Chinese Export Porcelain
FOR EUROPEAN MARKET AND AMERICAN TRADE
The west first became acquainted with China by way of trade and barter. For many years China was known only as the mysterious 'Land of Silk'-a mythical country of spices, tea and above all of translucent, brilliantly glazed porcelain, which reminded Marco Polo of the lustrous surface of the little shell called porcella, hence the European word "porcelain."
In 1498 the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and inaugurated the period of European maritime activities in Asia. Thus the Portuguese brought porcelain to Europe, a fact to which collections in Portugal and Spain bear witness. In 1517 Fernando Perez de Andrade arrived with eight ships at St. John's Island, 75 miles south-east of Macao, and eventually reached Canton where he received permission to trade. Iberian adventures soon engaged in commerce as far away as Foochow and Ningpo.
The arrival of Portuguese in China was soon followed by the Dutch, the volume of whose porcelain trade was to overtake that of Portugal in the following century. In 1604 the Dutch ship 'Catharine' arrived at Amsterdam from Patani, carrying a cargo of an 'untold mass" of porcelain of all kinds. The porcelain was sold at auction at Amsterdam. Buyers, who came from all over western Europe, included royalty.
Henceforth, the market for porcelain in Europe prospered. From the 17th century, immense quantities of Chinese porcelain were carried by trading ships to Europe. Collections of Chinese export porcelain all over the world remain to give us an impression of the busy porcelain traffic in those earlier days.
The first Chinese porcelain to reach the American continent came to the west coast in the 16th century on Spanish ships from the Philippines. In February, 1784, a year after the signing of the peace treaty that ended the Revolutionary War, the first American ship, Empress of China, left New York for Canton. The trade with China peaked in the early years of the 19th century.
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