Ming Dynasty Porcelain

For over six centuries, blue and white Ming Dynasty porcelain has been a favorite of collectors around the world. Portuguese kings lined a ceiling in the Santos Palace in Lisbon with collections of plates and bowls beginning around 1500. Japanese tea drinking led to a huge demand for small cups and dishes not much later. In the seventeenth century, no fashionable European home was without a set of porcelain dinnerware. The crafting of porcelain ceramics had begun hundreds of years earlier in China, and earlier pieces, notably from the Song Dynasty (960-1279), are still considered some of the finest examples of the craft. However, it was the intricate blue designs on fine, white porcelain which would capture the fancy of the world, help build China into an economic powerhouse and leave a lasting legacy for an otherwise poorly considered dynasty.

A town named Jingdezhen in the province of Jiangxi, located in southeastern China, became the center of production for porcelain. A special clay is needed to produce porcelain and set it apart from other ceramics. That clay was in abundance around Jingdezhen, as was ample supplies of wood to feed the kiln fires, which had to produce very high firing temperatures, and rivers to transport goods to the port cities for shipment around the world.

The production of porcelain was a detailed affair and mass production techniques made use of the specialized labor of many different artisans. No one person handled the process from beginning to end, rather every worker had one job only and several workshops handled different aspects of the production. One worker would form a bowl, while another would mold it. Another would chisel it and yet another would apply the underglaze, and so on down the line until a piece was finished. Dozens of people could be involved in the making of one bowl. Using cobalt, which had not been available to earlier generations of artisans, as it was an import, craftsmen applied beautiful designs to unfired pieces and the result was the famous blue and white Ming porcelain.

During the sixteenth century, the vast amount of orders for porcelain came from the imperial palace. As well as being used in the palace, many pieces were commissioned as gifts. Quality control of imperial porcelain was rigorous. Every piece destined for imperial use had special markings, but the tiniest imperfection would cause a piece to be broken into pieces and discarded, as imperial porcelain could not be used for any other purpose. What seems a waste today has also been a treasure for modern archaeologists. The peak of imperial patronage was in 1577, but declining finances led the government to decrease the number of orders after that year.

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