The Craze for Chinese Porcelain

Teresa Canepa is an independent researcher and lecturer in Chinese export art. Much of her work relates to Chinese porcelain. These are the fahua pieces for the first time found in a shipwreck. You find them very neatly ordered because this is the way they were packed under the water for so long. Generally the glaze becomes opaque so you lose a little bit of the shiny area but in this case they look very good. So many pieces are intact so you can see the shapes and you can restudy them so it's excellent. When you have these intact pieces and in good condition you will be able to study their glazes, their material and understand really better the production of these pieces. So I think this is probably one of the most important finds that it has been in the latest decades I would say. Teresa considers Jingdezhen, the ceramic capital of China, as a critical link. She says since the 16th century the exchange of craftsmanship and trade triggered by Chinese ceramics have created a global popularity. They produce special orders for the European market, they produce special shapes for the Islamic market and special decorations which actually were related to the customs that people had in the Middle East. So this made Jingdezhen and Jingdezhen porcelain an important commodity and you would see that it was imitated all over the world, particularly the blue and white porcelain. In the Ming dynasty large quantities of porcelain were exported to Southeast Asia, to Japan and to the Middle East. When the Portuguese began to trade directly with China in the early 16th century, large quantities of porcelain were imported into Portugal and from there were distributed throughout Europe. When porcelain began to arrive in Europe they admired this new material, that it was much harder than anything they had. It had not only a practical aspect to it but also a connotation of knowing about the world, of understanding what China was and also the exoticism of owning these pieces that nobody else could own. You see influences going from China to these countries and then from these countries going back to China. One of the important things of the porcelain porters and painters, particularly those of Jingdezhen, is that they adapted swiftly to the different requirements of their different customers in different parts of the world.