Export Porcelain In The Qing Dynasty: Chinese Scenery In European Courts

Despite 300 years of seawater erosion and silt covering, the blue and white porcelain from the sunken ship in Vung Tau still has a faint blue light after it comes out of the water, and it still retains the immortal charm of the Qing Dynasty. However, Louis XIV's Palais Trianon began to crack within a few years of its construction, water leaked from the roof, and the color faded. The walls were made of low-temperature soft clay made in France, which could not withstand wind and rain. When Madame Montespan fell out of favor, the Porcelain Palace was eventually demolished and a more magnificent Trianon was rebuilt.

In 1670, in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, King Louis XIV of France and his mistress Madame de Montespan were having an affair. Hiding beautiful women in a golden house was probably a common hobby of emperors from the East and the West. He decided to build a palace for his lover.

What kind of palace is worthy of my beloved concubine? Seeing that the large collection of Chinese porcelain is lacking a good exhibition hall, let's build a replica of the Chinese Porcelain Palace. This year, the Trianon Porcelain Palace, made of soft pottery, was built. The charm of blue flowers on a white background is like a huge blue and white porcelain erected in the Palace of Versailles.

At this time, the Chinese porcelain that Louis XIV loved was being continuously shipped out of China's coastal ports, heading south along the coast of Vietnam, first arriving in Batavia (i.e. Jakarta) or Malacca, and then being repackaged and shipped to Europe. At the port, every time it arrives, there is a crazy rush.

A voyage halfway around the world is never smooth sailing. One day 20 years later, on the sea near Vung Tau, a southern province in Vietnam today, a Dutch sailing ship loaded with porcelain suddenly caught fire, and then took the porcelain with it. The ship's cargo and countless Europeans waited to sink to the bottom of the sea.

Nearly 300 years later, in 1986, a Vietnamese fisherman cast a fishing net beside a reef. When the fishing net was slowly put away, in addition to lively tropical fish, there were also white porcelain with patterns painted as blue as the sea…

Sixty thousand pieces of blue and white porcelain surfaced

The lucky fisherman sold the porcelain to a businessman in Vung Tau City. The shrewd businessman soon realized the value of the porcelain and promised the fisherman that he would purchase large quantities of such blue and white porcelain. So the fishermen returned to the marked point to start fishing, and once again successfully found a large number of porcelain. Large quantities of porcelain came onto the market, and many years later they can still be found in antique shops.

This batch of salvaged porcelain attracted the attention of the Vietnamese government and stopped private salvage. After investigation, it was found that there was a sunken ship in the salvage area, which was named "Vung Tau Shipwreck". In 1990, the Vietnam National Maritime Rescue Organization teamed up with a Swedish salvage company and began a two-year salvage operation.

In the end, nearly 60,000 pieces of porcelain were salvaged. According to the salvage report "from the Vung Tau wreck", the cargo ship sank in the 1690s, equivalent to China's Kangxi period, and nearly 70% of them were blue and white porcelain from Jingdezhen. , they were supposed to be on their way to Batavia, where they were repackaged and shipped to Dutch ports for sale.

Some of the porcelains were auctioned in the international market, and some were collected by the Southern Song Dynasty Official Kiln Museum together with the blue and white porcelain sold for export at the same time. In 2008, a total of 105 pieces of these porcelains briefly appeared on the official blog, and then began touring various places, visiting 10 museums in 9 cities, attracting a viewing craze every time.

Now, after many years of absence, these blue and white porcelains have returned to the Guanyao Museum and are back in front of us. In blue and white accents, they tell the story of their three-hundred-year journey across the sea.

If the sudden fire had not interrupted the journey, this batch of porcelain would have been heading west along the new shipping route opened by the Portuguese at the end of the 15th century, across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, and north to Europe.

Before this sea route was accessible, very little Chinese porcelain flowed into Europe. After Portugal established trade relations with China, porcelain, along with silk and spices, began to be continuously shipped to Europe, which promoted the porcelain collection craze in European countries and set off a "Chinese style" that lasted until the mid-19th century. According to statistics: from the establishment of the Dutch East India Company to the thirty-fourth year of Kangxi (1602-1695), 20 million pieces of Chinese porcelain were trafficked to Europe, mainly including blue and white, five-color and Guangcai porcelain from the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

In the early 16th century, during the era of Queen Isabella of Portugal, only "porcelain was the most coveted of all treasures" in the royal property list. The Portuguese liked the smooth appearance of porcelain very much. Thinking of the skin of an animal called "piggy" on the bottom of the sea in southern Europe, they called the coveted porcelain "pigs".

Princes and nobles are all ardent fans

The European aristocrats' pursuit of "sea pigs" has reached the point of recklessness, just like a French poem chants: Come, look at this piece of porcelain, what attracts me is its splendor. It comes from a new world and I have never seen such beautiful art. How seductive, exquisite and transcendent, from China, its homeland.

Louis XIV, who built a porcelain palace, was not the most enthusiastic person. Augustus II, the elector of German Saxony at the same time, wrote to the Prime Minister: "I have fallen into a fanatical pursuit of Dutch orange trees and Chinese porcelain. "He is buying and collecting without restraint and ignorance of the world." A collection list that has survived to this day shows us that at the peak of his collection, Augustus II owned as many as 24,100 pieces of Oriental porcelain and Chinese porcelain. The number reached 17,000 pieces, and he also built a Chinese Palace and a Japanese Palace to display these porcelains.

After Augustus II became king of Poland, he specially purchased hundreds of pieces of Chinese multicolored porcelain from the Masurun area of Warsaw to decorate the magnificent Zwinger Palace. In order to buy 127 pieces of blue and white porcelain from King William I of Prussia, Augustus II did not hesitate to exchange 600 fully armed Guards Cavalry.

The cavalry used to trade porcelain was later incorporated into the Prussian Army and earned the nickname "Porcelain Regiment". These blue and white porcelains are therefore called the "Dragoon Bottle Group". They are large in size and covered with blue and white patterns. They are still displayed in the Zwinger Palace today, showing their luxurious style.

In addition to Louis XIV and Augustus II, displaying the porcelain purchased with a lot of money for viewing – and showing off their wealth – was something that the nobles at that time enjoyed. Porcelain halls of large and small sizes appeared in various palaces in Europe. The Prussian Royal Palace Charlotten Castle has the "Chinese Porcelain Hall". Queen Mary II of England specially set up many glass cabinets in the palace to display various porcelain. The trend of decorating with porcelain became popular in the whole society, and porcelain gradually became an indispensable furnishing in living rooms and interior rooms.

Empress Maria Theresa of Austria built a Chinese Porcelain Hall in the palace, and coincidentally with Louis XIV, she chose the blue-on-white style to decorate the walls, with the decorations separated by ribbon reliefs composed of flowers and fruits. Among all kinds of porcelain, the most commonly displayed porcelain is blue and white porcelain. The blue color adds a unique sense of tranquility and solemnity to the lakes, mountains, flowers and birds commonly seen on porcelain, highlighting the intoxicating Chinese style. The blue and white style born out of this has become The most fashionable interior design of the time.

Except for a small amount of white porcelain, most of the porcelain salvaged from the shipwreck in Vung Tau is blue and white porcelain. This reflects the European aristocrats' crazy love for blue flower porcelain with white background from the source of the goods. As for what was painted, maybe they didn't care.

For example, there is a piece of "Blue and White White Snake on the edge of the basin". The bottom of the basin is painted with a well-known character story on the White Snake: Xu Xian is holding a folding fan, the jade tree is facing the wind, and the monk Fahai is holding a fly whisk between Xu Xian and the White Snake. , while the white lady carries a sword on her back, her long sleeves follow the wind, and she stops talking. It must have been difficult for Europeans at that time to understand the meaning of the painting and to figure out the lingering plot, but the characters and scenes in the painting alone were enough to make them imagine.

Western landscape on porcelain

Wandering in the exhibition hall, you will also see pure landscapes, cowherd boys playing on the backs of cows, and butterflies from the Qing Dynasty still lingering on the peonies of 300 years ago. Huh? There was something strange about the big jar with the lid on it.

This jar with a large lid is called a Gaozang jar, and it is a type of porcelain produced for export since the Ming Dynasty. The overall shape of this jar is slender, with a high-arched lid and a rounded lid. Half of the jar is decorated with brilliantly blooming flower bonsai from top to bottom, while the other half depicts European Gothic churches and towering castles in a hexagonal frame.

With the strengthening of exchanges between the East and the West, Europeans soon began to be "selective" about blue paintings when buying porcelain. They were not satisfied with the Chinese scenery and hoped to customize unique porcelain to show their taste. , is also a symbol of financial strength.

In 1602, on the sea of Malacca, a group of Dutch ships were besieging a Portuguese merchant ship. The former quickly captured the merchant ship and took away the spoils. Among them is the blue and white porcelain of the Ming Dynasty, but the picture has been changed a lot to meet the aesthetic needs of Portuguese businessmen and cater to the preferences of Europeans. Because the ship was called Clark, this kind of porcelain was called "Clarke porcelain". This style of porcelain has been popular in Europe for a long time.

For example, "Clark Porcelain" and other porcelain that purely catered to Europeans were all produced by "processing according to supplied samples", which gave birth to the "customized production" method three to four hundred years ago. Although they are painting some pictures that have never been seen before, they are not a challenge to the skills of Chinese craftsmen.

There is such a widely circulated story. There was a nobleman in the Kingdom of Sweden who loved Chinese porcelain. In order to show his noble status and strong financial resources, he sent people to China with a set of drawn patterns to customize a batch of porcelain. The craftsmen must strictly follow the instructions. Pattern fired painted porcelain.

The paper with the pattern on it was accidentally soaked by the sea water during several months of turbulence at sea, and there was a faint trace of water around it. Chinese craftsmen discovered the water marks on it and thought it was a deliberate request by the customizer, so they stayed true to the original work and burned the water marks on the porcelain as part of the pattern. Naturally, the nobleman was a little unhappy after receiving such a product. But when he discovered that the water marks on the porcelain were exactly the same as the patterns, he couldn't help but admire the superb craftsmanship.

Porcelain changes eating habits

Among these exhibits, in addition to pairs of flower vases of different sizes, large jars with lids and other utensils for viewing or illustration, there are also sets of dishes, teapots, etc., and a pair of small cups that are very cute. The surface of the cup is painted with traditional Chinese pictures of children grazing in spring and young swallows flying in the clouds. The lotus petal-shaped consecration in the belly of the cup is filled with fruit tree fruiting patterns. The pattern is full and dense, which is a traditional pattern. However, the shape is completely different from traditional Chinese cups.

In fact, this was a specially customized milk cup in Europe at that time, imitating the shape of European gold and silver cups. When Europeans drank tea or coffee, this cup was specially used to hold milk.

From the vases placed in the cabinet to the utensils on the dining table, the transformation of porcelain from decoration to practicality benefited from the reforms of French King Louis XV. The son of Louis XIV loved porcelain as much as his father. He issued an edict requiring that the original gold and silver tableware in the palace be melted down and used for other purposes, and all porcelain plates and cups were used during meals. As the vane of Western European fashion, the royal family's behavior quickly became popular among the people and the courts of Western European countries.

In addition to using porcelain to show dignity, the lower class people no longer use wooden or ceramic tableware that is bulky and difficult to clean, and eating hygiene has been greatly improved. Behind the success of the daily necessities revolution, it is naturally inseparable from the continuous input of porcelain. According to a document from the Danish East India Company in 1760 (the 25th year of Qianlong's reign), among the porcelain carried by three Danish cargo ships, there were coffee cups, Tea cups, 522 sets of tea sets, 748 milk cups, etc.

According to "from the Vung Tau wreck", there was an overwhelming number of tea sets and models in the cargo hold of the Vung Tau shipwreck, and there were also a large number of tea sets in the Danish cargo ship. In 1680, more than ten years after the cargo ship sank, a Dutch doctor, Bondigault, proposed that drinking 200 cups of tea a day could cure all diseases. Chinese tea, which came with the tea set, became the most fashionable dietary trend among Europeans. , the two complement each other and have been successfully implanted into the eating habits of Europeans.

Porcelain making technology spread to the west

After buying porcelain for hundreds of years, European craftsmen in the Louis XIV era still could not figure out the mysterious materials and manufacturing techniques of Chinese porcelain. In addition, the Chinese government at that time had strict personal restrictions on missionaries in China, and it was difficult for Europe to know the core formula. .

At the invitation of Emperor Kangxi, Louis XIV sent a group of missionaries to China. Among them was a priest named "Yin Hongxu" in Chinese. He gained trust by using Western medicine to heal the people while preaching. Through his personal relationship with Jiangxi Governor Lang Tingji, he lived in Jingdezhen for seven years with official acquiescence, and had free access to porcelain workshops. "I took great pains to teach Chinese workers how to make porcelain," and finally he found out. The porcelain production details and raw material formulas were written in two reports and sent back to Europe with samples.

From then on, the craftsmanship of porcelain was no longer mysterious, and Europeans began to make wonderful Chinese porcelain themselves. (Youth Times)