Art transformed when West meets East.

Description of Objects

These decorative groups combine parts made in China and France. They were assembled in France and used in the interior decoration of a fashionable home. The two boys are the He he er xian [huh huh er shien], or the Immortal Twins, folklore figures who personify the spirit of accord. Popular in southern China, they were the patrons of potters and merchants and would have been displayed in shops and parlors. Fo is Chinese for Buddha. The so-called foo-dogs are in fact Buddhist lions (also called kylin). Large examplcs were placed as guardians at temple doors. These porcelain lions were originally fixed to thc tops of the porcelain rocks.

The lidded porcelain spheres were used as pomanders in China, filled with fragrant flowers or solid balls of perfume.

The French owner of the groups probably would not have recognized the original Chinese identity of the objects nor their function but would have viewed them as exotic decorations.

How They Were Made

The Chinese porcelain factories were located in Jingdezhen [jing duh jun], the center of the porcelain industry in China. Making porcelain involved several stages. A different person oversaw each one: mixing the clay, putting it into molds, touching up the details of the dried clay figures, firing them in a kiln, painting them with bright colors and firing them again to make the colors permanent, dipping them into glazes and firing them again. Supervising the firing was an especially important job; the porcelain could crack or collapse if fired improperly.

The finished porcelain pieces were sent down the Yangtze River to Nanjing and then to Canton, where Chinese merchants sold them to European traders. The volume of this trade in porcelain was immense: a ship that sank in 1752 was found to have 223,303 pieces on board!

A Parisian merchant called a marchand-mercier [MAR-shan MARE-see-ay] would have purchased the figures, the lions mounted on the rocks and the spheres. He decided to separate the lions from the rocks by putting the sphere in between them, and to place the boys so that they seemed to be peering into the spheres. He directed a craftsman to make a gilt bronze base cast with small lizards, snails and shells on which to arrange the Chinese pieces and add French porcelain flowers on gilt bronze twigs to the base, the rocks and the sphere. Bronze is an alloy of copper, tin and lead. It was covered with a thin layer of gold to make gilt bronze. Gilt bronze has the appearance of gold at a fraction of the cost and is much more durable.

Context

The Chinese had been making porcelain for domestic use and for export for hundreds of years when these objects were created. They not only exported objects in native shapes and subjects but also exported wares adaptcd to the tastc of their European clients.

Only the most affluent could afford the finished groups. The price is not known, but in 1756, a pair of candelabra made of Chinese figures and French flowers mounted in gilt bronze was sold for 264 livres [LEAV-ruh] (the eighteenth-century French unit of money), a year's wages for a skilled workman.

Key Concepts

To understand thls work, it may be important to think about the following items:

1. Europeans had a long-standing interest in the exotic countries of the Far East and in objects made there.

2. Porcelain, which we sometimes call china after the country that invented it, is made of clay fired in a kiln. White and translucent, but also extremely hard and durable, it was admired and imitated by Europeans.

3. Traditional Chinese subjects were combined in new ways by Parisian craftsmen to make decorative items for French houses.

Mothers and daughters are having breakfast in the kind of room in which the mounted porcelain groups might have been displayed. Notice how much gold is used: in the gilt bronze wall lights and clock, and in the carved and gildcd wood of the wall panels, mirror frame and table. Even the Chinese porcelain jar on the table is fitted with a gilt bronze mount. Look for examples of other objects that might have been imported from the Orient, such as the pu-tai (god of good luck) on one of the display shelves next to the mirror. The black and red table was made in France and painted to imitate oriental lacquer. In another cross@cultural connection, the family is drinking hot chocolate, a luxury drink imported from South America that was just becoming popular in this period.

Questions for the Viewer

1. How are the two objects the same and how are they different?

2. After noticing the main elements - the boys, lions, spheres and rocker - what other, smaller details can you find? (porcelain birds, gilt-bronze lizards, snails and shells)

3. How many different flower forms can you see? (two-dimensional flowers painted on the boys, coats and on the spheres, three-dimensional flowers on yellow stems that are part of the rock, and separate flowers attached by gilt bronze stems)

4. How are all of the seemingly disparate elements unified into an integrated whole? (repeated elements such as the use of greens, blues and yellows, gilt accents, the floral designs)

5. What appeals to you about the piece? What might have been the appeal of these groups to people long ago? (the many details, fineness of the painting, bright colors, ingenuity in the way the French sections are combined with the Chinese ones, the action of the boys looking into the spheres making us wonder what they see)

6. Using your observations and this background information, what hypotheses can you develop about the taste and interests of the people for whom these were made? What can you hypothesize about the impact of intemational trade on art in Europe at this time? How can you find out more information to confirm or refine your hypotheses?

Activities and Extensions

* Use an atlas to find the city of Jingdezhen in China, and trace the route of porcelain trade down the Yangtze River to Nanjing, and then to Canton and on to Europe. Investigate the European@east Asian trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What were the main objects of trade between the continents@ ftea and silk@ What role did porcelain play? (It often served as ballast in trade ships; i.e., heavy material carried below deck to balance the ship's weight. While porcelain would not be damaged by water, the lighter and more precious silk and tea had to be stored above the water line.)

* Look for examples of how distinctive visual elements of one culture become adapted for use by another culture. Examine import stores (such as Pier 1) or popular intcrior design magazines for examples. Can you find examples of objects inspired by traditional Chinese, Japanese or other East Asian cultures in your homes@ Compare traditionally made objects from other countries. Why are these objects valued today?

* Visit a local museum that includes European or American art of this time period, or study illustrated art books of the subject. Find and list as many examples as you can of objects that were imported from or inspired by cultures of East Asia. Look carefully at paintings of interior scenes (such as the painting by Boucher included here) for more examples. Also visit a museum or study illustrated art books that depict collections of Chinese porcelain. How do some objects made for export vary from porcelain made for Chinese use?

* Photocopy parts of objects and distribute copies to the students to cut up and imagine they are marchands-merciers. Let them design ways to arrange the clements. Have them paste their objects to a background paper and add embellishments to help it fit in with today,s style. Examine the collages to see how each student tried to unify the rearrangement. * Using these objects and other ceramic pieces as inspiration, create small, imaginative landscapes in clay and create separate figures to be placed within them.

References

Battle, David, ed. Sotheby's Concise Encyclopedia of Porcelain. London: Conran Octopus Ltd., 1990. Vainker, S.J. Chinese Pottery and Procelain from Prehistory to the Present. London: British Museum Press, 1991. Watson, F.J.B., and Gillian Wilson. Mounted Oriental Porcelain in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1982.