appstore google play

My Blue China: A Lesson in Globalization

“Culture Repudiated” (2014), by Bouke De Vries, is one of the artworks featured in “My Blue China,” an exhibition at the Fondation Bernardaud in Limoges, France. A superb rendition that is paying homage to the traditional State image of Chairman Mao and, at the same time, demonstrating how even a restricted regime can give birth to 21st-century creativity by reinventing the creativity of past centuries of Chinese porcelain making and all the European pastiches that followed. Creativity breaks through in the end!
“Culture Repudiated” (2014), by Bouke De Vries, is one of the artworks featured in “My Blue China,” an exhibition at the Fondation Bernardaud in Limoges, France. A superb rendition that is paying homage to the traditional State image of Chairman Mao and, at the same time, demonstrating how even a restricted regime can give birth to 21st-century creativity by reinventing the creativity of past centuries of Chinese porcelain making and all the European pastiches that followed. Creativity breaks through in the end!

Tracing the history of blue-and-white china is a great primer. The very ?rst examples of white earthenware decorated with cobalt appeared in China as early as the ninth century. By the 1500s, they were already being snatched up by orient-obsessed Europeans and imitated with varying degrees of accuracy. Delft, a term often confusingly used to describe blue-and-white motifs, is named for a town in the Netherlands where renditions of the “Chinese style” were produced in large quantity. The classic “Willow” pattern—which is based on a famous Mandarin fable—was actually created and popularized by a British porcelain maker. Quick to understand the comedy of it all, aesthete and author Oscar Wilde once wrote, in his inimitable style, “I ?nd it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.” He normally succeeded and how right he was!

A new exhibition at the Fondation Bernardaud in Limoges, France, looks at modern interpretations of the now-ubiquitous tableware, exploring the way that 12 contemporary artists have incorporated it into their work. From Korean sculptor Yee Sookyung’s forms made from pasted-together porcelain to British artist Jayne Lloyd’s rendition of a dinner plate created with blue pen on Styrofoam, the show looks at how the tabletop motif has come to symbolize larger issues of globalization and cultural appropriation.

Ann Agee’s “Gross Domestic Product” is an assemblage of blue-and-white paintings of household settings.
Ann Agee’s “Gross Domestic Product” is an assemblage of blue-and-white paintings of household settings.

Ann Agee is an American visual artist and 2011 Guggenheim Fellow who works mainly in ceramics, often re-appropriating traditional designs such as blue-and-white patterns. Her works include ceramic murals, an entire ceramic bathroom, and ceramic sex toys. She ?rst came to fame in the “Bad Girls” show at the New Museum in New York in 1994.

Claire Partington’s sculptures are inspired by “Bartmann” jugs, medieval stoneware from Germany. Over time, their form evolved and their decoration became more ?gurative, but the head continued to retain its original function as the stopper. Over time, these objects became increasingly grotesque. Much of the artist’s work derives from her fascination with legends and fairy tales. Early in her career, she limited herself to reinterpreting ancestral themes. Today, her focus is on appropriation and the errors of interpretation that it engenders. Here, she can draw on a long tradition of appropriation in the applied arts in Europe, where chinoiserie is an important recurring theme. Contemplating her hybrid creatures, viewers get the unsettling feeling that they have lost their bearings. The artist relies on contrasting sources of inspiration: Oriental and Western, anachronistic and boldly forward looking.

The Blue Boar reprises the universal theme of the man-beast. It is based on the character of Prince Marcassin from a fairy tale by Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, a scandal-prone 17th-century French author, known for her marvelous, subversive and scathing fairy tales.
The Blue Boar reprises the universal theme of the man-beast. It is based on the character of Prince Marcassin from a fairy tale by Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, a scandal-prone 17th-century French author, known for her marvelous, subversive and scathing fairy tales.

For Fabrice Langlade, cultural globalization is more than a favorite subject. It’s at the heart of his personal history. Deeply in?uenced by extensive travels and especially a stay in Japan, he is convinced that it’s imperative to have a global world view. Knowing the cultural history of Asia is key to understanding the history of humanity, marked by an incessant back-and-forth between East and West.

Fabrice Langlade’s “Chinoiserie” (Eden 2009).
Fabrice Langlade’s “Chinoiserie” (Eden 2009).

Can one appreciate Cézanne’s Sainte-Victoire paintings without having seen Hokusai’s “One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji?” Or understand Van Gogh without knowing Hiroshige’s work? If there had been no cultural exchange, would John Ford and Kurosawa still have made the same ?lms? These questions are all posed in Langlade’s works, including the ones displayed here, “Chinoiserie” (above). These wall panels look sort of like gigantic plates of resin ?gurines pinned to the wall, like so many shadow puppets or creatures from an entomologist’s dream. A longer look at these compositions—rather pretty at ?rst glance—reveals a much darker perspective. The artist sees his Chinoiserie as typical of their day and age, like those Afghan rugs, whose traditional natural motifs have been replaced by tanks, grenades and Kalashnikovs.

Most of the silhouettes are created from news photos (e.g. the streets of Baghdad in ruins, Apache helicopters in the Gaza strip and war victims). However, his ?owers taken from the 16th-century compendium of botanical illustrations by Basilius Besler, chosen for their universal dimension, o?er the only ray of hope.

Brendan Tang is known for the originality with which he engineers encounters between two famous appropriations, blue-and-white wares and mangas, resulting in improbable amalgamations. Vases, plates and blue-and-white pieces of all kinds are combined with futuristic or prosthetic techno-pop forms. Fragments of Japanese mangas emerge from ceramic pieces, offering a very contemporary version of chinoiserie.

The title “Manga Ormolu” of this piece refers to the use of gilt bronze, developed in 18th-century Europe, to embellish furniture and decorative objects. Its use transformed blue-and-white wares into curios for aristocrats and adapted them to European tastes.
The title “Manga Ormolu” of this piece refers to the use of gilt bronze, developed in 18th-century Europe, to embellish furniture and decorative objects. Its use transformed blue-and-white wares into curios for aristocrats and adapted them to European tastes.

Tang’s sculptures go back to the earliest production of blue-and-white wares, playing with the rich and varied history of these objects and how they relate to appropriation, imitation or even propaganda.

The artist focuses on two forms of transcultural exchange between the Far East and the West. First, he considers how blue-and-white ceramic pieces, often held to be the quintessence of Chinese production, were actually the result of prolonged interaction between the technology and the motifs used. He is also interested in chinoiserie as a typical example of European emulation of Chinese artistic production.

China and the Middle East first introduced this application for cobalt blue. In China, “Muslim blue” was imported from Persia for many centuries (8th to 15th) before the Chinese discovered their own cobalt deposits during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).

A Persian bowl in turquoise-glazed pottery, circa 12th or 13th century,
A Persian bowl in turquoise-glazed pottery, circa 12th or 13th century,

The flow of imports was discontinuous, interrupted whenever trade routes across the Asian continent were not practicable. The first experiments applying a high-temperature blue pigment to white ceramic pieces took place in China in the early 8th century, during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). In the Middle East, the potters of the Abbassid Caliphate (750-1258) set out to imitate the white porcelain imported from China. In the process, they invented earthenware (9th century), covering some of their pieces with lettering or decoration in cobalt blue.

The Persian potters of the 12th- and 13th-centuries continued to use this same shade. Early in the 13th century, the vast Mongol Empire reopened overland and maritime trade routes between the Middle East and China, enabling it to procure cobalt once again. From the 14th century, the city of Jingdezhen in central China—the largest center for the manufacture of white porcelain of the 12th and 13th centuries—led the world in the production of blue-and-white porcelain, most of which was exported to the Middle East.

This large fritware dish (charger) with foliate rim, with a design reserved on a dark cobalt ground, dates to the 1480s.
This large fritware dish (charger) with foliate rim, with a design reserved on a dark cobalt ground, dates to the 1480s.

From the 15th century, the Ottoman potters from Iznik used cobalt blue to make tiles of fritware paste for architectural applications. They also used it to decorate vessels, some of which imitated the Chinese blue-and-white decoration typical of Ming porcelain. Elsewhere in Asia, blue decoration was introduced in Korean and Vietnamese porcelain in the 15th century and in Japan two centuries later, with the launch of porcelain production in Arita during the Edo period (1603-1868).

Meanwhile, in Europe, Germany’s first cobalt deposit was discovered in Saxony in the 14th century, but it would be full two centuries before Europe as a whole—from Spain to Holland—mastered the technique of producing high-quality earthenware, essential to the development of blue ornamentation. In 16th-century Lisbon, the cargoes of Portuguese ships returning from Asia contained not only spices, tea and silk, but also blue-and-white wares called Kraak porcelain—Chinese export porcelain for the European market.

A Chinese blue-and-white kraak porcelain dish—from Wanli period (1573-1619) —decorated with a panel of birds and flowers within a radiating band paneled with flowers and precious emblems.
A Chinese blue-and-white kraak porcelain dish—from Wanli period (1573-1619) —decorated with a panel of birds and flowers within a radiating band paneled with flowers and precious emblems.

Starting in 1602, competition grew fierce between the ships of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the British East India Company and the Compagnie française pour le commerce des Indes orientales. The importation of blue-and-white porcelain from China or Japan grew and, by 1700, was occurring on a massive scale. Precious, rare and expensive, these pieces were coveted by the crowned heads of Europe, whose palaces contained cabinets filled with them. Starting in the second half of the 17th century, many of Europe’s earthenware manufactories took inspiration from the compositions and motifs of Kraak porcelain. The most famous are Delft (Netherlands); Nevers, Rouen, Lille, Moustiers and Strasbourg (France); Alcora (Spain); Lisbon (Portugal); and Savona (Italy).

Prior to the discovery of the European deposit of kaolin—the clay needed to produce hard-paste porcelain—demand from European courts was such that a few soft-paste porcelain factories (e.g. those in Saint-Cloud and Chantilly in France or in Copenhagen, Denmark) opted to use blue for their luxury wares.

In England, the makers of fine earthenware—known as creamware—often came up with their own interpretations of blue Chinese motifs. The famous Willow Pattern is a case in point. Josiah Wedgwood was the visionary potter who was hell-bent on finding kaolin in order to mass-produce his wares. Having found kaolin in Cornwall and Devon, he then looked further afield and discovered that American Indians were using vast quantities of kaolin. Wedgwood, understanding global trade, imported the kaolin and later opened his own showroom.

A Wedgwood slave medallion, circa 1787.
A Wedgwood slave medallion, circa 1787.

Throughout his life, Wedgwood expressed an ardent concern over the social and political upheavals which were characterized the age in which he lived. Such concern was not limited to his immediate responsibilities. He looked after the welfare and working conditions of his employees, but his concerns extended to the American War of Independence and the French Revolution, amongst others. It is not surprising, then, that towards the end of his life, Wedgwood became actively involved with the move towards the abolition of slavery. Wedgwood met and corresponded with William Wilberforce, the parliamentary leader for the cause of the abolition of slavery. Wilberforce was ultimately responsible for the passing of the bill enforcing the gradual abolition of slavery and it is to Wedgwood’s credit that his comments on this topic were apparently of much importance to Wilberforce.

From the 16th to the 18th century, the use of cobalt blue was a major trend from central Asia to Europe via the Middle East. The importation of Chinese and then Japanese porcelain inspired variations on the theme of decorating with cobalt blue in each country. The discovery of kaolin deposits in Saxony (Germany) in 1708 and subsequently in 1768 near Limoges (France), in Saint-Yrieixla-Perche, permitted the application of cobalt blue to hard-paste porcelain, whose production saw substantial development throughout the 19th century.

An example of a Spode Ceramic Works’ Willow Pattern plate, made in Staffordshire, England.
An example of a Spode Ceramic Works’ Willow Pattern plate, made in Staffordshire, England.

Today, some manufactories still use cobalt blue, although the Chinese model is no longer in vogue. Among them, a few—such as Meissen (Saxony), Sèvres and Limoges—have used cobalt blue as a signature for two centuries.

The centuries-old legacy? It was one of the most profound exports of Chinese expertise and creativity to the West that has begun its cycle yet again!

A W. Guerin Limoges porcelain cobalt blue with gold gilt covered Trembleuse cup and saucer.
A W. Guerin Limoges porcelain cobalt blue with gold gilt covered Trembleuse cup and saucer.

Adrien von Ferscht is an Honorary Research Fellow at University of Glasgow’s Scottish Centre for China Research, a Fellow for Arts & Culture at the Asia Scotland Institute and works with museums and universities around the world.

His ever-expanding website, Chinese Export Silver, is the largest online information resource on the subject. His new 1,000-page Third Edition of the “Collector’s Guide to Chinese Export Silver 1785-1940,” is the largest information reference resource for this unique silver category. The single purchase price acquires the Catalogue plus all subsequent editions free of charge. Adrien also encourages people to share images and ask questions at avf@chinese-export-silver.com.

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

Stay up to date - Subscribe to Newsletter!

Keeping you informed, connected, and involved in the antiques and collectibles industry