Baluster Jar with Cover

Beginning in the 17th century, the wealthy and powerful of Europe developed a mania for contemporary Chinese porcelains decorated in the blue-and-white manner. This typical late-Ming dynasty baluster jar and cover is from the famous Hatcher wreck, a European trading vessel that sank off the coast of Singapore around 1640 with thousands of examples of so-called Transitional wares—named for the period between the Ming and Qing dynasties—destined for the European market.

Dutch, English, French, and German potters imitated the expensive Chinese imports with cheaper wares of earthenware covered with a white tin-glaze decorated with blue under a clear lead glaze. What mattered was not the material composition of the European imitations but their physical appearance to their porcelain models. At first, the European potteries imitated Chinese shapes and decoration; European forms and ornament in the Baroque manner were also favored, as exemplified by the plate decorated with the rustic scene of a shepherd and his maiden love, patterned after the frontispiece to a book of designs by the great Rococo designer John François de Cuviliés, published in France in 1745.