KANGXI 1662 – 1722 Chinese Export Porcelain

Information

Baroque Displays of Kangxi Vases :
Vases such as the present examples were ordered in large quantities by the Dutch East India Company (V.O.C.) at the end of the Seventeenth Century. They were often used as part of fashionable Baroque decorative schemes, displayed on gilded brackets and on little ledges, in fact on any and every available surface. The desired effect was to show the pieces on-mass as part of a grand room setting, arranged so as to overwhelm the spectator. Garnitures were specifically made for chimney pieces but were used in many different decorative arrangements. This fashion, sometimes referred to as `China Mania` was bought from Holland to England by Mary II (Reigned 1689 -1694). Her rooms at Kensington Palace (5 Minutes Walk from our Shop) were decorated in this Fashion. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) Stated that "The Queen (Mary) bought in the custom or humour, as I may call it, of furnishing houses with China-Ware, which increased to a strange degree afterwards, piling their China upon the tops of cabinets, scrutores, and every chymney-piece, to the top of the ceilings, and every setting up of shelves for their China-Ware, where they wanted such places, till it became a grievance in the experience of it, and even injurious to their families and estates". Even allowing for artistic licence this give an idea of the extent of the fashion.