English Decorated 18th Century Chinese Export Porcelain Jug and Cover

A London Decorated Chinese Export Porcelain sparrow-beak jug and cover, Qianlong Period c.1750-1760, Enamelled in London between c.1755-1765. The Chinese Export Porcelain jug and cover was painted in London, probably in the James Giles workshop and the flower painting is categorised as Group ‘A’. Painted with a large sprig of English flowers, butterflies and further scattered flowers. This type of English enamel decoration on Chinese export porcelain should be seen in a different way to what is referred to as `over-decorated` or `clobbered` porcelain. Those terms refer to Chinese porcelain that was imported into Europe as finished articles, but were either too plain for merchants to sell or their profits could be enhanced by adding enamels over the existing Chinese decoration. The present example was plain white when it arrived in England, it would not have been salable and so no merchant would have ordered it to retail. However, James Giles must have ordered a lot of white porcelain specifically for decoration at his workshop in London. The shapes ordered were the lasted fashion in Europe as was the decoration he added. To my mind this makes these objects separate and distinct from other Chinese porcelain, China only provided the blank `canvas` and even that was of a form dictated to by Europe. For this reason these objects would primarily be see as English, they would have been totally alien to the Chinese.

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