Chinese export porcelain from the Leo and Doris Hodroff Collection at Winterthur - Winterthur - Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2002 by Ron Fuchs

According to Daniel Defoe (1661?-1731), Mary II of England (r. 1689-1694) was one of the first collectors of Chinese export porcelain in that country. He credited, or blamed, her for beginning

the custom or bumour of furnishing houses with China-ware, which spread to lesser mortals and increased to such a strange degree afterwards, piling their China upon the tops of Cabinets, Scrutores and every Chymney-Piece... till it became a grievance in the Expence of it and even injurious to their Families and Estates. (1)

Mary was one of many in a long line of connoisseurs and collectors captivated by the allure of Chinese export porcelain. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these connoisseurs were members of the European aristocracy, but by the twentieth century, wealthy Americans rivaled Europeans in the size and scope of their collections.

One of the leading collectors of Chinese export porcelain in the United States was Henry Francis du Pont (p. 154, Pl. I), who amassed well over four thousand pieces between 1921 and 1955. (2) Some of the porcelain was used by the du Ponts while they were in residence at Winterthur, but most was used for decoration, "to create," as H. F. du Pont wrote, "a certain atmosphere for my early rooms." (3) The collection contains many fine pieces made for the European market, but it is especially rich in pieces made for the American market in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and includes treasures like George Washington's dinner service decorated with the badge of the Order of the Cincinnati. (4)

Winterthur's collection was recently enhanced by a major gift of two hundred pieces of Chinese and Japanese export porcelain from Leo and Doris Hodroff. (5) The gift contains examples from as early as 1550 and as late as 1900 and complements the holdings already at Winterthur, allowing the museum to better tell the story of export porcelain and the China trade. The Hodroff Collection is especially rich in pieces that show the influence of European design on the forms and decoration of export porcelain, providing an opportunity to examine the complex interaction between East and West that produced the objects that had, and continue to have, such appeal.

The relationships between Western traders and Chinese and Japanese merchants, potters, and painters led to porcelain designed and produced for Western needs and tastes that retained the exotic appeal of Asia. For the Chinese potters, adapting their wares to the needs of a foreign market was nothing new; they had manufactured wares specifically designed for their Asian and Middle Eastern markets since the thirteenth century. They no doubt viewed the inception of trade with Europeans as merely an extension of their preexisting export markets.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to trade directly with the Chinese, arriving in Guangzhou (Canton) in 1517, and the earliest known pieces of Chinese export porcelain with European decoration were made soon thereafter. The Portuguese and the Spanish controlled the China trade in the sixteenth century, but the traffic in porcelain was relatively small. Most of the known designs are associated with Iberian royalty or the Catholic Church and occur on pieces that in form and overall decoration were originally for the domestic Chinese or the Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern export markets. (6) A monumental late sixteenth- century jar in the Hodroff Collection is representative (Pl. I). Created for the Portuguese market around 1590, the jar is decorated with a crowned double-headed eagle clasping a heart pierced by two arrows, which is a motif associated variously with Philip II of Spain (r. 1556-1598) and with the Catholic Order of Saint Augustine. Similar jars have been discovered in an Augustinian conve nt founded in Macao in 1589. (7)

It was not until the seventeenth century when the Dutch gained control of the China trade and the demand for usable porcelain wares grew, that forms designed specifically for the European market appeared. (8) As early as 1634 the Dutch East India Company sent turned wooden models of European dishes to China to be reproduced in porcelain. (9) Paper patterns and European metal, ceramic, and glass objects were also taken to China to be copied. Among the earliest examples of Chinese porcelain in European forms were candlesticks, such as the one in Plate II, which may date to as early as 1640, for in 1639 the Dutch East India Company ordered "200 large candlesticks, one half according to sample and the other half plain, everything made nicely thin and well-painted according to no. 3 sample." (10) Silver, pewter, and brass were commonly used to make the most stylish table and other useful wares in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and many of the seventeenth-century export porcelains were copies of objects m ade of these materials. (11)

In addition to sturdy metal and wooden prototypes, fragile ceramic and glass objects were also sent to Asia to be copied in porcelain. The handles on a pair of porcelain vases made for the Dutch market about 1700 (P1. III) are based on the folded and tooled ornament found on elaborate seventeenth-century Venetian and Venetian-style goblets. (12) Delicate and ornate Venetian glassware was prized in the seventeenth century, rivaling even silver for a place on fashionable tables, and it is not surprising that their decorative elements were copied in porcelain. (13) European glass goblets and bottles were shipped throughout the world in the seventeenth century and no doubt were available in European trading posts in China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, where they could have been passed on to potters to be reproduced in porcelain. (14)