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White Gold: Porcelain in the New World

Yi Yu Fu

“The earth is so refined that dishes made of it are of an azure tint with a very brilliant sheen.”

 

Attributed to Marco Polo.

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Bowl commemorating the success of the African trade made at Liverpool, circa 1760s.

 

“As smooth as the richly decorated silk with which the ships were laden and as flawlessly azure as the waves that crashed over their bows on their long treacherous journeys,” British historian Janet Gleason would marvel at the beauty of porcelain as had generations of British merchants.[1] It is indeed difficult today to imagine afternoon tea without finely made porcelain wares, just as it is difficult to imagine British life without tea and crumpets. But the origins of porcelain do not lie within British shores. In fact, the very term porcelain comes from Marco Polo’s nickname for it - porcellini. This was a reference to the Italian cowry shell, whose flawless surface resembles that of porcelain. Perhaps more subtly, it was a snide reference to porcellina which was a denigrating remark for beautiful women of loose morals. If so, Marco Polo had been observant. Nicknamed “white gold”, porcelain, at once exotic and mundane, was one of the most prized commodities in the early modern world.[2] Yet porcelain’s pristine beauty had always stood in contrast to the violent and amoral character of its trade, a dangerous journey filled with piracy and slavery. Porcelain as an Atlantic commodity reflects the myriad dimensions of the early modern world. Imperial elites sought porcelain for its luxury status and display value, and often porcelain wares conveyed powerful political messages or projected imperial power to subaltern populaces.​

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Porcelain first entered European eyes through the accounts of Marco Polo, though it would be several centuries before Europeans could capitalize on its trade.[3] In China however, ceramic manufacturing had a storied history stretching to the Sui Dynasty. When the Portuguese finally made direct contact with China’s imperial government in the late Ming Dynasty, porcelain had evolved from the early glazed and fragile ceramics to the flawlessly translucent and richly painted patterns that modern consumers would find familiar. Portugal was quick to capitalize on this trade by establishing trade with China’s imperial government, but with the capture of the San Yago and Santa Catarina in 1602 and 1604 other European powers including the Netherlands and Britain entered the trade. As the European market opened up, Chinese porcelain makers began producing porcelain that would appeal to Europeans. This attention to European demand inaugurated a defining trait of porcelain exports: porcelain became a vehicle for Western imagery. Chinese-style coloring decorated facsimiles of European icons such as royal emblems and the Virgin Mary on an expanding array of wares such as tankards and mustard pots that would look out of place in a Chinese kitchen.[4] In a sense, porcelain embodied the global dimension of early modern trade and the evolution of Chinese export porcelain demonstrates how even the smallest consumer item could be interwoven with individual and national identities.

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A Chinese-made export porcelain during the 17th Century.

Archaeological evidence such as estate records and excavated fragments show that porcelain was widely traded in the New World since the beginning of Sino-European contact in the seventeenth century.[5] In New Spain, porcelain was transported by Chinese ships to Manila where Spanish merchants carried porcelain to the Americas. Records indicate that annual fairs were held in Acapulco every January and buyers from all over New Spain would come for the porcelain. Porcelain reached as far as Vera Cruz via muleback, and excavations of Mexico City turned up large volumes of seventeenth-century porcelain shards that suggested it was not a luxury reserved for the rich.[6]

 

Surviving documents revealed that Spanish-imported porcelain was often made in shapes to hold chocolate. In the British Empire, porcelain quickly became one of the empire’s most fashionable goods. An estimated 215 million pieces of Chinese porcelain were in circulation within British holdings by 1791, and porcelain wares found their ways to the lower classes as well. Wealthy colonial families however had been bringing porcelain to the American colonies since the early seventeenth century and by the mid eighteenth century Charleston and New York were said to have boasted porcelain collections that rivaled those in Britain. Jamaican planters had also favored porcelain to demonstrate their opulence, and their porcelain was often decorated with scenes of slavery and trade that spoke of their wealth.[7] In a sense, the porcelain commodity chain created a British identity that stretched across the Atlantic. Tellingly, as tensions rose between the American colonies and the British homeland, porcelain became one of the first targets along with tea. Boycotts of British porcelain vessels were common in the years leading up to the American Revolution and one of the first American commerce initiatives after the Treaty of Paris was the negotiation of an American-specific porcelain trade agreement with Qing China.

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Porcelain was heavily associated with the triangular trade both in the economic and political sense. Although Chinese-made porcelain continued to dominate European markets well into the nineteenth century, Europeans made many attempts to replicate the manufacturing process. In 1768, William Cookworthy cracked the porcelain formula in Britain and established the Plymouth China Factory.[8] The factory was subsequently moved to Bristol, a rather backwater port. Following the establishment of the first British porcelain factory, Bristol became the center of the burgeoning Atlantic trade. Its porcelain factory produced goods for Britain and the Americas while its shipyard served as a major launching point for slave ships. Like many other ports in Britain and the West Indies, Bristol prospered from the capital gained through the transfer of commodities in the Atlantic. Many of the ceramics produced for the benefactors of this transatlantic trade celebrated the city’s newfound wealth by incorporating imagery of plantation labor and slave ships. The stark contrast between the elegantly illustrated scenes of slave ships/plantations with the horrific realities of slavery drives home the scale of human suffering condoned by those who traded their humanity for profit. However, some abolitionists also commissioned porcelain pieces to make powerful political attacks upon slavery. The founder of Wedgewood pottery, Josiah Wedgewood distributed many porcelain wares that included imagery of suffering slaves that educated consumers on the crimes of slave owners. In a sense, porcelain played the stoic witness to the inhumanities of the Atlantic slave trade. Through porcelain, the plight of enslaved Africans gained a foothold into many British homes and the British imagination.

 

Overall, examining the movement of porcelain gives us insight into the highly connected nature of the Atlantic world. Porcelain played a crucial role in the development of the Atlantic trade and the changes made to porcelain wares as they move across the oceans point to the complex national and individual identities woven into even the smallest and most mundane commodity.​

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Porcelain with abolitionist message produced by Josiah Wedgewood at Wedgewood Factory.

Notes

 

[1] P. M. Guerty and K. Switaj, “Tea, Porcelain, and Sugar in the British Atlantic World,” OAH Magazine of History 18, no. 3 (January 2004): pp. 56-59, https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/18.3.56.

[2] Ibid., 57.

[3] Clare Le Corbeiller and Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, “Chinese Export Porcelain,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 60, no. 3 (2003): p. 1, https://doi.org/10.2307/3269266.

[4] Ibid., 7.

[5] Meha Priyadarshini, “Conclusion: Themes from a Connected World,” Chinese Porcelain in Colonial Mexico, 2018, pp. 167-177, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66547-4_6.

[6] Ibid., 171.

[7] Ibid., 7.

[8] Allison Robinson, “The Triangle Trade and the English Export Ceramics Industry,” Material Matters, February 18, 2017, https://sites.udel.edu/materialmatters/2017/02/21/the-triangle-trade-and-the-english-export-ceramics-industry/.

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Bibliography

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