Detail Chinese Pavilions from a Lacquer Screen, Martyn Cook Antiques, Sydney, Australia
‘Let us travel into Cathay, so.. you may learn something of it grandeurs’ wrote Italian adventurer Marco Polo at the turn of the 14th century, inspiring the notion China was a land unlike any other.
The International trade routes with Asia have a history that stretch back well into antiquity. There is archaelogical evidence of cross cultural influences from Cathay (China) with its Asian neighbours as well as those separated by great distances such as the Roman, Persian and Greek empires.
From the 1st century trade moved regularly overland between the Chinese capital and the Mediterranean a distance of 7000 kilometres. Roman ships laden with trade goods, gold bullion and coins set out from Red sea ports each year. The trade with Asia was continued well into the 2nd century a fact documented in Han dynasty records.
There are reports of peacocks and parrots in Greece in the fifth century through contact with India. There is also evidence of trade activities through sea voyages from China to many Eastern ports on the Atlantic Ocean rim. Goods came along the Seidenstrassen, or Silk Road (the name coined by Baron Ferdinand Von Richthofen in the 19th century) for ancient routes that linked Asia and the west.
During the Middle Ages in western Europe these contacts were, by and large, reduced to a mere trickle, as cities and towns defended themselves against continual threats of invasion by emigrating and marauding peoples.
The first stirring of what we now describe as the China Trade began when Europe was still emerging from the medieval period. Marco Polo’s controversial ‘Description of the World’, written in 1298 described a vast exotic land from reputedly, first hand observation of amenable, happy people who seemingly whiled away the hours pleasantly disporting in pavilions set in ethereal landscapes. The world Marco Polo (1254-1324) described to western Christendom was almost wholly unknown and he said himself that ‘no other man, Christian or Saracen, Mongol or Pagan, has explored so much of the world as Messer Marco, son of Messer Niccolo Polo, great and noble citizen of the city of Venice.’
After 17 years of living at the court of the Great Khan Kubilai where they enjoyed many privileges, Marco and his father and his Uncle Matteo returned to Venice ‘I believe it was God’s will we should come back so that men might know the things that are in the world’. His much disputed account of the wealth of Cathay (China), the might of the Mongol empire and exotic customs of India and Africa ensured his book was a bestseller soon afterward. Its impact on contemporary Europe was tremendous although contemporarily it became known as Il Milione the Million Lies. Marco Polo himself earned the nickname Marco Milione as few believed that the stories he had revealed were true. However on his deathbed he was reputed to have confused the issue even further by saying ‘I did not tell yet half of what I saw’.
The popularity of Marco Polo’s Travels were, by the mid fourteenth century surpassed by self-styled noble author ‘Sir’ John Mandeville’s Travels. Mandeville enhanced the view of a people who were different, but in no way inferior. Although their source is much disputed they did provide further insight into a culture that by now many found fascinating, profound and perhaps just a little peculiar.
Initially Europeans could not differentiate between the Chinese, Indian, Japanese South East Asian, or Middle Eastern peoples, so the European eastern vision was extremely vast and did not really reflect the geographic or cultural reality. Marco Polo had stressed the prodigious riches of the East as a land of precious gems, spices, and gorgeous silks.
Ceramic traditions since ancient times have undergone many cross fertilizations by their exposure to various cultures. In 1368 the famed poets and painters of the Chinese T’ang and Sung dynasties had already passed into the hallowed halls of antiquity and it was also considered by the Chinese themselves that the supreme periods of their major arts had passed.
By the 15th century select pieces of porcelain made for the Imperial Court and the more exacting home markets of China were arriving in Europe to be displayed in homes of its successful merchants and noble families who both respected and revered these wares for their boldness of colouring and modernity of design. They were magically translucent, resonant when struck, impervious to liquids and considered to be refined, aesthetically pleasing with great beauty of form.
To put it into a European context Emperor Wan Li, the last ruler of the Ming Dynasty was sitting on the Throne of Heaven between 1573 and 1620 when Elizabeth 1st in England was contending with Mary Queen of Scots and other vexing issues. The earliest accurate records we have of pieces of Chinese porcelain in the west are those listed in Queen Elizabeth 1’s will, so we can deduce they were highly prized. Burghley House was the home of Elizabeth 1’s advisers the Cecil’s who became one of the most powerful families during the reign of the Tudor’s in England. Like others they enshrined each precious object with the addition of gilded mounts a traditional practice of western Christianity for centuries.
The gilded mounts attached to Chinese porcelains in great English country house collections today reveal the mounts offered a measure of protection against their fragility and highlighted the esteem in which they were held. The trade to Europe prior to 1600 was sporadic and the Portuguese established themselves at a succession of key points including Goa on the Indian Coast before 1511 and Malacca, which they seized in that year. It was the main junction for the Indies spice trade and the limit reached by the Chinese junks, which came south to exchange cargoes of porcelain and silk.
Macao in 19th century
In 1557 they were allowed to settle in Macao. Pieces usually came to the west with seamen. Kraak is a Dutch word thought to be a corruption of the name for Portuguese Carracks whose goods were dubbed kraak ware when they arrived. One of the most notable the Portuguese carrack “Catarina’ was taken by the Dutch off the coast of Malaya. There was much rejoicing in Amsterdam when her cargo of about 100,000 pieces was sold on the docks as the Dutch were seeking to wrestle the trade opportunities away from the Portuguese.
A flexible and entrepreneurial business class had developed in China during its Ming Period and there is a very real idea the western world economic system grew out of its fascination with the east and craving for her luxury goods as silks, spices, teas, porcelain, furniture, painting and silver.
17th century Dutch artists incorporated Chinese porcelains in their genre of ‘still life’ painting confronting us with a moral choice, reflecting the Calvinistic approach at the time for that of translating choices into terms of good and evil. Painters used the dishes to reflect the fragity and transitory nature of humankind, as well as the vanity of the collector who would have been seen as vainglorious; fruit in paintings symbolised fertility, luxury and enjoyment of sensory pleasures. Artists also depicted decorative objects to reflect their aesthetic values and to acknowledge the visual impact of such objects. They only existed to the extent they could be experienced by their translucency to light, which dispelled darkness; this idea had theological links to the belief in Jesus the Christ as the light, and therefore the hope of the world. This spiritual perspective had great force in 17th century Holland by underpinning the work of many painters of the period.
The years surrounding the fall of the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644) and founding of the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1911) were uncertain and foreign trade suffered. Emperor Kangxi (1662-1722) himself an accomplished poet and calligrapher, as well as a vigorous reformer, patron of classical studies and the decorative arts ordered the reconstruction of ceramic kilns at Jingdezhen. They had been partly destroyed during a transitional period between dynasties.
During the reign of Kangxi painting in cobalt reached new heights of artistic and technical achievement; the colour had an almost luminescence quality and the techniques attached to rendering the decoration under the glaze were further refined.
During the first half of the 17th century the volume of porcelain imported to Europe increased and by the second half of the century trade with Cathay had become far more important to Europeans than to China’s rulers, who prided themselves on their nation’s self-sufficiency.
Blanc de Chine (white porcelain) wares were made near Dehua in Fujian province and exported to England in huge quantities during the latter part of the 17th century.
However by 1715 their popularity was waning because of the invention of European porcelain by Johann Friedrich Boettger at Meissen in 1710.
In less than five years his moulded white wares, very much inspired by oriental blanc-de-chine, became available and the beautiful prunus blossom and grape vines so admired on Chinese wares were grafted onto shapes that were preferred in Europe giving the pieces a distinct flavour of the orient.
Tea first arrived in Europe in the first ten years of the 17th century. A tiny stratum of society enjoyed tea at first, as its cost was extremely prohibitive. The acquisition of ‘china’ to drink tea became a craze among the very wealthy fashionable. This included beautiful blue and white wares, colourfully enamelled wares and simple blanc de chine tea wares all of which were imported from China at great cost. The English aristocracy began a daily ritual for the taking of tea. Two varieties dominated the early trade Bohea, which was a black tea and the other a green tea made from the steamed and dried leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant a shrub that was native to the mountainous regions of Asia. While Black tea is also made from this plant unlike green tea it is made from dried and fermented leaves.
Following the beheading of his father Charles 1 England’s heir apparent and prince in waiting was in exile at the French and Dutch courts. His restoration to the throne of England in 1660 would give great impetus for change and a new class of people would emerge one whose wealth was based on business and trade rather than inherited land as it had been since William the Conqueror in 1066. 1660 was the year English diarist Samuel Pepys recorded the pleasures associated with the taking of ‘this China drinke’. Catharine of Braganza the new King Charles II’s prospective bride arrived at Portsmouth on 13th May 1662 on route to her new home. She asked first for a ‘cup of tea’, thus ensuring its popularity. There is a ‘ large four square teapot’ in the so-called ‘Devonshire Schedule’ at Chatsworth, one of England’s most famous country houses. It appears among a list of items bequeathed by Elizabeth, the Countess of Devonshire to her daughter Anne, who became the 5th Earl of Burghley’s wife. Presumably the teapot went with her to Burghley House and its silver gilt mounts date from c1650.
Trade by sea was an exceedingly risky venture. Taxes, tributes, bribes and deceptions were rife. Storms, pirates, disease and rival traders were a constant threat during the often two-year round trip voyage to and from Europe.
The private trade was either commissioned, or bought for speculative purchase and demand would eventually outstrip all other trade as porcelain became the largest, and most desirable shipment. Packed into tubs and wooden boxes it was cushioned with rice or other marketable goods such as pepper, sago and tea all of which were used in the bottom of ships for ballast.
Ship’s officers and crews sailing out of England were actively engaging in this exclusive and lucrative private trade although it would take until the turn of the 18th century for Chinese officials to realise the monetary potential of Europe’s interest, in not only their tea and silk, but also other wares and art forms they could export and start to take advantage of it. The trade in goods would grow slowly and reach its peak during the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe.
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