Chinese ceramics became known to the wider world from the Tang Dynasty (618- 907) onward; the word ‘China’ eventually became the generic name for porcelain

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A description of the manufacture of porcelain in 1713 by French Jesuit priest Father D’Entrecolles, a resident in Peking, relates the firing of blue and white porcelain ‘A beautiful blue colour appears on the porcelain after having been lost for some time. When the colour is first painted on, it is pale black; when it [...]

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For centuries the Chinese traded with Asian islands and the trade spread to the Near East. Today the greatest collections of pre 1620 Chinese porcelains are in Eastern collections, particularly at Istanbul. During the Ming period 1368 – 1644 an entrepreneurial business class grew up in China and by the seventeenth century the Dutch East [...]

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