Reviews

'Arts of Asia' Review

Chinese Armorial Porcelain, Volume II, by David Sanctuary Howard, with a foreword by Peter Ll. Gwynn-Jones, CVO, Garter Principal King of Arms, Heirloom & Howard Limited, London 2003. 900 pages, 1980 illustrations (all but 100 in colour), list of services not illustrated, Appendix I-XIV, Selected Bibliography, Index of Services. 29 x 22 cm. ISBN 09544 38906 (cloth bound), £480. ISBN 09544 38914 (leather bound), £680. UK inland: postage included.

It is very rare indeed in the field of Chinese ceramics to be able to state without fear of contradiction that a book is definitive, a publication whose conclusions, significance and contents may be tweaked or slightly supplemented by future scholars, but whose mastery of the subject and impregnable scholarship will never be supplanted.

In 1974, David Howard published a massive volume on the subject of Chinese Armorial Porcelain, named as such, which he himself considered part of a 'work in progress'; too much information was still coming to light for it to be definitive.

In 2003, the publication of what is now Volume II marks the effective end of the 'work in progress', and the near-completion of a remarkable project. Taking heraldry, the study of individual coats-of-arms painted on Chinese Export porcelain, as his dating tool David Howard has addressed more widely the history and development of an entire coherent sector of the Chinese ceramic industry. In doing so, he has produced not a series of stepping-stones for dating (almost undatable) Chinese export porcelain, but an entire motorway along which future scholars will conveniently travel. With the appearance of Volume II, it is time to review David Howard's achievement, and to assess the significance of this two-volume milestone publication in the context of studies of Chinese porcelain.

Chinese Armorial Porcelain, Volume II, follows in every major respect the principles set out by the author in Volume I. He sets out to record and identify every individual porcelain order (service or smaller commission) enamelled in colours or painted in underglaze blue with the armorial bearing (coat-of-arms and/or crest and/or motto) of British families, between about 1695 and the mid-19th century – the 'glory years' of the so-called English East India Company. The statistics are remarkable, and help to explain the significance of these two books for collectors and social historians.

In Volume I, Howard recorded 2960 orders and illustrated (mainly in black and white) about 1900. In Volume II, he illustrates a further 1380, of which about 1060 were entirely unrecorded in the first volume, and discovered since 1974. All in Volume II are now illustrated in colour as well as about 320 formerly known but not illustrated in Volume I; an important development since colour can be significant for the identification of coats-of-arms, though Chinese painters did not invariably copy them accurately from the original watercolours, with occasional hilarious results!

Howard's researches are still yielding as many as two new unrecorded armorial orders a week; a part service at auction here, an unrecorded coffee cup in a mixed lot there, with an unexpected number being for the American market.

The first volume published most of the readily accessible services and sets, appearing to demonstrate quite clearly that the high point for the creation of these individual sets was the period 1740-1780; we now know that 52 per cent of all orders date from this period. Volume II interestingly extends the story, showing that a surprisingly large number of services were commissioned after 1780 (now up to 31 per cent of the known services) when everyone had assumed that English manufacturers of armorial porcelain like Derby, Rockingham and Worcester had largely supplanted Chinese potters by the introduction of new Western industrial potting technology and by the protectionist imposition of huge import duties of 150 per cent on Chinese wares. And yet the story is still not complete.

The author has calculated that there may well have been up to 6000 Chinese armorial commissions supplied for the English-speaking market, from dinner services to beer mugs, from coffee/tea sets to garnitures of vases, and he disarmingly notes that since he has only identified and published some 4000, of which some 3300 are now illustrated, it is not at all implausible that 2000 still remain to be identified. Meanwhile, a new edition of Volume I is planned, which will enable all the initial arms to be re-illustrated this time in colour, and a few minor amendments incorporated. The study, and compilation, and resulting chronology for dating Qing dynasty export porcelain of all kinds is definitive; but the database will continue to expand.

Many readers of Arts of Asia will be very familiar with the literature about Chinese ceramics in guanyao (official) taste, the fine porcelains from Jingdezhen. Others will have followed the emergence of new pre-historic and early ceramic cultures in recent decades, through the printed archaeological reports. Readers who appreciate Chinese ceramics in 'classic' or archaeological taste may perhaps wonder: what is the significance of David Howard's massive publication? It has not illuminated pre-Qing dynasty Chinese ceramics, for it does not draw on archaeology, which has revolutionised our understanding of many of the greatest or most significant episodes in Chinese ceramic history: the division of the Gansu province ceramic sub-cultures, the new understanding of the products of the Ru kiln, the astonishing revelations from the Yongle, Xuande and Chenghua spoil heaps at Zhushan. Nor does it present material which is either familiar to, or popular with, many Chinese-oriented collectors, scholars and dealers in Asia; for the author is dealing with Export-quality ceramics from unconsidered non-Imperial kilns.

Enamelled (often very carefully, sometimes rather beautifully) at muffle kilns either in Jingdezhen or Canton, these owe very little in shape, or design, to Chinese traditions – indeed, some of the most exceptional Export porcelains in this field often explicitly disavow them. This is material demonstrably commissioned by Westerners: for its primary, unifying characteristic is that it is all decorated with a Western armorial 'bearing' – a family coat-of-arms, sometimes merely a crest, sometimes also a Western motto. It forms a coherent whole, because Export porcelain became a commercial backbone of the Western trade with Southeast China in the late 17th century. The refurbishment of the Jingdezhen province kilns during the early years of the Qing dynasty coincide with a fundamental change in cosmopolitan European society, as Western demand required attractive Chinese Export porcelain for politely serving food or the newly fashionable non-alcoholic beverages (tea, coffee and chocolate).

Yet this Export porcelain is not realistically ever likely to be datable by excavation. If a chronology for the evolution of Export ceramics was to be created, it could draw on only two convincing datable design sources: the evidence from dated prints copied onto porcelain, and the evidence of each individual coat-of-arms related back to the family's circumstances.

David Howard has turned the archaeological approach to dating Chinese porcelain on its head. He has created his own datable series of 'archaeological strata', by working out a convincing approximate (or in some cases absolutely precise) date of production for each commission, each individual nugget of primary information, by assembling them into groups; and then by creating 'generic' strata, datable parameters of different types of border decorations which represent evolving and consistent accompaniment to the coat-of-arms, and which individually seem to become redundant after at most twenty years.

It is fair to accept, therefore, that a Howard dating of 'circa 1730' is as accurate as (if not more so than) dividing Chenghua ceramics into periods 1, 2 and 3 on the basis of strata examination. This provides a formidable tool for scholarship within the wider context of Export art, and the whole history of the Export trade with China.

This book is the product of entirely Western art-historical scholarship. There is very little need (or room) here for conventional, hallowed shibboleths of dating, over the 200-year period covered; there is no need, for each individual order contains its own internal dating evidence.

The author's personal background has given rise to this unique book. A specialist in identifying coats-of-arms for all his professional life, his skills in genealogy became harnessed later in life to his newer career after 1973 as an antique dealer; first in works of art bearing armorial decoration, and then focusing on the art market's most coherent single category of armorial items, Chinese armorial porcelain. Allied to these interests was his belief in the importance of shipwreck evidence as a tool for providing much greater precision in dating the conventional, invariably undated, blue and white porcelain which was the staple of 'Company' cargoes coming back to Europe and America, and was such routine material as to hardly ever be datable from Eastern or Western documentary sources. His familiarity with the four 'great cargoes', the Asian Junk, Vung Tau, Geldermalsen and Diana shipwrecks, provided him with yet more termini post quem, further refining his design and manufacturing chronology.

In Volume II, the database of identified orders was extended further after the author bought a remarkable nine-volume 18th century set of manuscript illustrations of English coats-of-arms, intended to be painted onto coaches in mid-Georgian England. Any halfway-successful entrepreneur, installed in his handsome new pile, would rapidly send for a coach and a dinner service, each emblazoned even more boldly and unashamedly than a personalised number plate on a car today! The author has managed to identify a large new crop of personalised porcelains by referring to this coach-painter's office record. A further group has been identified from armorial evidence supplied my mother-of-pearl gaming counters, often unconsidered trifles ignored by collectors until the author set them into a historical context. He gave them a social significance, and in many cases no doubt helped repatriate them to heirs of the individual merchant or ship's captain who had originally commissioned their production in Canton a century or two earlier.

Howard's two volume magnum opus is not just the quintessential reference guide to dating Chinese Export porcelain, although this itself would be impressive enough if it marked the limit of the author's ambitions. It sets out to interpret those tangible relics of the annual British maritime trade with Asia, and to illuminate aspects of this remarkable trade which did so much to add elegance and entertainment to the quality of 18th century daily life in the upper levels of polite European society. Much buying of porcelain, and indeed its usage in society, was driven by female demand, the need to be able to entertain other ladies in a new elegant manner. For the man of the house, on the other hand, commissioning and possessing special-commission 'private trade' porcelain proudly bearing your family arms was a most visible sign of a family's success.

Howard demonstrates, by comparing border patterns and shapes (which change markedly over time), that buyers clearly wanted to follow contemporary fashion in their purchases of Chinese Export porcelain. Increasing consumption of salad vegetables needed new types of bowl; serving tea required different vessels from serving hot chocolate; chilling wine bottles before pouring from them, rather than chilling the glasses into which wine was served warm, needed different dining room accessories. In large part no doubt these armorial porcelains reflected contemporary social behaviour, but the use of coats-of-arms datable to the year of a particular dynastic marriage, or close to the grant of a new armorial bearing, pins the social usage itself down to a tight period, probably often reflecting a time lag of several years after a particular silver style had become the norm.

David Howard's final achievement is perhaps less important in the broader scheme of things, but one which is irresistible for the very many collectors who have found tangible relics of their own family history in his antique shop. It is his ability to provide a clear and unambiguous connection, through an attractive ceramic medium, with an earlier episode, often a rather successful and prosperous one, in the history of thousands of perfectly nice but otherwise undistinguished British families. My final example demonstrates one such family event. In 1727, an increasingly successful London merchant (he was to cap his career in 1754 as the Governor of the Bank of England) celebrated his marriage to an Irish lady, Mary Higginson, and he commissioned a fine service in the smart new famille-rose palette. The family had been wealthy weavers and farmers at Cranbrook in Kent for generations, but his branch was expanding in the City, and he needed this status symbol, despite the family's rather low-key and opaque motto 'Poor is the friendless master of a world'. I like to think that Mary's new husband Alexander Sheafe would be pleased that, thanks to David Howard, a piece of his own wedding service has returned to a direct descendant equally fascinated by Chinese porcelain, this London reviewer, a fine art auctioneer.

Volume II of Chinese Armorial Porcelain is privately printed by Heirloom and Howard Ltd. Further information is available from leading specialist art bookshops, or directly from the author by post: David Howard Esq., Heirloom and Howard Ltd., PO Box 2435, Chippenham, Wiltshire, SN14 7XN, England. The informative website (www.chinese-armorial-porcelain.co.uk) also shows several sample pages from the book.

Colin Sheaf

Colin Sheaf is Head of Asian Art at Bonhams, 101 New Bond Street, London, W1S 1SR, UK. After specialising in Economic History at Oxford, he has held senior positions in the Chinese departments of international auction houses since 1976.