelain, while the glaze is neither smoothly melted nor free from defects. Obviously the effect of Chinese blue and white porcelain was aimed at, the decorations, reminiscent of the style of the Persian pot-painters, being executed in cobalt blue alone. These rare and interesting pieces bear distinctive marks; for at their period the use of painters’ marks or monograms had become fairly general on artistic pottery in Europe. One of the best known marks is the “palle” or balls of the arms of the Medici family, bearing the letters “F M M E D II.” for “Franciscus Medici Magnus Etruriae Dux II.”; while other pieces have a rude representation of the Great Dome of Florence and the letter “F.”
Plate VIII.
| Chinese. K’ang-hsi period. | Chinese. Black ground. K’ang-hsi period. | Chinese (Famille Verte). K’ang-hsi period. |
| Chinese (Famille Rose). Ch’ien-lung period. | Chinese. Plum-blossom jar. K’ang-hsi period. |