Canton or Cantonese porcelain is the characteristic style of
ceramic ware decorated in
Guangzhou
Guangzhou, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Canton or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, southern China. Located on the Pearl River about nor ...
, the capital of
Guangdong
) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...
and (
prior to 1842) the sole legal port for export of Chinese goods to Europe. As such, it was one of the major forms of
exportware produced in China in the 18th and 20th centuries.
History
Typically, the exportware was made, glazed, and fired at
Jingdezhen
Jingdezhen is a prefecture-level city in eastern Jiangxi province with a total population of 1,669,057 (2018), bordering Anhui to the north. It is known as the "Porcelain Capital" because it has been producing Chinese ceramics for at least 1,0 ...
but decorated with enamels in Guangzhou (then usually romanized as Canton) for export to the west via the
Thirteen Factories
The Thirteen Factories, also known as the , was a neighbourhood along the Pearl River in southwestern Guangzhou (Canton) in the Qing Empire from to 1856 around modern day Xiguan, in Guangzhou's Liwan District. These warehouses and stores were t ...
of the
Canton System.
Canton ''
famille rose'' in the 19th century was typically decorated with figures and
bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...
s,
flower
Flowers, also known as blooms and blossoms, are the reproductive structures of flowering plants ( angiosperms). Typically, they are structured in four circular levels, called whorls, around the end of a stalk. These whorls include: calyx, m ...
s and
insect
Insects (from Latin ') are Hexapoda, hexapod invertebrates of the class (biology), class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (Insect morphology#Head, head, ...
s, predominantly in
pink
Pink is a pale tint of red, the color of the Dianthus plumarius, pink flower. It was first used as a color name in the late 17th century. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, pink is the color most often associated with charm, p ...
and
green
Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a com ...
.
The decorative ''famille rose'' patterns used in export wares may be differentiated by the following terms: Rose Canton which is decorated with flowers, birds and insects but with no human figures; Rose Mandarin with human figures as the main subject and introduced in the late 18th century; and Rose Medallion which has different panels that may be of different subjects and introduced in the 19th century.
See also
*
Cantonese culture
References
External links
Paintings of the Traditional Porcelain ProcessDerek Philip Au
Several series of paintings, with links to sources.
Trading China
Google Arts and Culture presentation of Hong Kong Maritime Museum albums.
Chinese porcelain
Cantonese folk art
History of Guangzhou
{{Ceramics-stub