From Alchemist to Potter

Wang Jiafong　/　photos Cheng Yuan-ching　/　tr. by Robert Taylor

November 1995

中文

Medieval Europeans believed that everything in nature which was imperfect or incomplete would eventually be transformed into the most stable and perfect substance in the universe: gold. Thus transmutation became the secret art of kings, and mysterious alchemists searched indefatigably for the legendary "philosopher's stone" which could transform base metals into gold.

The dreaming of turning lead into gold never came true. But after seeing shimmering, translucent Chinese porcelain, the alchemists who had so assiduously pursued the philosopher's stone turned their attention to the secret of making porcelain....

What ecstasies her bosom fire!

How her eyes languish with desire!

How blest, how happy should I be, Were that fond glance bestowed on me!

New doubts and fears within me war:

What rival's near? A China Jar.

China's the passion of her soul; A cup, a plate, a dish, a bowl

Can kindle wishes in her breast,

Inflame her joy, or break her rest.

Thus wrote the English poet John Gay in 1725. Just as with the tea variety called "pearl tea" by the Chinese (for the way the leaves are rolled into little round balls), but which in Britain was christened "gunpowder," the old potters of Jingdezhen can never have imagined that when their pure white, smooth, cold porcelain arrived at the other side of the oceans it would have the magical power to stir up such burning desires in young men and women.

But of course it was this passion for porcelain which prompted Europeans to spend several centuries painstakingly searching for the secret of its manufacture.

（top） Seventeenth-century Europeans generally used tin-glazed earthenware.

A mysterious European quest

As early as the 15th century, Venetian alchemists learned from the Arabs how to make soft-paste porcelain. But it was weak and fragile, and never gained popularity. In 16th-century Florence the powerful Medici family mixed sand, glass, powdered rock crystal and other ingredients in an attempt to recreate the Chinese porcelain of the Ming dynasty Wanli reign, with its blue decoration on a white ground. But sadly the soft-paste ware which resulted was full of bubbles and often suffered distortion during firing in the kiln.

At the end of the 16th century people were still saying in suspicious tones that they wished they knew just what porcelain was, for by now this thing which no-one understood--not even great feudal lords or connoisseurs--was no longer found only in the palaces of pagan princes, but on the dining tables of popes, monarchs and nobles.

Such popes and potentates were privileged to enjoy many marvels. In those days it was still common for European royalty to have ostrich eggs mounted to use as cups, in the unshakable belief that they were griffins' eggs. But what went into making those beautiful porcelain utensils which glistened on their dining tables? This was one of the great riddles of 16th and 17th-century Europe, which exercised many a monarch and ingenious inventor.

Just as with many other matters Oriental, the first to voice an opinion was the oldest "China hand" of them all, Marco Polo.

（bottom） Qing-dynasty blue-and-white export porcelain. （courtesy of the National Museum of History）

Eggshells, seashells and bone ash

In his account of his travels in China, Marco Polo wrote: "They collect a certain kind of earth, as it were from a mine, and laying it in a great heap, suffer it to be exposed to the wind, the rain and the sun, for thirty or forty years, during which time it is never disturbed. By this time it becomes refined and fit for being wrought into the vessels above mentioned. Such colors as may be thought proper are then laid on, and the ware is afterwards baked in ovens or furnaces."

Apart from somewhat overestimating the length of time for which clay was left to weather, Marco Polo, who had travelled far and wide in China, really wasn't that wide of the mark. But the problem was, just what was this "certain kind of earth"? And just how could one make it into lustrous, durable porcelain which kept its shape during firing?

Compared with the flights of fancy of other writers, in fact the "great travel liar" did not romanticize things at all.

Professor Oliver Impey, deputy curator of the Oriental department of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, says that the translucent white of Chinese porcelain first made Europeans think of eggshells or bone ash.

In the mid-16th century one writer proclaimed with great assurance: "It is certain that porcelain is ... made of a certain juice which coalesces underground." Another explanation was: "They are made in this fashion. Eggshells and the shell of umbilical shellfish (named porcelains, whence the name) are pounded into dust, which is then mingled with water and shaped into vases. These are then hidden underground. A hundred years later they are dug up, being considered finished, and are put up for sale...." Though far from the truth, this explanation really would make people covet porcelain.

Old kilns in Staffordshire, the center of the English potteries.

Everyday utensils in rough brown earthenware

The great guesses of the romantics did not get to the heart of the matter, and King Philip II of Spain, the most powerful monarch in 16th century Europe and a collector of Chinese porcelain, is said to have sent envoys to China to search for the secret of how it was made, but without success. How Chinese porcelain could be so white, light, thin, tough and hard remained an unfathomable enigma.

Then in the early 17th century someone finally came up with something close to the answer: porcelain was probably made in a similar way to the soft European majolica earthenware, but from a different raw material.

What was majolica? And what kind of crockery were Europeans in the habit of using?

Mr. H.W. Koster, president of the Royal Delft pottery company, says that from the second half of the 16th century and on into the 17th century, the crockery made in Holland and other European countries was majolica, an earthenware made by a technique which originated in Italy. Its brownish-yellow body was sealed and made waterproof at the first firing by a transparent lead glaze on the back, then before a second firing a tin glaze was added to the front to give an opaque white base which could also be overlaid with colors.

"As you can imagine, when the gleaming, translucent, tough and beautifully decorated Ming blue-and-white ware appeared in Europe, it was the majolica industry which felt the competition first." Dr. Jorg, Head of Collections at Holland's Groningen Museum, points out that of Holland's potteries large and small, some turned to making wall tiles, some went out of business, and some took the bull by the horns and began to imitate blue-and-white porcelain.

The traditional kiln stacking method （right） and the indispensable fire engine, displayed in the museum at England's Wedgwood pottery. （photo by Vincent Chang）

Faience mimics Chinese blue-and-white

Around 1620-30, after continuous experimentation some potteries discovered a clay which could be fired into a fairly thin ware. If an opaque tin glaze was used on both sides instead of lead glaze, an effect approaching the pure whiteness of Chinese porcelain could be achieved. Europeans call this pottery "faience." If a blue enamel was painted on top of the tin glaze and the ware fired again at a low temperature, it looked like Chinese blue-and-white ware.

Among the faiences common throughout Europe, the most famous is probably the soft-paste ware made in Delft, Holland. Not only was this ware popular in the 17th century, today it is one of the famous "must-see" products for tourists visiting the Netherlands.

Delft is a small town near The Hague, and was a center of the Dutch pottery industry in the 17th century. Delft ware made its appearance just at the most opportune moment, for it was the time of the fall of the Ming dynasty and the rise of the Qing. China was in a state of war and chaos, and Jingdezhen closed down for a time, so naturally the quantity of porcelain imported into Europe fell dramatically. It reached its lowest point around 1650, and to fill the gap in the market many potteries started making earthenware in imitation of the styles of the Wanli export porcelain (kraakporselein), and the MingQing transition porcelain. They used a white glaze on which they painted decorative panels, or landscapes and pavilions, in blue enamel.

The exaggerated lines and bright colors typical of the patterns used on German Meissen porcelain.

Delft ware: the first Chinoiserie

"The potters of that time made brilliant copies; from a distance you can't tell them from original Chinese ware," Mr. Koster observes as he guides us through Royal Delft's exhibition rooms. Delft ware was a great success on the markets of the time, and later gradually moved away from imitating Ming blue-and-white ware, to develop its own distinctive style.

Delft's first attempts at imitating Chinese porcelain were ceramic tiles and other items decorated with strangely dressed, pigtailed little Chinese. Later, all kinds of "Chinese-style" scenes and objects were designed. Finally the artists went into free flights of fancy, developing unique half-Chinese, half-Western patterns and forms, the most representative of which are the blue-and-white tulip vases. Shaped like a multi-storey porcelain pagoda, each storey has four holes in which to insert flowers, and each hole takes just one tulip.

In the 17th century the Dutch imported tulips from Turkey, and the businessmen of the time drove the prices up to extraordinary levels. So it is not hard to imagine what a fashionable, opulent and up-to-date product these vases were, combining as they did the two rarest items of the age! At that time, tulips and blue-and-white Delft ware were most redorent of the exotic Orient, but today, 300 years later, both have become national symbols of Holland. To this day, the Royal Delft pottery continues to produce traditional hand-crafted soft-paste porcelain in a richly Oriental style.

The laughing, cross-legged "pagod" became part of the basic vocabulary of Chinoiserie.

A strange Eastern paradise

Dr. Jorg believes that it is not going too far to say that Delft was one of the pioneers of the European Chinoiserie style. At the time, its "Chinese style" patterns not only took Holland by storm, but were also sold throughout Europe.

In those days Europe was in the grip of a China fever. The court of King Louis of France imitated the Chinese emperor's spring rituals, philosophers quoted Confucius at every turn, politicians introduced the Chinese civil service system, economists passionately debated China's physiocracy (the theory that agriculture is of supreme importance in a nation's economy), and Chinese literary works were translated into European languages.

With the continuous growth in the tea and porcelain trades, things Chinese seemed to be penetrating every aspect of Europeans' daily lives. Chinese- style furniture, Chinese wallpaper, Chinese-style gardens and buildings and so on abounded in stately homes. Interior designers and artists all eagerly constructed the birthplace of porcelain as the paradise of their imaginations.

European potters were naturally also busily selecting the elements which people of the time thought most representative of China, and combining them creatively on their ceramics: pagodas, parasols, dragons and phoenixes, philosopher kings lost in thought, playful lions, buildings with upturned eaves, gardens ablaze with flowers.... This mysterious and graceful Eastern wonderland combined well with the extravagant rococo style that was sweeping Europe in the time of Louis XV, to create Chinoiserie, that strange and remarkable blend of East and West that has its own place in art history.

The pagod as a wall ornament.

Disrupting the market?

These exotic and imaginative decorations not only satisfied Europeans' yearning for the unknown world of the East. For the middle classes which could not afford real Chinese porcelain, the lower priced faience ware also allowed them to fulfill their dreams of owning porcelain. European faience including Delft was still mainly modelled on blue-and-white ware, the "trademark" Chinese porcelain, but when the famille rose and garish doucai (a glaze with starkly contrasting colors) of the Qing dynasty Kangxi reign and onwards reached Europe in the mid-17th century along with the polychrome Japanese Imari porcelain, European potters also began to use the patterns and colors of polychrome ware, and motifs such as ladies and playing children.

Because the quantity of polychrome ware imported from China and Japan was relatively small, and faience came in many patterns and styles and was fashionably decorated, it was very well received on the market.

From today's perspective, when the Europeans flooded the market with copies of Chinese porcelain, could they be accused of deliberately trying to pass off counterfeit ware as the real thing?

"The Europeans of those days really would have liked very much to imitate Chinese porcelain," says Robert Copeland, resident historian at England's Spode pottery. He notes that at that time English potteries like Worcester even used bogus "Chinese characters" in their trademarks. But however cleverly the blue-and-white patterns on the faience were executed, its quality was still a far cry from the snow-white body, transparent glaze and bright ringing sound when tapped of real porcelain--"there was no way that consumers would be taken in." Copeland stresses that one can only say that the manufacturers were following the trend of the times and providing the market with another less expensive choice with more variety of design.

Chinoiserie: a "confused decoration with no apparent rhyme or reason"?

Who started "counterfeiting"?

Amusingly, according to Dr. Jorg's research, the people who were most skilled at "copying" in those days were actually the Chinese.

Because the market for European-style "Chinoiserie" was booming, astute European businessmen specially ordered porcelain from China on this model. Groningen Museum has a Chinese-made tulip vase which in its design and decoration is modelled on typical Delft ware, "right down to the 'AK' maker's mark on the bottom." Dr. Jorg says that the files of the Dutch East India Company record many pieces of Delft ware being shipped to the East, and they were probably all sent as samples to be copied. From 1729 on, European-style utensils in porcelain, rather than Delft's earthenware, were shipped from Guangzhou to Holland in large quantities and sold at low prices. Faience could not compete with this ware and production gradually declined.

Throughout the 17th century, Delft was the leader in faience ware and had its own distinctive style, but it never managed to produce the tough, thin, fully waterproof hard-paste porcelain. But Delft potters did successfully make hard, tough unglazed red stoneware, and produced teapots modelled on China's Yixing pottery. In fact, this type of red clay stoneware is very close in nature to porcelain, which is fired at high temperatures. But real white porcelain was awaiting a still fierier passion to finally unlock its secret.

Stowaways on a sunken ship? This pair of Meissen figurines is thought to have been sent as a model for counterfeit pieces.

The porcelain-crazy prince

In the late 17th century, Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, had a fanatical ardor for porcelain.

He spared no expense to enhance his collection of oriental porcelain, and is said to have spent 100,000 thalers on it in the first year of his reign. He is even rumored to have given a whole regiment of Saxon dragoons to the King of Prussia in exchange for 48 porcelain vases. This famous set of "dragoon vases" today survives in the Dresden Museum in Eastern Germany. The taxes levied to buy more porcelain for the elector were satirized by commentators as growing "at an even more alarming rate than his tribe of bastards"--of which 350 are recorded. Thus it is hardly surprising that his ministers called China the "bleeding bowl of Saxony." Whenever a new shipload of oriental porcelain reached a European port, the elector was overjoyed, but his ministers trembled.

The situation was becoming intolerable, and after much thought one of Augustus' courtiers, von Tschirnhausen, who was an amateur alchemist, concluded there were only two ways to solve this thorny problem: one was to find a way to transmute base metals into gold, so the emperor could buy porcelain to his heart's content; the other was to go to the root of the problem by finding the secret of making porcelain!

"The people of this land have grown rich. When they see Western goods they like, they are willing to spend lavishly, so we are pleased to trade with them ." Lord Wedgwood of Barlaston, ninth-generation descendant of Josiah Wedgwood I, visits the ROC to exhibit and promote Jasper ware. （photo by Vincent Chang）

The alchemist turns potter

Europe's long road to porcelain manufacture was connected with alchemy from start to finish, and not without reason. Since the Middle Ages, the Europeans not only believed that all the substance in heaven and earth would eventually turn into its most perfect form, gold, they also believed this precious metal could be manufactured. By the same principle, the pure white and tough Chinese porcelain was surely some precious and perfect material which could be made if one persevered long enough.

Von Tschirnhausen spent more than 10 years experimenting, but he never managed to make gold for his prince to buy porcelain, nor was he able to unlock the secret of making porcelain.

But in Prussia, Saxony's neighbor, there was also an outstanding alchemist by the name of Bottger. Bottger searched long and hard for the philosopher's stone without success. Seeing that Prussia's royal finances were in disarray, he was afraid that if he dallied there too long his head might be in danger. He very much wanted to move to another country, and when Augustus got wind of this he sent a military escort to meet Bottger at the border and accompany him safely back to Dresden, where he was given all the equipment he asked for to let him continue his efforts to make gold. This dream remained elusive, and the alchemist's failure was becoming ever more obvious. He tried to flee again but was caught and placed under vion Tschirnhausen's supervision. Finally when their efforts still came to nothing, Bottger was thrown into prison.

When the alchemist was released, he was instructed to address himself to the problem of making hard-paste porcelain. Considering this a lowly task, Bottger hung a sign over the doorway to his laboratory which read: "God our Creator has turned a gold-maker into a potter."

Europe's first real porcelain

God took clay and formed this tenacious German potter, and the potter Bottger really did create Europe's first true porcelain.

First, on the basis of Delft's experience with red stoneware, he improved the kiln design to produce a higher firing temperature and made a hard red stoneware similar to Yixing ware. But sadly this still fell some way short of the pure white porcelain which the elector craved after day and night.

In 1708, Bottger finally succeeded in finding, in what is now the Czech Republic, a clay similar to kaolin, from which he fired a genuine white hardpaste porcelain. Augustus was overjoyed and three years later set up the Royal Saxon Porcelain Manufactory--the famous Meissen porcelain works--which stands 12 miles outside the old town of Dresden. In 1711 a better clay was found, and for the first time in Europe produced a high-quality genuine porcelain.

In only a few years, Meissen began to produce large quantities of excellent white hard-paste porcelain. And although in those days the secrets of porcelain-making were guarded as closely as nuclear weapons secrets today, the art was taken by craftsmen from Meissen to Vienna, Denmark and St. Petersburg, and gradually became known throughout Europe. But Meissen still remained indisputably in the lead.

"Chinese style"--Meissen style

Meissen's lead stemmed not only from its historical status, but even more from its team of excellent designers. In order to compete in the marketplace with Chinese porcelain, Meissen also developed many new "Chinoiserie" designs. The most striking of these featured Chinese figures and buildings in bright colors and gold, excessively stretched and distorted according to the shape of the object. They revealed the designer's powerfully individual style and imaginative personal vision of the paradise of China.

Most ordinary Meissen ware, however, was decorated with strange and gaudy flowers. The polychrome decoration so recently introduced from China and Japan, with designs copied from the chrysanthemums and peonies which were the favorites of the Chinese artisans, were enough to make a botanist's head spin. It is worth reminding ourselves that in those days these flower species were unknown in Europe, and in European eyes they still appeared as fantastic and unreal as the stories of Marco Polo.

Meissen is also very well known for its porcelain figurines. The pagod, a figure of Budai Heshang, the Chinese spirit of happiness, sitting with his mouth cracked open in a broad smile, became part of the basic vocabulary of Chinoiserie, and was widely adopted by other potteries. A host of other characters such as actors, peddlars, herdsmen, birds, animals, monkey musicians and so on, created a vivid image of China--Meissen style. From Meissen and other European potteries they entered European drawing rooms and dining rooms, and the same designs were widely used on all kinds of craft products such as furniture and wall hangings. By osmosis, this image of China became deeply imprinted in Europeans' minds.

Changing from year to year?

The Meissen ware which led this trend gained an important status in Europe. Dr. Jorg says that from the mid-18th century on, the Chinese porcelain which was imported en masse was no longer a novelty. Some rich fashion seekers and collectors of royal porcelain began to turn from collecting Chinese ware to collecting German porcelain. Just as had been the case with Chinese porcelain in the 16th century, Europeans of the time wanted to own Meison porcelain because it was seen as a trendsetting status symbol.

Of course, it was not many years before "German style" and "Meissen style" porcelain made in China began to be imported into Europe in large quantities and sold to the middle classes, who were a step behind the latest trends. "Some were sold as the real thing at an enormous profit," adds Dr. Jorg.

When the birthplace of porcelain was busy producing large quantities of imitation German ware to turn a fast thaler, we seem to see history taking leave of an age of creativity. Times really had changed. On the other side of the Urals, the Europe of the late 18th century was caught up in a mood of revolutionary fervor and declarations of the rights of man, and was searching for the relative status of the state, the nation and the individual.

A mass of confused decoration?

By then the simple majesty of David's The Dead Marat and the surging passion of Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People had replaced the dreamy, light-hearted elegance of Watteau's and Boucher's paintings. Chinoiserie, with its elements of rococo decadence, was obviously no longer in step with the times. And with the development and spread of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the ever-growing cries for balanced trade, in European eyes China, the namesake of porcelain, was no longer a paradise ruled by philosopher-kings, but an old empire with which it was hard to communicate and which rejected change. Even the "Chinese art" which been fashionable in Europe for over a century was defined in Diderot's Encyclopedie as: "a mass of confused decoration with no apparent rhyme or reason."

This definition obviously had nothing to do with classical Chinese landscape paintings or the simple beauty of Song-dynasty porcelain, and in fact is hard to connect with the Chinese art of any period. What Diderot referred to was surely the "Chinoiserie" created by Europeans themselves, an accident of history which in the past had expressed people's yearnings but was incomprehensible, and which by then appeared patently ridiculous and hardly worth comprehending.

The change in views was also expressed in the manufacture of porcelain. From the second half of the 18th century onwards, English Wedgwood pottery began to follow a quite different path.

A cloak of neoclassicism

Just like most other European potteries, Wedgwood began by imitating Chinese patterns and forms, but Josiah Wedgwood's sharp nose for changes in fashion quickly led him to pioneer another new trend.

"Jasper" is a decorative silica stone, and was also the name given by Bottger, the father of European porcelain, to his Yixing-type red stoneware. In the late 18th century, Josiah Wedgwood launched an unglazed stoneware imitating the shapes of ancient Greek urns, which he decorated with relief moldings of motifs from Greek mythology. This ware he also called "jasper."

With this creation Wedgwood took on the heritage of European pottery and cleverly latched onto the neoclassical fashion for venerating the spirit of Greek and Roman art. Today his cameo-decorated stoneware has become one of the traditional symbols of Britain. Looking at Wedgwood's "exotic" ware, we are hard pressed to find any connection between it and white, translucent porcelain, nor do we find any trace of Chineseness about it. To connect its blue-and-white coloration with the soul of Ming dynasty blue-and-white ware would be far-fetched in the extreme.

Going to England to study making porcelain?

In 1767 Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of the Wedgwood pottery, brimming with confidence because of the excellent sales of his products, wrote to a friend describing his approach to running his business. He added jokingly: "Don't you think we shall have some Chinese Missionaries come here soon to learn the art of making Creamcolour?" (Creamcolour was a cream-colored earthenware developed by Wedgwood.)

Three years ago, a UPI report from Beijing announced: "The mainland Chinese ceramics industry has sent several groups of personnel abroad to seek advanced technology. They hope catch up with the level of advanced countries such as Germany and Britain by around 1995."

1995 is the bicentenary of Josiah Wedgwood's death. In recent years a fashion for things European has swept through the newly prosperous Asian countries, and the ninth-generation successor to Josiah Wedgwood has visited Taiwan three times to promote Wedgwood ware, which symbolizes "British elegance and fine tradition." At an exhibition and sale in Taiwan, enthusiastic consumers queued to buy the expensive stoneware which ordinary Britons can only look at and sigh, and waited eagerly for Wedgwood to sign the guarantee card in person.

Thus it appears that although Josiah Wedgwood's words of jest may have been written too early, perhaps he was right: the age in which porcelain should be called "China" seems to be over. Or does it?

[Picture Caption]

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In Berlin's sumptuous Charlottenburg, exquisite Kangxi porcelain is on display everywhere.

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(top) Seventeenth-century Europeans generally used tin-glazed earthenware.

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(bottom) Qing-dynasty blue-and-white export porcelain. (courtesy of the National Museum of History)

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Old kilns in Staffordshire, the center of the English potteries.

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The traditional kiln stacking method (right) and the indispensable fire engine, displayed in the museum at England's Wedgwood pottery. (photo by Vincent Chang)

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The kitchen at the Amalienburg in Munich is decorated throughout with Delft tiles. This type of decoration was very common in European royal palaces in the 18th century.

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In 1759 when Charles III acceded to the Spanish throne he moved from Naples to Spain, taking with him his porcelain factory, which he named "China." His Aranjuez Palace turns the traditional notion of a china house upside down.

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