Historically, after Chinese porcelain crossed the ocean to Europe, it was "transformed", inlaid with gold, decorated with gemstones, or colored processing, changing the original function, people flocked to it.
Cartier's third-generation head, Louis Cartier, draws inspiration from his collection of Chinese antique treasures to fuse and reinvent different cultural elements. Under his direction, the designer transformed two pastel-cut porcelain aromatherapy into Cartier cigarette cases. The aromatherapy is rectangular and was made during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, and its hollow part is turquoise green. This type of porcelain was still difficult to fire during the Qianlong period, so it was relatively rare. Cartier cigarette boxes borrow from these two pieces of perfume, the top is made into the roof ridge of the Chinese architectural temple, the four corners are decorated with dragon-shaped decorations, just like cornices; the top is surrounded by mother-of-pearl, and the porcelain pieces in the middle are painted with the character story of the "West Chamber" loved by Europeans.
Pastel hollow porcelain aromatherapy modified into Cartier cigarette box
In Louis Cartier's collection, there is also a colorful women's plate from the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty. The pan heart is decorated with a fan-holding lady sitting at a stone table in the courtyard, and the table in the picture is placed with vases of flowers and pen holders, and the plum blossoms in the bottle bloom, and the women have cangsong and bamboo behind them. This very Chinese lady figure later became cartier's design pattern, and accordingly made into an exquisite rectangular makeup box.
The two artifacts of cigarette boxes and makeup boxes appeared in the "Beyond the Boundary - Cartier Palace Museum Craft and Restoration Special Exhibition" held at the Palace Museum in 2019, and were displayed again in the "Convergence of East and West - Special Exhibition of Chinese and European Ceramics and Cultural Exchanges" held by the Shanghai Museum last October, along with a modified ink bottle with coral red glaze water cup. The same artifacts express different themes in different exhibitions - "Beyond the Boundary" shows how the design of modern European jewelry can draw inspiration from exotic cultures such as ancient China, break the boundaries of time, space and culture and blend and reshape, tolerate each other, and achieve each other; "East-West Convergence" is intended to show the revival of design inspired by the Oriental style in the early 20th century, and emphasizes the interaction between Western craftsmanship and Chinese porcelain, which is in line with the European modification of Chinese porcelain in the 18th century.
The scene of "East-West Convergence - Special Exhibition of Ceramics and Cultural Exchange between China and Europe"
Chinese porcelain, which was "transformed", was sold overseas in the 17th and 18th centuries: gold or gilded metal attachments were inlaid on porcelain, or decorated with precious stones, or "tattooed" porcelain, colored, and even reprocessed to change its original function. For example, the multicolored dark flower bowl is set with gold and precious stones, the white porcelain cup produced in Dehua, Fujian Province is painted with a biblical story pattern, the brown glazed cup is ground with a white pattern by the grinding process of engraving glass, and the blue and white pen holder is added with a silver gilded handle, base and lid to change it into a lid cup... All of these can be classified as "European re-decorated Chinese porcelain". Why? The reason for this is nothing more than another understanding of Chinese porcelain shape and its functional characteristics by European consumers. Some Europeans believe that Chinese porcelain is too elegant and does not conform to the aesthetic taste of the locals; some are for the purpose of protecting the collection to show the value of Chinese porcelain; and some are purely used for daily use. Due to market needs, there has even been an industry in Europe that specializes in inlaid metal accessories for porcelain. The modification service meets the needs of European consumers for both practical and aesthetic aspects of porcelain, and is also a stopgap measure in the process of European acceptance of Chinese export porcelain in an era when custom porcelain has not yet been widely popular.
The blue and white Bogutu pen holder was converted into a lid cup and is now in the National Victoria and Albert Museum in the United Kingdom
With the surge in the number of Exports of Chinese porcelain, people's appreciation of porcelain has declined, and the processing of customized porcelain has become popular, and the practice of inlaid modification has also decreased. But the practice of repairing porcelain, as in China, has survived as a trade. In the 18th century, there were shops specializing in porcelain in Normandy, France, and London, England. In China, which is rich in porcelain, the trade of curium porcelain continued until the 1980s, and the saying "no diamonds, don't do porcelain work" is derived from this. Curium porcelain craftsmen, who worked like today's porcelain conservators, spread to Japan and achieved the famous "locust stumbling". A small nail reflects not only the exquisite craftsmanship, but also the fine tradition of people's conservation and conservation in the past.
The modified porcelain is the most impressive part of the "East-West Convergence" exhibition. It does not need much interpretation, only from the artifact itself can see the beginning of the "convergence of east and west" at that time. When we admire the various inlay and modification processes, we always marvel at their ingenuity and lament the difficulty of cross-cultural understanding. Not to mention the transcendence of time and space, porcelain was misread when it appeared on the other side of the ocean hundreds of years ago, even in the same culture and the same region, the Warring States period also changed the Western Zhou Yu chun to an incense burner user, and the Qing Dynasty court changed the yu chun to a water bowl... This enlightens us that looking at the artifact itself in isolation from the socio-cultural environment of artifact generation is likely to lead to misreading and misjudgment. Similarly, if you want to understand the way Europeans view and use Chinese porcelain, you need to restore it to the context of Europeans, to see the social and historical environment in which porcelain entered Europe in the early days of trade.
The Blue and White Blossom Landscape Atlas is now in the Anastasia Gonçalves Museum in Portugal
In 1498, the Portuguese navigator da Gama bypassed Africa to reach India and discovered a new shipping route. The following year, he returned from India with Chinese porcelain from King Calicut and offered them as gifts to his patron, King Manuel I of Portugal. It was something the king had dreamed of for a long time. The driving force behind funding the new voyage expedition, in addition to bringing back the spices that were of great benefit, was the second thing he wanted: Chinese porcelain. In 1517, as soon as portuguese ships arrived in China, Manuel I immediately ordered porcelain with a ring-shaped armillary sphere pattern, which represented the earth
PolyU discovery, also the king's private coat of arms. As a result, custom-made porcelain with royal coats of arms, together with blue and white porcelain with Chinese motifs such as blue and white landscapes and pavilion flowers and birds, was loaded onto huge Portuguese merchant ships and escaped several attacks by storms, undercurrents, reefs, pirates and enemy naval guns, and arrived in Portugal, opening up the era of globalization of the porcelain trade in the eastern and western hemispheres.
During the Renaissance, Europeans did not know what material Chinese porcelain was made of, and Chinese porcelain was valuable because it was rare, clean and durable. Portuguese officials who sailed to China gave blue and white porcelain to the rulers and kings of the trade along the route; King Manuel I introduced Chinese porcelain to the Spanish Royal Family of Madrid, who had become relatives by intermarriage; and the Royal Family of Madrid continued this tradition of gift-giving. In the same way, these royals provided porcelain and other Asian luxuries to their relatives and clergy living at the courts of Brussels, Vienna, Prague, and Munich.
In 17th-century Europe, only princes and nobles could possess porcelain, and they regarded porcelain as a symbol of status and wealth. In addition to gold-encrusted porcelain, the practice of displaying purchased porcelain to show off its strength was also popular in the courts of European countries. More than 200 pieces of Chinese porcelain from the Portuguese king's collection are set on the pyramid-shaped roof of the Santos Palace in Lisbon, and the exhibition "East-West Convergence" also exhibits the porcelain roof of the Santos Palace restored in 3D.
The ceiling of the porcelain hall of the Palazzo Santos in Portugal
Santos Palace was once the residence of Manuel I, and after 1589 it was owned by the Lancastere family. The family continued to collect those blue and white porcelain that originally belonged to the king, and in the last 25 years of the 17th century built a pyramid-shaped roof, on which porcelain was inlaid. The porcelain of the Santos Palace was clearly not intended for everyday use, but rather as a powerful testament to wealth and prestige.
In 1909, the French government financed the purchase of palazzo Santos as the French Embassy in Portugal. In 2015, due to the renovation of the embassy, the porcelain on the ceiling was removed, and an exhibition of blue and white porcelain was held in Lisbon, and data collection was carried out; in 2019, the French Museum of Gemmer digitally restored these blue and white porcelain, and lit various types of porcelain in turn with projection technology. In 2019, when I was preparing for the exhibition "White Gold, Eastern and Western Porcelain Capital: From Jingdezhen to Mason Porcelain Exhibition", I also hoped to project and reproduce the porcelain dome of Santos Palace on the ceiling of the South Hall of the Shanghai History Museum (the ticket hall of the Racecourse Club built in 1934), but unfortunately this idea was not realized due to the fact that the venue was a modern protected building. Later, in a quiet corner of the "East-West Convergence" exhibition hall, I sat on an off-white futon and looked up at the images of Chinese blue and white porcelain more than 400 years ago, just like looking up at the blue and white starry sky that still shines with the light of civilization.
The spices, raw silk and porcelain carried by the three-masted double-decker galleon Clarke brought prestige and benefits to Portugal that other European countries coveted. In 1603, the Dutch intercepted the Portuguese merchant ship Santa Catarina, and the auction proceeds brought in 54% of the total share price of the newly formed Dutch East India Company, and the porcelain with six or eight open lights named "Clark" was also famous. Thereafter, the East India Company purchased large quantities of porcelain in China and spread this porcelain to every corner of Northern Europe.
A set of blue and white plates from the wreck of the San Diego is now in the American Museum of Asian Art in Kyrgyzstan, France
In the exchange cycle of Chinese porcelain in Southwest Asia, blue and white porcelain with white ground blue flowers was determined as the standard color matching scheme. Since then, the hybrid of blue and white porcelain has been invincible, not only Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia and Persia have imitated it, but also the Netherlands and other European countries have begun to produce blue and white porcelain under the stimulation of this. The road to imitation was long, until King Augustus II, who "traded cavalry for porcelain", ordered alchemists and mathematicians to work together to create Mason hard porcelain like Chinese porcelain in 1710 after tens of thousands of experiments. Although the pattern of the world ceramic trade has changed since then, and Chinese and Western cultures have long been blended and interpenetrated in the cycle of trade, the appearance of Chinese and Western porcelain in the wave of globalization, borrowing the name of an exhibition held by the Cultural Heritage Museum of the University of Chinese in Hong Kong, can really be described as "the same wind of all countries".
As the beginning of the trend, although blue and white porcelain has been repeatedly "transfigured" to cater to the aesthetics of different groups of people, its status in the entire history of ceramics is still invincible. It has attracted the Dutch painter Calf, the American painter Whistler, and the English poet Wilde, and is regarded as a representative symbol of Chinese culture, which promotes the cultural interconnection and emotional resonance in the fusion of East and West.
The blue and white teacups and saucers originally belonged to Augustus II are now in the Herthiens-German Ceramics Museum in Düsseldorf, Germany