Page 195 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1496 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

A Chinese porcelain vase.

into their fertility, divination, and headhunting rituals;
they adopted Chinese “dragon jars” into lineages and
passed them down through generations, each seen to
possess a personality and embody supernatural power.
On the coast of East Africa and the littoral of North
Africa, porcelain adorned mosques and religious shrines.
In Iran, Iraq, and Egypt in the eleventh century, potters
imitated gleaming white porcelain by applying a tin
glaze surface to their earthenware. Discontent with the
dull result, they used cobalt oxide pigment to paint blue
designs on the earthenware. By the fourteenth century,
under the influence of Muslim merchants in China and
Mongol rulers in Beijing, potters in Jingdezhen also
began producing vessels in blue and white, the ceramic
style destined to conquer the world, imprinting it with an
image of elegance and refinement.
Rulers of Mughal India (1526–1857), Safavid Iran
(1501–1722/1736), Mamluk Egypt (1250–1517), and
Ottoman Turkey (c. 1300–1922) collected blue-and-
white porcelain, while potters in those kingdoms repli-
cated and transformed Chinese designs on their own
blue-and-white earthenware. When porcelain reached
the West in large quantities after 1600, the same thing
happened: The elite amassed blue-and-white porcelain,
and potters in Holland, Germany, France, and Italy cop-
ied the Chinese ceramics, combining their own tradi-
tional motifs with imaginative versions of Chinese pago-
with China in the sixteenth century, Europe also became das, Buddhist symbols, and urbane mandarins. At the
a premier market for porcelain, with perhaps 250 million same time, European princes, influenced by mercantilist
pieces being imported by 1800. Jingdezhen used mass doctrine, aimed to staunch the flow of silver bullion to
production techniques to manufacture wares for wide- Asia to pay for exotic commodities, including porcelain.
ranging markets, with a single piece of porcelain passing In the end, the race to find a formula for porcelain was
through the hands of over seventy workers during its won by Augustus II, although within a few years, abscond-
manufacture and decoration. Other regions could not ing artisans carried the secret to other manufactories.
compete with the massive Chinese economy, nor could Still, neither Meissen nor its great competitor, the
their potters create vessels as lustrous as porcelain. Sèvres manufactory outside Paris, could compete inter-
Whether it was monochromatic whiteware in the Song nationally with Chinese porcelain.That was the achieve-
or blue-decorated pieces from the Yuan dynasty (1279– ment of Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795), the pottery
1368), porcelain swept all before it. In Borneo and Java, baron of Great Britain. He produced an innovative
local ceramic traditions died out when huge quantities of glazed earthenware, christened “creamware,” that was as
porcelain were imported. Peoples in the hills of Sumatra durable and thin as porcelain. Equipping his manufac-
and the islands of the Philippines incorporated porcelain tory with steam power and employing mass production