page_title: Chinese ceramics
section_title: Qing dynasty, 1644–1911
hierarchical_section_title: Chinese ceramics / History / Qing dynasty, 1644–1911
caption_attribution_description: Yellow-glazed brush-holder bearing the mark "Chen Guo Zhi". Jingdezhen Ware, from the reign of emperor Daoguang (1821-1850 AD), Qing dynasty. On display at the Shanghai Museum.
context_page_description: Chinese ceramics show a continuous development since pre-dynastic times and are one of the most significant forms of Chinese art and ceramics globally. The first pottery was made during the Palaeolithic era. Chinese ceramics range from construction materials such as bricks and tiles, to hand-built pottery vessels fired in bonfires or kilns, to the sophisticated Chinese porcelain wares made for the imperial court and for export. Porcelain was a Chinese invention and is so identified with China that it is still called "china" in everyday English usage.
  Most later Chinese ceramics, even of the finest quality, were made on an industrial scale, thus few names of individual potters were recorded. Many of the most important kiln workshops were owned by or reserved for the emperor, and large quantities of Chinese export porcelain were exported as diplomatic gifts or for trade from an early date, initially to East Asia and the Islamic world, and then from around the 16th century to Europe. Chinese ceramics have had an enormous influence on other ceramic traditions in these areas.
context_section_description: The lengthy civil wars marking the transition from Ming to Qing caused a breakdown in the Imperial kilns system, forcing the managers to find new markets. The Transitional porcelain of about 1620 to the 1680s saw a new style in painting, mostly in blue and white, with new subject-matter of landscapes and figures painted very freely, borrowing from other media. The later part of the period saw Europe joining the existing export markets.
  The Qing dynasty produced very varied porcelain styles, developing many of the innovations of the Ming. The most notable area of continuing innovation was in the increasing range of colours available, mostly in overglaze enamels.  A very significant trade in Chinese export porcelain with the West developed.  Court taste was highly eclectic, still favouring monochrome wares, which now used a wide range of bright glaze colours.  Special glazing effects were highly regarded; new ones were developed and classic Song wares imitated with great skill. But the court now accepted wares with painted scenes in both blue and white and the new bright polychrome palettes.  Technical standards at Jingdezhen were remarkably high, though falling somewhat by the middle of the 19th century.
  Decoration, and sometimes shapes, became increasingly over-elaborate and fussy, and generally the Ming period is regarded as the greater; indeed in China this was the case at the time.  By the 18th century the tradition had ceased to innovate in any radical way, and the vitality of painting declines.
  
  Primary source material on Qing dynasty porcelain is available from both foreign residents and domestic authors. Two letters written by Père François Xavier d'Entrecolles, a Jesuit missionary and industrial spy who lived and worked in Jingdezhen in the early 18th century, described in detail manufacturing of porcelain in the city. In his first letter dated 1712, d'Entrecolles described the way in which pottery stones were crushed, refined and formed into little white bricks, known in Chinese as petuntse. He then went on to describe the refining of china clay kaolin along with the developmental stages of glazing and firing. He explained his motives: 
   Nothing but my curiosity could ever have prompted me to such researches, but it appears to me that a minute description of all that concerns this kind of work might,  be useful in Europe.
  In 1743, during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, Tang Ying, the imperial supervisor in the city produced a memoir entitled Twenty Illustrations of the Manufacture of Porcelain. The original illustrations have been lost, but the text is still accessible.
caption: Yellow-glazed brush-holder, "Chen Guo Zhi" mark; Jingdezhen Daoguang period, (1821–50); Shanghai Museum
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