From China to Europe and back

The first ships carrying Chinese porcelain arrived in the Dutch Republic in the early years of the 17th century, soon after the establishment of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The Dutch ordered porcelain from Jingdezhen and exported it to Europe. These so-called Kraak porcelains (kraakporselein in Dutch, after the Dutch ship of the same name, the carrack) included similar porcelain stands. Serving the European luxury market throughout the 17th century, the VOC is estimated to have ordered 11,000,000 pieces of Chinese ware. To satisfy European markets, they even purchased porcelain in Japan.

The popularity of Chinese porcelain in Holland and beyond meant that the demand could not be met by import alone. Unfortunately, porcelain is made of very fine white clay known as Kaolin (derived from gaolingtu 高岭土 in Chinese, also called China clay), which was not available in the Dutch Republic. Instead, the Dutch used tin glaze to make pottery. It is not a technology that originated in China, but rather in the south of the Iberian Peninsula in the period of Arab-ruled Al-Andalus, having entered Europe from the Near East and Islamic world. The technology later spread to northern Italy by way of the Balearic Islands, where it was called ‘Maiolica’ in Italian, after the largest island of the Balearic, Mallorca. The technique involved adding tin to the glaze, which produced a white color. This base was then decorated with metal oxides, among which cobalt and manganese oxide that produce the blue color. These can withstand high firing temperatures of around 1000 degrees Celsius. The technology later spread to Flanders and the Dutch Republic after the fall of Antwerp in 1585 during the Eighty Years’ War.

In the mid 17th century, Dutch entrepreneurs started trying to imitate the popular but expensive Chinese porcelain. They began their undertaking in Delft, a member city of the VOC where an art school had been built. The Dutch began to apply the techniques that Europeans were familiar with to imitate Chinese blue and white porcelain. Soon, several Delft factories were manufacturing high-quality earthenware at a much cheaper price than those imported from China.

The most famous factory in Delft was De Grieksche A (The Greek A), which also produced wig stands (fig. 12). Though these wig stands are now very rare, some extant pieces even have the proprietor’s name on them. One of them belonged to Samuel van Eenhoorn, who was also the owner of the factory and ordered the stand for himself. For the 17th century Dutch, these stands may also have been used to place their hats due to the predominance of wearing hats in the Dutch Republic.

However, France has an equal or even longer history of tin glaze-making compared to the Dutch Republic. France produced its own tin-glazed earthenware from the 16th century and named it faïence (faience in English), after the Italian pottery center Faenza. Like the pottery makers in Flanders in the 16th century, under the influence of the Italian maiolica style Nevers, Rouen and Lyon became the centers of faience production in France. The industry in Nevers was supported by Louis Gonzaga, the Duke of Nevers, who was half Italian. The faience from Nevers was famous for its high quality, and the makers were able to supply wares to the standards required by the court and nobility.

In the early 18th century, many other faience centers developed in France, such as Marseille and Strasbourg (acquired by France after the Franco-Dutch war), thanks to the support of the royal house and nobility. Plenty of wig stands (porte-perruques) produced at this time in Marseille still survive (figs. 14). The main wig stand in this story was possibly also produced there in the early 18th century.

Porcelain stands between China and Europe

Although Europe yearned for porcelain for a long time, it was not able to produce porcelain until the eighteenth century. On January 15, 1708, Johann Friedrich Böttger and Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus successfully produced the first batch of European hard-paste porcelain in the Dresden Fortress. After the death of Tschirnhaus, Böttger further developed the process in Meißen and Dresden. At the same time, the French missionary François Xavier d'Entrecolles, who lived in China for seven years and had a good understanding of Jingdezhen porcelain, sent letters to Paris introducing the secrets of Chinese porcelain. In two letters written in 1712 and 1722, d’Entrecolles wrote about the history and process of porcelain-making in China and how Jingdezhen produced its famous ceramics. His letters had a huge impact on porcelain production in Europe, leading to the gradual decline of tin-glazed pottery and its eventual replacement by porcelain.

Contact between Chinese merchants and European traders also meant that Southern China started producing porcelain objects that were tailored to the European market. Manufacturers of Kwon-Glazed Porcelain created the western style porcelain according to orders from these traders. European fashions also started reaching the Qing court in Beijing: the hat of Qing officials could be placed on a stand similar to those used for holding wigs in Europe. We may suppose that the style of the wig stands is reflected in the mid-18th century “crown stands”. The fashion of wearing wigs even reached the emperor: the Yongzheng emperor commissioned a portrait of himself wearing a French-style wig (fig. 15). It was not only the style of wig stand that was transported to China, but another technique named faience enamel also impacted the production of such objects at the Qing court. Under the same emperor, crown stands survive that were decorated with the faience enamel and were not only used to hold official hats, but also as incense burners or sundials.