Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent unused condition. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. Gift message in front. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Thirty years ago Faber & Faber published Chinese Armorial Porcelain which has remained the most comprehensive book on this subject. At that time David Howard did not anticipate the need for a second volume; however continued research has resulted in this book which illustrates a further 1380 services not illustrated in Volume I (in addition to the 160 services which formed the addendum to that volume). While Chinese Armorial Porcelain Volume II relies heavily on the evidence of armorials and their ability to date sometimes to the exact year when a service was made it also throws extra light on the whole China Trade which was an integral part of the commercial success of 18th Century Britain. The details of cap- tains and supercargoes and the record of the sheer volume of trade which attended the growth of the largest company the world has ever known the Honourable East India Company provide a reliable and accurate backdrop to many other events in the 18th Century. This also enables researchers to use the evi- dence of heraldry to date many stylistic changes in porcelain in a way which because of the lack of Chinese records of the export trade would not otherwise be possible. The publication of the first volume in 1974 led to a reassess- ment of the scale of this specialist porcelain trade which was handled almost exclusively by private traders working within the framework of the East India Company. Because they were private exact details of what these merchants purchased are not recorded in the India Office Library and it is only possible to gauge their influence on trade and decorative etiquette in Europe by studying what they brought home some 12000 miles by sea at a time when travel was far less certain than it is today and the voyage could take five or six months. The chap- ters in the book explain not only the natural but also the politi- cal risks of trading in the 18th Century while the index of over 4000 services made for the British and American markets illus- trates the scale of this trade. (OS)