Exhibition dates: January 14 – July 13, 2003
Exhibition location: Erving and Joyce Wolf Gallery, The American Wing
Press preview: Monday, January 13, 10:00 a.m. - noon
One of the most important and comprehensive collections of Chinese export porcelain in America will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 14, 2003. Featuring more than 80 works drawn from the Museum's own collections, Chinese Export Porcelain at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will examine the precious porcelain created in China for export to Europe and America. Dating from the mid-16th century through the third quarter of the 19th century, the exhibition includes bowls and vases, services and tureens, reverse glass paintings, and works in ivory. Together with the Metropolitan's winter 2003 Bulletin on the subject, the exhibition will spotlight this little-known facet of the Museum's collections.
The exhibition and its accompanying publication are made possible by
Mary and Marvin Davidson.
Introduced to Europe in the 14th century, Chinese porcelains were regarded as objects of rarity and luxury. In the early 16th century, however – after Portugal established trade routes to the Far East and began commercial trade with Asia – Chinese porcelains began to arrive in the West in some quantity. By the 18th
century, trade between China and Europe had expanded from spices to tea,
textiles, silver, and porcelain as well. Although porcelain was incidental to the success of the trade, the quantity of exported items – some 300 million pieces that are believed to have reached England over two centuries – ensured a lasting influence on Western taste and the history of ceramics.
The exhibition begins with some of the earliest export porcelains known, including a ewer in Islamic form dating to about 1520, a rare surviving example of the first porcelain production intended for the West.
Of particular note are the armorial porcelains for the Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, English, and American markets. On view will be a large plant tub dating to 1693-1697, the earliest known piece of armorial porcelain made for the English market. Both individual objects and entire services decorated with coats of arms comprised a significant percentage of the trade in Chinese porcelain. Patrons often supplied their armorials in the form of a drawing or a print in which the details were indicated in heraldic language. Occasionally, these instructions were misinterpreted; in a dish made for the English market of about 1715, the words sa (for sable, black) and argt (for argent, silver) were included in the coat of arms.
Two extensive porcelain services featured in the exhibition are particular strengths of the Museum's collection: one group consisting of more than 200 pieces from about 1795 for the family of Samuel Chase of Baltimore, Maryland, and the other from circa 1765 that was made for the Portuguese Saldanha family. A group of porcelains produced just following America's entry into trade with China, which began in 1784, will also be on display.
A plate belonging to a large group of porcelains owned by George Washington
(1732-1799) and Henry "Lightfoot" Lee (1756-1818) will also be featured in the
exhibition. It is distinguished by the central motif depicting the Angel of Fame holding aloft the medallion of the Society of the Cincinnati suspended from a blue and white silk ribbon. Such porcelains arrived in America on only the second American ship to return with goods from China. Another striking example that emerged from American trade with China is an early-19th-century covered tureen emblazoned on front and back with a large spread eagle, framed by four quadrants of the so-called Fitzhugh pattern of leaves and flowers.
Besides porcelain, a small number of works in other media will also be presented to provide a contextual dimension to the exhibition. Porcelain was only part of the extensive trade between China and the West, and cargoes were full of tea, silks, paintings, lacquerware, metalwork, and ivory. One extraordinary survivor is a nine-story pagoda – over 3 1/2 feet high – that was said to have been brought back from China by Samuel Shaw in 1784 on the Empress of China, the first ship to sail from an American port to China. The intricate pagoda is composed of carved ivory walls with carved bells suspended from each roof, and with a fretwork fence and willowy, overscale flowers of stained ivory.
The exhibition will be accompanied by the Museum's winter 2003 Bulletin, written by Clare Le Corbeiller, Curator Emerita of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, and Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, the Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts. The Bulletin will be available in the Metropolitan's book shop for $ 8.95.
A variety of educational programs will be offered in conjunction with the exhibition, including documentary films and gallery talks, as well as a lecture – entitled Imitation as Flattery: Influence of the Chinese Potter – by William Sargent, Curator Peabody-Essex Museum. It will take place in the Museum's Uris Center Auditorium on Friday, March 14, at 6:00 p.m.; no reservations are necessary.
Chinese Export Porcelain at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is organized jointly by Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen in the Department of American Decorative Arts and Jeffrey Munger, Associate Curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts.
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