Cracking the Mysteries of “China”: China(ware) in the Early Modern Imagination

This essay explores early modern views of China as they were expressed through European representations of Chinese porcelain. Analyzing a range of artistic, printed, and dramatic texts, I show how sixteenth-and seventeenth-century western mythologies surrounding the production of chinaware offer a striking contrast to the more denigrating discourse of chinoiserie that developed in the eighteenth century. Focusing particularly on descriptions of chinaware that circulated in early modern England, I demonstrate how writers ranging from Mandeville to Hakluyt to Shakespeare and Jonson foster ideas about the mysteries of Chinese porcelain that emphasize its virtuous and magical properties. I also consider contemporary English translations of Marco Polo, the Portuguese trader Duarte Barbosa, and the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, as well as Italian paintings by Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini, revealing an admiration for chinaware that circulated throughout Europe. Examining the shifting ways that commodification affected perceptions of chinaware and vice versa, I draw attention to a particular period of transition over the first half of the seventeenth century when Chinese porcelain became increasingly available to moneyed English consumers. During this time, the myths surrounding porcelain’s creation were both demystified and reclaimed, while on the public stage diverse perceptions of chinaware offered a way to arbitrate social competency. Throughout, I chart an early modern discourse of chinaware in relation to an evolving history of East-West trade, revealing how the mysterious origins of Chinese porcelain both resisted and played into its commodification.