"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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The exaggerated lines and bright colors typical of the patterns used on German Meissen porcelain.
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The laughing, cross-legged "pagod" became part of the basic vocabulary of Chinoiserie.
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The pagod as a wall ornament.
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Chinoiserie: a "confused decoration with no apparent rhyme or reason"?
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Stowaways on a sunken ship? This pair of Meissen figurines is thought to have been sent as a model for counterfeit pieces.
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"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)
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