A Study Of The Heraldry Porcelain In The 18th Century

Armorial porcelain is a very important type of Chinese export porcelain, the exportation of armorial porcelain reached its peak in18th century and mainly to Britain. Armorial porcelain can reflect people’s social status who ordered them. Thus through studying armorial porcelain we can explore18th Britain society.In this paper, armorial porcelain is first placed in the history of Chinese porcelain development history, although its adornment has obvious western characteristics, it is Chinese product. Based on traditional study method of Chinese ceramics, I’ll put armorial porcelain in order according to shape, pattern and adornment. Then using explicit dated products to divide all armorial porcelain of18th century.After that, using all material I can get to outline the ordering process. Normally people who ordered armorial porcelain had explicit demands, how to convert these demands to real porcelain products, that’s the question I want to answer in this section. There are many problems involved, like delivery and translation of order form, making process in China and sending products back to Britain.At last, through studying people who ordered armorial porcelain, one fact can be found that armorial porcelain is a symbol of social status especially in early and middle18th century. But afterwards, as ordering and making armorial porcelain became a commercial pattern, any person can have his own armorial porcelain with paying a little money. At this stage, armorial porcelain began to decline at the end of18th century.