.
PART 3 - DENOUEMENT
It is interesting to note that as soon as the eight Buddhist emblems are missing, to many it ceases to be classed as nyonyaware, even though it can be noticed that the painting styles are very similar. One questionnaire respondent even thought it was not a Chinese export piece. This plate was bought from the U.S. and it is strange that such trouble was taken to file off the whole border. Perhaps it was cheaper than restoring a large chunk which had been broken off? Still, it can't have been easy and shows in what high esteem this plate is held. The auction lot came with a tazza of a more generic Chinese export four-season flowers design, which the Chinese Peranakans were also quick to take to. Why confine yourself to just the flower of spring?
Surprisingly, I have seen two other fencai examples with this mark, but both in Chinese style. One was a censer featuring an iron-red dragon between tri-coloured keyfret mouth rim border and green wave footrim border. Could Wu Kai Di's father-in-law have been pure Chinese?
The other was a mug featuring a white-headed bird and flower design, possibly indicative of a wish for longevity and eternal spring. Could Wu Kai Di have been a sinkek who married into a Peranakan/Chinese household? (藏品鉴赏, 域鉴, 2019). Or, less likely, perhaps the mark indicates the maker was the son-in-law of the porcelain studio owner?
Fig. 9 - This rare yellow teapot was bought from a Hong Kong auction house and labelled simply as fencai ware. I was told a rare offering dish in one of the famous Singapore auctions of the 1990s was also found in a crockery shop in Hong Kong.
Fig. 10 - This coffee pot was from the Parsi community in Bombay. Unmarked, early 20th. century. Although it could have been a gift or bought as a souvenir, one cannot disregard the possibility that wares like this were imported directly from China, as Bombay's trade with China began in Canton in 1770. Parsi ladies had a great fondness for colourful Chinese silks and embroidery; their interiors were a blend of British and Chinese influences, a taste started by the early Parsi merchants.
The Parsis who fled Persia and settled in India to avoid religious persecution are considered a model minority, educated and elite. By the 19th. century, they had dominated the commercial sector in Bombay and were major landowners; they were also well-known for their philanthropy. Multi-faceted and eclectic, Anglophilic and admired by the British, they integrated into Indian society while maintaining their own ethnic identity. There is genetic evidence to suggest that the menfolk initially admixed with local women. Who is and who is not a Parsi is a matter of contention within their community. Does all this ring a bell?
An old apple green nyonya vase was likewise found in a Guangzhou flea market, a white nyonyaware phoenix plate in a Friendship Store. More nyonyaware pieces have been found in Mainland China now that some experts and dealers are aware of what this genre is. Export ware, did anyone say?
I was told that they had always been in white American hands and not Asian. Another was found in South America. The vases were obviously not imported from China pre-drilled; they were obviously exported to America because there was a demand for them there and not because some American Nyonya commissioned them. Note that vases do not usually sport the eight Buddhist emblems. All manner of Oriental exotica adapted as table lamps have been popular with the international market to this day, including mahjong tiles and all types of figures and gods.
“Made in China – Jiangxi Yue Min Xuan chu pin - Imported by Handicrafts Mart Inc. New York, N.Y.”. Major cities in Jiangxi province include its capital Nanchang, Jiujiang and Jingdezhen, all noted players in the porcelain trade. This is an utilitarian plate and to transform it into a lamp does not come immediately to mind. With the US McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, porcelain from China imported from the 1st. of March 1891 had to be marked “China” and later in 1919, “Made in China”. However, quite a few nyonyaware pieces with these marks also made their way to the Straits Settlements. They were not imported from the US. This to me suggests that a whole batch was made with the same marks and sent to whichever country wanted them. I am inclined to think maybe at that time, the Americans were importing nyonyaware more than the Straits Settlements.
Besides the earlier Portuguese, Dutch, British and others - starting with the French in 1699 - the Americans have been trading in China since 1784, when the American ship 'Empress of China' sailed into Guangzhou, thus opening the trade route between the two countries. Huge quantities of porcelain served as ballast on the return journeys. By 1803, most of the trading ships in China came from America, overtaking Britain and all other nations in The Old China Trade, albeit the American vessels were smaller than the European “East Indiamen” variety. This started a flood of Chinese wares into America, to the extent that even the relatively poor eventually had some Chinese items in their possession. (Richards as cited in Wikipedia.org, 1994). The Burlingame Treaty of 1868 saw the United States granting China the status of most favoured nation with regards to trade and this resulted in large-scale Chinese emigration to the United States until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Communist forces took over Jingdezhen on the 29th. of April 1949, and I surmise in the absence of evidence to the contrary that most of the records, design books, order books and so on were destroyed and only the persistence of memory of those who survived allowed old designs to be replicated from then on.
Circa 1980, found in Hong Kong. “Made in China 103”. The Chinese characters indicate it was made in Shantou, a predominantly Teochew city in Guangdong Province. Other examples not shown are marked “Made in China 118”, “Made in China 167”, “Made in China 209”, and yet another “Made in China 195” but without the phoenix. As far as I am able to ascertain, the numbers indicate various factories, although some have suggested that they are pattern numbers which vary from factory to factory. Shantou was opened as a Western trading port in 1860 after the 2nd. Opium War.
This unpretentious (euphemism for filthy and crude) obviously much newer offering dish was bought during my first visit to Jingdezhen in November 2007 with the South-East Asian Ceramic Society, West Malaysia Chapter. The symbols are not the usual Buddhist ones, but of course Taoist emblems do just as well with the Chinese Peranakans. Faded Xu Shun Chang mark. It has been claimed that the Mainland Chinese do not like colourful nyonyaware and that if any pieces are found there, it was probably because overseas demand dried up and stocks remained unsold. I have some difficulty in believing this as the colours are no more colourful than the highly-prized and densely-painted porcelains of the great Qianlong and Yongzheng reigns, besides which I seriously doubt there is homogeneity in humankind. My paternal great grandmother – a typically dark-skinned Malaccan Nyonya – in fact decided of her own free will to reside in China to look after her husband's large estate there, while her husband remained in Kuala Lumpur with his two China wives. She was treated as lady of the manor: A Nyonya in Longbeiling, the only Hakka village in the area.
Having said that, I must mention Han Wai Toon's observation in his 1960 book “Ancient Chinese Export Ware Found in Nanyang”, that it is a pity to have the white ground on a finely painted bowl covered up by patchy green glaze, when talking about a stash of antique nyonyaware which he found from a karanguni (rag and bone) man. The first book in which nyonyaware is featured, such porcelains were simply referred to as export ware to the Straits Settlements and the Nanyang (Southern Seas) in general, to the rich Chinese there. There is no mention of mixed marriages.
Back in November 2007, antique dealers in Jingdezhen referred to the classic phoenix nyonyaware design simply as the phoenix and peony pattern, and some experts we consulted did not have much idea as to their intended market. They were more inclined to research and document such genres as Tang and Song wares, blue and white and, of course, the imperial porcelain patterns.
On my second visit to Jingdezhen in 2009 with the South-East Asian Ceramic Society, West Malaysia Chapter, a large workshop we visited had a small section with artists copying nyonyaware straight from a book. I visited Shanghai after that, where I found an authentic old Shanghai ware cup in situ. Can you spot it?
Yay, butterflies, which of course have always been liked by the Chinese Peranakans. At the end of 2019, it came full circle with commissioned nyonyaware being marked with the Cheah surname, and featuring Taoist emblems, by an entrepreneurial Singaporean family, ordered from Jingdezhen via the internet. But yet to this day, there are still some Mainland Chinese sellers on auction sites who refer to the classic nyonyaware design simply as “phoenix flower” or “phoenix peony”.
EPILOGUE
Customer base for Chinese export ware has always been wide to begin with. For example, popular designs for the Persian and Turkish markets circa 1790 to 1840 were found as far afield as India, America and Brazil. As far as nyonyaware is concerned, I even have an antique pink powder box which had been used in Japan as a koro (incense burner) and came in a wooden box. It is foolhardy to automatically assign anything colourful to the scanty inhabitants of a land-sparse Nanyang; there are many other colourful cultures besides the minority Peranakan.
With the Great Depression of the 1930s followed by World War II, many Chinese Peranakans lost their standing and their wealth. It was not until around the time of the first annual Baba Nyonya Convention which was held in Penang in 1988 – coupled with books like “Nonya ware and Kitchen Ch'ing” (The Southeast Asia Ceramic Society West Malaysia Chapter, 1981) and “Straits Chinese Porcelain – A Collector's Guide” (Ho Wing Meng, 1983) - that an awakening of the traditional Peranakan identity brought about a resurgence of contemporary nyonyawares being exported to Malaysia, Singapore and anywhere else which wanted them. They bore the old nyonyaware shop marks, with Xu Shun Chang being perhaps the most popular. To quote a major British collector to whom I am indebted: “Between 1925 and 1975, as far as I can recall, nyonyawares interested only a relatively few collectors and therefore there was no viable reason to produce copies for a non-existent market. When I started collecting in the mid-60s, Peranakan families were virtually giving it away to itinerant karangunimen and junk-shop owners as the younger generation couldn't stand the stuff”. This is also confirmed by Han Wai Toon in his book (Han, 1960, p.41) and antique dealers. Many Peranakans had embraced Catholicism, as a result of which traditional crockery was replaced with modern European and Japanese alternatives such as Royal Crown Derby and Noritake. I wonder if the Peranakans then – descendants of the Queen's Chinese – were aware that it was actually Queen Victoria who gave Crown Derby her seal of approval by appointing them 'Manufacturers of porcelain to Her Majesty' and granting them the title "The Royal Crown Derby Porcelain Company" way back in 1890. The apple didn't fall far from the tree.
For about half a century, it seems purveyors of nyonyaware had to look more to other markets. “Lain ulu lain parang, lain dulu lain sekarang”. (Gwee, 2006, p.119). (Note 7).
The customer base for nyonyaware has certainly evolved along the way, as the wealth, social standing and mobility of different cultures across the world waxed and waned, as tastes and styles ebbed, flowed and intermingled.
Returning to the Herend Victoria pattern, I can now tidy up loose ends with the following approved statement by The Royal Collection Trust: “No nineteenth-century Herend porcelain is formally recorded by the Royal Archives as having been presented to Queen Victoria, nor purchased by Her Majesty, nor does any survive in the Royal Collection today”. (Goodsir and Lawson, 2020).
- THE END -
Note 7: Different jungles different machetes, different before different now.
Acknowledgments:
I am very thankful to the following who have helped tremendously in the preparation of this article: Chan Sel Ching, Michael Cheah, Colin and Linda Chee, Ronald Chong, Cliff Gan, Victoria Hau Yong-Ng, Ian Johnson, Andrew Lau, Karen Lawson and Sally Goodsir of The Royal Collection Trust, Alvan Lee, Edmond Lee of Ermes Design for the artwork, Peter Lee, Dr. Lee Su Kim, Dr. David Neo, Ng Ah Choon of Guan Antique Singapore, Christopher Ng, Sanya Nuamngoen of Sanya Art & Antiques Bangkok, Freek Pals of ShangriLa-Antique Amsterdam, Robyn Rae, Eric Tay, Johnni Wong and Lily Yew.
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