China and the West

Sung, Mei-ying. Blake and the Chinaman [ID D26564].
At the height of the Chinese fashion in England around the 1750s, the trade in porcelain was a prosperous business. As the Chinese had developed over several centuries a much more advanced technology of porcelain-making, the English had admired and tried to imitate them with enthusiasm. The interest in Chinese style and objects, especially porcelain, was the prevailing fashion in mid-eighteenth-century England. It was popular not only to collect Chinese exported ceramics but also 'chinoiserie' style furniture and images. William Hogarth's Marriage à-la-Mode (1745) shows the luxuries of an aristocrat's house including a range of
Chinese porcelain prominently displayed above the fireplace. This represents the fashion of the 18th-century British wealthy household, where Chinese ceramic figures, porcelain jars and vases were highly valued and extremely desirable objects for rich collectors. Although by William Blake's time much of this chinoiserie had been replaced by neo-classical purity, china remained a favourite English houshold decoration. Through the 18th century, there had been close connections between English china dealers (chinamen) and the criss-crossing of Chinese imports and Midlands domestic manufactures involving the engraving and print trades. English china dealers often had their engraved or etched trade cards designed in a Chinese or chinoiserie style, and advertisting technique meant to hint to the customer that their ceramic wares were of the highest quality. A political and satirical history of the years 1756 and 1757. [Plates publ. By George Edwards
and Matthew Darly]. (London : E. Morris, 1757 od. 1758) in which appear several caricatures published by Darly and Edwards, not only combined text and image in a combination similar to Blake's illuminated books, but a number of Blake's autograph signatures bearing the date 'May 29 1773' are inscribed in one copy of the edition. If Blake had seen Darly and Edwards' prints on political and satirical history, he may have also seen their chinoiserie book A new book of Chinese designs [ID D8960] and know something of the prospering transfer-printing business for ceramics. Blake's only certain connection with the English chinamen was the engraving he did for the Wedgwood factory catalogue. Blake did not design the plates himself but took them from John Flaxman's designs. Blake's plates were never published and sold in a conventional manner as a catalogue for customers but were used by Wedgwood and his salesmen as a pattern book.