Inspired by Janey Dalrymple’s collection of Chinese porcelain, Caroline Rees takes a look at the enduring appeal of blue and white
COLLECTING
When the Dutch East India Company ship Geldermalsen was salvaged nearly 40 years ago, its cargo attested to the huge demand for blue and white Chinese porcelain in 18th-century Europe. Known as the ‘Nanking Cargo’, 100,000 pieces of china from the vessel, which sank in the South China Sea in 1752, were auctioned at Christie’s Amsterdam in 1986.
Chinoiserie was all the rage in wealthy circles, and was championed by the Prince Regent. Blue and white had first appeared in China almost 1,000 years earlier, when the cobalt blue pigment was the one colour that remained true in high-temperature firing. By the mid 1600s, the Dutch were making their own version, Delftware, and this was copied in English factories. It was hand-painted on thick, soft-bodied pottery, so it often became chipped over the years.
‘Imported Chinese porcelain was much coveted by the middle classes, then in the 1780s our potteries invented the process of transfer printing,’ says Sue Norman, London dealer in blue and white transferware. This democratised the output of large dinner services and allowed for more detail
