Ceramics reached Europe from China in the late Middle Ages. They were
greatly treasured and were often provided with precious mountings.
A Lung-ch’uan bowl now in Kassel was brought from the Near East in 1434
and was given its gothic mounting before 1453.’ In later centuries, porcelain was by far the most popular Chinese export to Europe. When the
contents of the Geldermalsen were recovered from the sea bottom in 1985,
it turned out that this one ship, sailing from Canton to Amsterdam in 1752,
had 150,000 pieces of porcelain in its hold.2
The Dutch East India Company
fleet in the eighteenth century comprised more than 200 ships,3 and although not all of them carried porcelain, and those that did not always as
much as the Geldermalsen, the number of pieces of porcelain exported to
Europe can be counted in the tens of millions. This trade had an enormous impact and changed the course of ceramic
history. Traditional stoneware fell out of favor in Europe and the technically
superior and aesthetically more versatile Chinese products were both greatly admired and copied. Low-fued ceramics decorated in blue on a white
ground were produced at Delft and other centers and traded widely, and,
once Johann Gottfried Biittger “re-invented” porcelain in 1709, high-temperature kilns were set up at Meissen and elsewhere. Even today, decoration
and shape of porcelain tradeware can still be traced back to Chinese prototype~.~ Blue and white can be called the most successful ceramic type in
world history.
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