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English Glass/Chinese Craft
66 Plays5 years ago
The technique of reverse-painting was introduced to China in the late 1600s by its European trading partners, who manufactured and shipped the plate glass necessary for its production. By the middle of the following century artists specializing in producing images for foreign markets were well-established at China’s primary international port, Guangzhou, or Canton, as well as the capital of Beijing. In this episode, Corning Museum of Glass curator Christopher Maxwell introduces a superlative example of this transnational art. The circa 1784–1785 painting depicts a bullish scene on the Zhujiang River, with junks and sampans crowding the wharf in front of the famous “hongs” (warehouses) flying the flags of Denmark, Sweden, Great Britain, and the Netherlands.
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Transcript
Introduction to Curious Objects Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:14
Speaker
Glass is one of the most durable and versatile materials in all of the decorative arts, and one of the world's greatest collections of glass objects is at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York.
00:00:27
Speaker
I've wanted to do an episode with the museum for a long time now, and I
00:00:32
Speaker
Now I have a great opportunity.
Exploring 'In Sparkling Company' Exhibition
00:00:34
Speaker
Their curator, Christopher Kitt Maxwell, has put together an exhibition and catalog called In Sparkling Company, Glass and the Costs of Social Life in Britain During the 1700s.
00:00:44
Speaker
The exhibition opens on May 22nd and will run through the beginning of next year.
00:00:50
Speaker
Now, this is a little bit of an unusual exhibition.
00:00:54
Speaker
As you'd expect for a show at a prestigious institution, it does feature impressive and beautiful objects.
00:01:00
Speaker
But I think it's fair to say that what Maxwell has really tried to do with this show is to look beyond the objects themselves and into the lives of the people who made and sold and bought and used them.
00:01:11
Speaker
And glass was such a ubiquitous material in the British economy that with a little research, it can reveal an awful lot about the desires and aspirations and values of what was growing to be the most powerful nation in the world.
00:01:28
Speaker
Kit, thanks so much for joining me.
00:01:30
Speaker
Thanks for having me, Ben.
00:01:30
Speaker
Pleased to be here.
The Versatility and Impact of Glass
00:01:32
Speaker
Now, I want to start with a very broad question.
00:01:35
Speaker
What does glass tell us that we might not learn from studying other kinds of decorative arts?
00:01:43
Speaker
Well, as you said, glass has been ubiquitous in human life for thousands of years.
00:01:49
Speaker
And I think in terms of studies of the decorative arts, it's a somewhat siloed field.
00:01:55
Speaker
It tends to be overlooked for the other arts of fire, ceramics and metalwork, for example.
00:02:00
Speaker
But the developments in glassmaking, I think, can tell us a huge amount about the preoccupations, the cultural preoccupations, the economic preoccupations
00:02:11
Speaker
of countries that were producing glass at any moment in time.
00:02:14
Speaker
And that is particularly true of Britain in the 18th century, which in fact was enjoying a uniquely glassy moment at that time.
00:02:26
Speaker
Tell me more about that.
Revolution of Lead Crystal Glass
00:02:28
Speaker
What made the 18th century Britain a glassy place?
00:02:31
Speaker
Well, I'm glad you asked.
00:02:33
Speaker
At the end of the 17th century, the British perfected a new formula for glass.
00:02:40
Speaker
It was a formula that comprised a large percentage, around 30%, in fact, of lead oxide.
00:02:46
Speaker
And this made the glass...
00:02:48
Speaker
clearer, brighter, more refractive, stronger and heavier than glass had ever been before.
00:02:54
Speaker
It was known as lead crystal.
00:02:56
Speaker
And rock crystal had always been the benchmark or had long been the benchmark for glass making in Europe.
00:03:02
Speaker
And until that point, the Venetians had kind of dominated the market with their luxury soda lime wares.
00:03:09
Speaker
And these were exported
00:03:11
Speaker
internationally, all throughout Europe and into Asia.
00:03:15
Speaker
But they were very, very fragile, which suited the Baroque and Renaissance and before that sensibilities very well.
00:03:21
Speaker
But as we get closer to the 18th century, more robust wares seemed to be harmonizing with design movements at the time.
00:03:30
Speaker
So this new English lead crystal was perfect for the moment and could be transported widely because it was robust and strong.
00:03:41
Speaker
Right.
00:03:41
Speaker
And so with this opening up glass wares to a broader swath of the population,
00:03:48
Speaker
It is.
00:03:48
Speaker
It's certainly in terms of geographically broad.
00:03:52
Speaker
So glass was exported to the British colonies, to North America, and right the way through the Caribbean.
00:04:00
Speaker
This innovative, expensive lead glass was already in the Caribbean, the British West Indies by the end of the 1600s.
00:04:08
Speaker
So it was certainly reaching broad audiences.
00:04:12
Speaker
So how much glass was being made?
00:04:14
Speaker
Can you give us a
Economic Impact of Glass Production in London
00:04:16
Speaker
sense of that?
00:04:16
Speaker
And who was making it?
00:04:18
Speaker
Well, glass production was initially, lit glass production was initially centered in London, in the southeast, but it grew exponentially within the first few decades as various restrictions on the use of essential ingredients were lifted.
00:04:35
Speaker
I don't have a sense of, I can't tell you,
00:04:38
Speaker
quantities of glass that were being produced, but it certainly grew throughout the 18th century to make up a significant percentage of the national economy.
00:04:48
Speaker
So several hundred thousands of pounds worth of income was generated through the glass industry.
00:04:56
Speaker
Now, you referred a moment ago to Venetian glass, and of course, there's Bohemian crystal as well.
00:05:03
Speaker
And these are, as you say, generally elite and expensive materials and elite and expensive objects.
Symbolism and Status of Lead Crystal
00:05:14
Speaker
As methods changed, as this new formula came to prominence, what kind of cultural status did glass have as a decorative arts material?
00:05:26
Speaker
Well, glass, although lead crystal was stronger, more robust, and it wasn't in itself necessarily prohibitively expensive, it did connote a certain lifestyle.
00:05:38
Speaker
And in order to preserve and use glass, you needed a certain means.
00:05:43
Speaker
You needed somewhere to store it safely.
00:05:45
Speaker
You needed to be able to clean it.
00:05:46
Speaker
You needed the food that it was designed to contain, the food and wines.
00:05:51
Speaker
And you needed to be able to support the social contexts for which it was designed.
00:05:56
Speaker
So although you could buy a set of wine glasses for just a few shillings, which was about the weekly salary of a glass worker, in fact, they required a much more significant income to support their use and care.
00:06:11
Speaker
So glass remained a fairly elite material throughout the 18th century.
00:06:18
Speaker
And I think one interesting comparison that I happened upon was Christmas reading Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol, which...
00:06:26
Speaker
I've read every year by tradition for years now, but I was particularly struck by Dickens' description of the Cratchits' Christmas lunch.
00:06:35
Speaker
So Bob Cratchit was a clerk working for Ebenezer Scrooge in the city in London.
00:06:40
Speaker
This was written in the 1840s.
00:06:42
Speaker
So he was literate and professional and supported a family in a small house in London.
00:06:48
Speaker
So Dickens describes Bob Cratchit's Christmas dinner and refers to the family display of glass, which comprised a custard cup without a handle and a tumbler.
00:07:01
Speaker
So even for a modest professional family, glassware was still considered prestigious.
00:07:09
Speaker
And you mentioned transportation and import, export.
Glass in Global Trade and Diplomacy
00:07:17
Speaker
This is an age of global trade.
00:07:20
Speaker
There's increasing fluidity of economic exchange, both within and outside of Europe.
00:07:29
Speaker
How does glass fit into this sort of picture of global trade in the 18th century?
00:07:35
Speaker
Well, tableware, as I mentioned, enjoyed significant markets in British colonies.
00:07:42
Speaker
So it was exported to North America, the West Indies, which were the most profitable of all the North American colonies, and also into India.
00:07:51
Speaker
But it was also transported and traded in other forms.
00:07:55
Speaker
Besides vessels, so plate glass and lenses as well within scientific instruments were also transported and used as diplomatic gifts, particularly in the Far East.
00:08:06
Speaker
Now, we've picked a curious object to focus in on today.
00:08:11
Speaker
But before we get to that particular object, can you give me just a brief overview of the scope of the exhibition?
Cultural and Economic Significance of Glass in 18th Century Britain
00:08:19
Speaker
What types of objects are you including and what overall story are you trying to tell with it?
00:08:26
Speaker
Sparkling Company is really a fairly broad and somewhat critical survey of glass and its meanings in Britain and the 18th century British world, let's call it.
00:08:39
Speaker
It is.
00:08:41
Speaker
showcases the innovations of glass, so lead glass productions we've just discussed, plate glass too, but it also includes glass as a witness to certain events in the 18th century, showing how fully it permeated British life and embodied the sense of British modernity.
00:09:00
Speaker
So we consider the ways in which the words polished and polite were used interchangeably.
00:09:06
Speaker
in terms of behaviour and etiquette and civility, ideals of civility, and how glass became something of a metaphor for the polite person, the modern individual.
00:09:18
Speaker
And we also consider the way in which it bore witness to trade and to empire.
00:09:23
Speaker
to the economies of slavery and the social life of the 18th century and how all these factors and facets intertwine around the material of glass.
00:09:37
Speaker
All right, excellent.
00:09:38
Speaker
So let's dive into our curious object then.
00:09:41
Speaker
And what we're focusing on today is actually it's a piece of art painted onto a piece
Global Trade Complexities in Canton
00:09:46
Speaker
of glass.
00:09:46
Speaker
And we'll get to what that means in a minute.
00:09:49
Speaker
But the painting was actually not done in Britain, but in Canton.
00:09:55
Speaker
So could you just start by describing the piece and tell us how big is it and what scene is depicted on it?
00:10:03
Speaker
Yes, so this is a plate of glass, as you say.
00:10:06
Speaker
It is set into a gilt wooden frame and it measures 38 centimetres in height by 54 centimetres in width.
00:10:17
Speaker
And it is reverse painted with a
00:10:21
Speaker
a watery scene.
00:10:22
Speaker
We're looking out across an expanse of water to a quayside in the middle ground.
00:10:27
Speaker
And the quayside is set out horizontally with a row of two-story buildings in a European style.
00:10:35
Speaker
And between us and the buildings in this expanse of water are a series of small ships.
00:10:41
Speaker
And what date can you ascribe to it?
00:10:43
Speaker
We can be fairly specific about the date and say it is 1784 or 1785.
00:10:51
Speaker
So tell me, just because there's an interesting story here, you know, there's not a date written on it.
00:10:59
Speaker
How are you able to get that specific date?
00:11:02
Speaker
Well, this scene represents the European or the foreign Hongs or warehouses at Canton, which is a southern trading port in China on the Pearl River.
00:11:14
Speaker
And after 1757, it was the only port in China through which European East India trading companies were allowed to do business.
00:11:24
Speaker
And these various companies, which were often national monopolies,
00:11:28
Speaker
rented buildings on the quayside, which is where they stored goods, did business, traded with the Chinese Merchant Guild and kept their accommodations.
00:11:38
Speaker
And as a result, they flew their national flags above these buildings that were raised and learned every day that the supercargo or the lead merchant was in residence.
00:11:48
Speaker
So by the sequence of the flags, we can identify the year in which, the year that this painting represents.
00:11:57
Speaker
I think that's totally fascinating.
00:12:00
Speaker
But tell me about life in Canton in the 1780s.
00:12:05
Speaker
I mean, what sort of level of development are we talking about, levels of economic activity?
00:12:14
Speaker
What was the relationship with the British?
00:12:18
Speaker
Well, Canton was selected by the Chinese as the principal and then the sole port of official trade with Europeans.
00:12:27
Speaker
The Chinese were very keen to restrict European access to the mainland and interaction with the Chinese populace.
00:12:35
Speaker
And so all the trading companies were required to moor their ships at Wampo, which is an island about 15 miles downriver from Canton.
00:12:45
Speaker
And then they would be transported upriver in Chinese boats to these hongs, where the most senior merchants would disembark along with their merchandise for sale.
00:12:56
Speaker
And this, well, the voyage to Canton from Britain could take up to six months.
00:13:02
Speaker
Usually ships would stop
00:13:04
Speaker
in India and Bombay, possibly on the way around.
00:13:09
Speaker
So they would arrive between August and September, having set out at the beginning of the year.
00:13:14
Speaker
And unloading and reloading the ships would take several months on top of that.
00:13:19
Speaker
So it's three or four months before the return voyage.
00:13:22
Speaker
So it was an incredibly...
00:13:24
Speaker
busy season because the European ships tended to arrive together.
00:13:28
Speaker
There could be up to 4,000 European mariners in Canton during any one season.
00:13:38
Speaker
Slowly, by the end of the 18th century, the season became a year-round event as new routes were discovered to Canton.
00:13:46
Speaker
But it was a very concentrated space, but Westerners were not allowed outside the walls of Canton.
00:13:52
Speaker
And Chinese merchants were selected.
00:13:54
Speaker
They were officially nominated to do business with East India trading companies.
00:14:00
Speaker
But a lot of outside merchants came in to trade informally in China and silks and so forth.
00:14:06
Speaker
But the principal trade tea was done very, very officially.
00:14:12
Speaker
I see.
00:14:13
Speaker
And as you look at the scene depicted on this piece of glass, what does it specifically tell you or reveal about what's happening in Canton between these British merchants and Chinese merchants and others?
00:14:30
Speaker
Well, it looks like a rather benign scene.
00:14:36
Speaker
We see the Chinese ships in the foreground.
00:14:40
Speaker
We see orderly Western-style buildings along the quayside.
00:14:44
Speaker
The various companies embellished and extended their buildings over the years, creating some classical arcades and buildings.
00:14:52
Speaker
and verandas and so on.
00:14:54
Speaker
And we see the Danish, the French, the Imperial, the Habsburg, the Austrian flag, the Swedish, the British and the Dutch flags flying from left to right.
00:15:06
Speaker
What it doesn't show is that the business of trade and what exactly is being traded in these warehouses or Hongs.
00:15:14
Speaker
And that, I think, is where the story gets particularly interesting.
00:15:18
Speaker
Well, tell me about that.
00:15:20
Speaker
What are we not seeing in this picture that would be particularly interesting to understand?
00:15:25
Speaker
Well, we're not seeing the increasingly nefarious trade between the Europeans and the Chinese in opium.
00:15:34
Speaker
And the British really led the way in this, supported later by the Americans who launched their own East India Trading Company in 1784.
00:15:44
Speaker
So in 1757, the British East India Company took control of Bengal and they really kind of extinguished the cotton industry there and replaced it with an opium plantation system.
00:15:56
Speaker
And this opium was exported in increasing quantities from India to China by the East India Company, where it was sold illicitly.
00:16:08
Speaker
And this generated an opium crisis in China, which compelled the Chinese to purchase unofficially, illegally, opium from the British buying it in silver, which the British then used to purchase tea.
00:16:24
Speaker
And this was really a way to circumvent the requirement of the Chinese or the preference of the Chinese for silver, for trading in silver.
00:16:33
Speaker
They had very comparatively little interest in imported opium.
00:16:36
Speaker
European manufactured goods and silver was their prime currency of trade.
00:16:43
Speaker
And the British, of course, didn't much care to part with their silver on these terms.
00:16:48
Speaker
So opium was introduced to the equation.
00:16:52
Speaker
But also this painting itself demonstrates that glass too was being exported.
00:16:58
Speaker
to China in increasing quantities.
00:17:02
Speaker
Plate glass wasn't produced in China until the 18th century, until the period of European interaction, when the skills of glass blowing and plate glass making were introduced.
00:17:19
Speaker
And the Chinese had a great interest in mirrors and in plate glass for windows.
00:17:25
Speaker
And I think by the early decades of the 19th century, some 100 tons of plate glass were being exported by the British.
00:17:39
Speaker
We'll be back with Kit Maxwell in just a moment.
00:17:42
Speaker
First, just a reminder that you can find images of this reverse glass painting at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast or on my Instagram at Objective Interest.
00:17:51
Speaker
If you have comments or suggestions for future episodes, please email me at curiousobjectspodcast at gmail.com.
00:17:57
Speaker
And if you'd like to support Curious Objects, I'd be really grateful if you take a minute right now to leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening.
00:18:04
Speaker
Thanks so much.
Production and Technique of Reverse Painted Glass
00:18:09
Speaker
This is a fascinating aspect of the story to me, because what we're talking about with this painting is, you know, it's not a piece that was made in one place.
00:18:19
Speaker
It's a piece that was made in two places.
00:18:23
Speaker
That is the glass manufactured in Britain, the painting applied in China, and then the piece actually made for a British audience.
00:18:33
Speaker
So it goes halfway around the world,
00:18:36
Speaker
gets painted and then gets sent halfway back around the world the other direction.
00:18:41
Speaker
And you've just described how long that journey was, you know, via India around the Cape of Good Hope.
00:18:52
Speaker
This is no casual endeavor.
00:18:54
Speaker
So, you know, really, we're talking about a great deal of effort and expense going into the production of this work.
00:19:03
Speaker
And yet, you've told me that these works were actually produced in significant quantities.
00:19:10
Speaker
Is that right?
00:19:11
Speaker
Yes, this is a subject of increasing scholarly attention at the moment, but these harbour scenes were popular and they exist in numerous versions reflecting the state of the occupancy of the Hongs at various points throughout the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries.
00:19:32
Speaker
So they were popular among mariners as souvenirs.
00:19:37
Speaker
one could assume.
00:19:38
Speaker
But they also appear on porcelain.
00:19:40
Speaker
These views also appear on porcelain and in fact, in one instance, on wallpaper too.
00:19:44
Speaker
But you're right, it's an incredible oceanic footprint.
00:19:49
Speaker
But glass had, this sort of glass had great advantages when it came to long distance transportation.
00:19:55
Speaker
It could be stored easily in the ship once.
00:20:00
Speaker
framed, it was even more secure, it didn't react to the damp of the humidity of either the climate in Canton, or in the hull of the ship.
00:20:11
Speaker
And the Chinese developed special backing special device that surrounded the frame on the inside of spacer, which allowed the wood of the frame to expand and contract without putting pressure onto the glass.
00:20:25
Speaker
So it's really quite ingenious.
00:20:26
Speaker
Yeah, very clever.
00:20:27
Speaker
And so the method here, what we've referred to as reverse painting, involves creating a picture by painting on one side of the glass and then looking at it from the other side of the glass.
00:20:40
Speaker
Now, where did that method originate and how did it proliferate in Canton?
00:20:48
Speaker
The technique of reverse painting on glass is really an ancient one.
00:20:52
Speaker
It can be dated back to the Roman Empire.
00:20:56
Speaker
And as you say, it involves, it really is painting in reverse in every sense.
00:21:01
Speaker
You apply the paint on the reverse side of the glass, the opposite side from which you view it.
00:21:07
Speaker
And you then by definition have to begin with the highlights of the painting and then work backwards into the background.
00:21:15
Speaker
And it really enjoyed popularity throughout Europe.
00:21:19
Speaker
But the Chinese had a very strong tradition of graphic arts, porcelain painting, ink painting, and so on, and developed a thriving export trade in porcelain painting and oil painting as well, which was an imported European technique, as well as this reverse painting on glass.
00:21:38
Speaker
And already by the 1740s, we...
00:21:41
Speaker
We have reports from Jesuit missionaries who were stationed at the Imperial Court in Beijing, describing how they were learning the techniques of glass painting from Chinese artists.
00:21:56
Speaker
And so you say by the mid to late 18th century, large quantities of plate glass were being imported to China.
00:22:04
Speaker
Now, some of this, as with the picture we're talking about now, was intended for Chinese artists to work on and then send back for British consumption.
00:22:17
Speaker
Was other glass meant for consumption in the Chinese domestic market?
00:22:21
Speaker
The evidence suggests increasingly that there was an emerging interest in reverse painted glass in China at this time.
00:22:29
Speaker
Certainly by the 19th century, it had become absorbed into Chinese folk traditional culture.
00:22:38
Speaker
But it seems that although the hub of the reverse painting was undertaken in Canton,
00:22:47
Speaker
or the hub of reverse painting was in the harbour town of Canton, there was certainly a demand for it at the imperial court.
00:22:54
Speaker
And we can assume therefore that higher levels of Chinese society at that time.
00:22:59
Speaker
So there's no signature on this picture, but what do we know about the sort of artists who might have made this painting?
00:23:11
Speaker
Where were they working?
00:23:12
Speaker
Was it in a shop?
00:23:14
Speaker
Would they have been an independent craftsman or someone working as part of a larger operation?
00:23:22
Speaker
What do we know about the actual production?
00:23:24
Speaker
Well, you're right.
00:23:25
Speaker
Very few Chinese glass painters are known.
00:23:29
Speaker
There are some, but this piece isn't attributed.
00:23:34
Speaker
And these painters would have had studios in Canton and would have been visited by the supercargos, probably on an individual private basis.
00:23:44
Speaker
Supercargos were the senior merchants aboard the vessels.
00:23:49
Speaker
They weren't sailors.
00:23:50
Speaker
They were East India Company officials who undertook the business of
00:23:55
Speaker
of the company in Canton.
00:23:58
Speaker
And they were, as part of their perks, they were given a certain allowance of private trade.
00:24:04
Speaker
So that enabled them to purchase things like porcelain or wallpaper or reverse painted pictures to bring back and sell commercially for their own profit.
00:24:15
Speaker
So these sorts of paintings would have been commissioned on a private basis.
00:24:20
Speaker
And so how many artists do you think were doing this kind of work?
00:24:27
Speaker
I mean, is this a more of a niche industry where a small handful of people would have developed the artistic technique to do this?
00:24:37
Speaker
Or was this more of a widespread trend?
00:24:41
Speaker
Very, I mean, comparatively little is known about the extent of reverse painting in Canton in terms of the number of workshops.
00:24:48
Speaker
It was certainly an established industry there in as much as the Imperial Court in Beijing recognised that this was the place to send to for artists and for examples of reverse painted glass.
00:25:03
Speaker
So it was...
00:25:05
Speaker
Certainly more than a handful and many of these artists would paint speculatively.
00:25:10
Speaker
So this, for example, was probably not painted to commission, but may have been one of several that the artists prepared before the beginning of the season in order to have ready for the
00:25:21
Speaker
for purchase when the Europeans arrived.
00:25:24
Speaker
And they certainly vary in scale and complexity and quality.
00:25:28
Speaker
And there are smaller versions which depict some generic fashionably dressed European women, which probably would have been popular souvenirs among the sailors.
00:25:42
Speaker
No Western women were allowed into Canton.
00:25:45
Speaker
So it wasn't exclusively
00:25:49
Speaker
male environment in terms of the European presence.
00:25:53
Speaker
I see.
00:25:55
Speaker
Well, and so the artist who painted this picture, you're speculating, may have had an idea of the sort of scene that a British trader would have found appealing.
00:26:09
Speaker
You know, listeners may be familiar with Chinese export porcelain.
00:26:14
Speaker
There was by this point in history, as we've been talking about, this great exchange of
00:26:21
Speaker
of goods and services between China and Great Britain.
00:26:27
Speaker
But tell me about this.
00:26:29
Speaker
I'm really trying to dig into the sort of artistic process.
00:26:37
Speaker
Were there pieces that might have been made on commission, on demand for British traders?
00:26:43
Speaker
Would those have been significantly more expensive?
00:26:46
Speaker
Were pieces like this one produced in multiples?
00:26:50
Speaker
I mean, would the same scene have been painted by the same artist a dozen different times and sold to a dozen different merchants?
00:26:59
Speaker
I mean, how sort of bespoke was the artistic process, if you will?
00:27:05
Speaker
Well, that really depended on your budget, one assumes.
00:27:08
Speaker
There are certainly portraits of identifiable East India Company officials, which were certainly commissioned, but therefore certainly bespoke.
00:27:20
Speaker
But then there are these more generic views,
00:27:23
Speaker
which were probably produced in advance.
00:27:26
Speaker
And there were certainly the portraits of the European women.
00:27:33
Speaker
These were stock that I imagine were kept rolling, produced throughout the year and always available.
00:27:41
Speaker
But the artist of this picture, of the harbour, would have had a great interest in selling it
00:27:51
Speaker
in that season because the flags may well change and it would be more difficult to sell the following year.
00:27:57
Speaker
So he would have had a particular market.
00:28:00
Speaker
I say he, we assume it was a male artist in Canton.
00:28:06
Speaker
But we assume that the artist would have had a market in mind and directed this to that.
00:28:13
Speaker
When you say you assume it was a male artist, how strong is that assumption?
00:28:21
Speaker
We don't have any reports, we don't have any evidence of female artists working in Canton on glass.
00:28:32
Speaker
And I think that would have been culturally egregious in 18th century China.
00:28:44
Speaker
Okay, let's talk about the British consumer now.
00:28:49
Speaker
You mentioned earlier that perhaps the sort of maritime scene would have appealed to sailors, which seems reasonable.
00:29:01
Speaker
But other sorts of scenes might have appealed to other sorts of people.
00:29:05
Speaker
Were these scenes largely being created for the benefit of the merchants and sailors who were in Canton?
00:29:13
Speaker
Or were they also being created for these people to bring back and sell to people in the British mainland who might have other interests?
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think a bit of both.
00:29:25
Speaker
There is certainly, as I say, these bespoke portraits that speak to a very close connection between the patron and the artist.
00:29:35
Speaker
But there were different types of scenes that were commissioned in Canton for Western market.
00:29:41
Speaker
You have birds and gardens, which are commonly applied to, in fact, to mirrors and scenes depicting
00:29:50
Speaker
courtly couples in gardens, or auspicious scenes, lakes and golden pheasants and scholars rocks and so on.
00:29:59
Speaker
And these would have probably been sold speculatively upon arrival in, a large portion of these would probably have been sold speculatively upon arrival in Britain, where there was a huge fascination with China, the notion of chinoiserie, which is a 19th century term,
00:30:18
Speaker
referred to as the Chinese taste in the 18th century, was not one of a mimicry, but it was one of revisionist approaches to xinoiseries suggest that it was one born of great admiration.
00:30:34
Speaker
China was an ancient culture and one that really fascinated the
00:30:38
Speaker
Europeans as a parallel to the classical antique origins of European civilization as they perceived it.
00:30:49
Speaker
So it was an admiration that was born out of fascination and a degree of respect as well.
00:30:59
Speaker
So how expensive do you think this particular picture might have been?
00:31:02
Speaker
And what sort of, you know, what class would have been the likely target for a piece like that?
00:31:12
Speaker
I think it would certainly have been the supra cargo class.
00:31:16
Speaker
So these would have been the most elite members of the East India Company officials traveling to Canton.
00:31:22
Speaker
And they would have been the ones who disembarked the ship at one per and went up river and lived and worked in the Hongs.
00:31:32
Speaker
So this put them really at the upper middling levels of mercantile society.
00:31:40
Speaker
And the values of these pictures are certainly variables, the quality of glass, obviously the oceanic footprint, the sorts of frames that they're put in.
00:31:52
Speaker
So mirrors, reverse painted mirrors sold in London at auction for 20, 30 pounds a pair.
00:32:00
Speaker
And the average image
00:32:03
Speaker
disposable income of a family at the threshold of the middling classes was £16 per annum.
00:32:10
Speaker
So this is disposable income after the bills and so on and so forth have been paid.
Decline and Rediscovery of Reverse Painted Glass
00:32:16
Speaker
So these sorts of pictures would have been really quite expensive and not within reach for many people.
00:32:26
Speaker
I mean, would they go all the way to the top of the socioeconomic ladder?
00:32:31
Speaker
Were pictures like this hung in the halls of the great English country houses?
00:32:37
Speaker
Or are we talking really just about the upper middle class?
00:32:40
Speaker
They certainly made their way into aristocratic and royal residences.
00:32:45
Speaker
We have records of reverse painted pictures in the collection of Frederick Prince of Wales in the mid 18th century.
00:32:54
Speaker
And George IV had a great interest in Chinese export art, although
00:33:01
Speaker
There are no surviving reverse painted pictures in the Royal Collection that can corroborate this, but we can certainly imagine that, well, we know that they're certainly present in the mid 18th century and probably remained there through into the 19th.
00:33:18
Speaker
So this picture, as you said, is dated to 1784 or 85.
00:33:26
Speaker
When did this art form decline?
00:33:28
Speaker
When did it sort of fall out of fashion or when do you stop seeing examples?
00:33:33
Speaker
Well, the Chinese reverse painted pictures continued to be produced in Canton really into the early 19th century.
00:33:40
Speaker
It was the opium wars and the changing relationship between Britain and China that really changed the system of patronage and the basis of trade there.
00:33:53
Speaker
In England, generally, reverse painted pictures and first painted mirrors and the reception of these Chinese objects began to decline really by the early 19th century.
00:34:08
Speaker
Painting on glass had moved into the domestic amateur realm, and it wasn't considered as high a form of art as it once had been.
00:34:19
Speaker
So there were various artistic, cultural, political, economic factors, I think, that contributed to the demise in popularity and really the demise in popularity of this art form.
00:34:36
Speaker
It's been overlooked really ever since and has been written off as folk art or somehow substandard.
00:34:47
Speaker
But the process of making it is so technically demanding and it relied on such good quality glass.
00:34:57
Speaker
To do a reverse painted picture like this on bad quality glass would have resulted in
00:35:03
Speaker
all sorts of warps and distortions and you would be able to see the air bubbles and so on.
00:35:08
Speaker
So it did require glass of a significant quality, which carried expense too.
00:35:15
Speaker
Well, and I hope listeners will take a look at the pictures online.
00:35:21
Speaker
It's quite an interesting experience to look at the picture.
00:35:26
Speaker
You know, listeners may have seen reverse painted glass
00:35:31
Speaker
In other contexts before, but if you haven't, it creates a special quality of color and contrast.
00:35:39
Speaker
And you mentioned to me that this color really translates even under dim light, such as candlelight.
00:35:49
Speaker
The great advantage to reverse painting on glass is that the surface can be cleaned.
00:35:54
Speaker
So in a world of candles, you can easily remove soot and any kind of wax or any kind of dirt from it without damaging the painting itself.
00:36:06
Speaker
And the colours retain, they don't fade with exposure to daylight.
00:36:12
Speaker
So these...
00:36:14
Speaker
paintings really retain their original brightness and the layer of glass adds a kind of depth to them, which is particularly appropriate with an acquiesce scene like this.
00:36:27
Speaker
It really enhances the visual experience.
00:36:30
Speaker
When the reverse painting is combined with mirrors as well, the viewer can see themselves as part of this Far Eastern, this Chinese landscape or experience.
00:36:41
Speaker
So they're quite interactive in many ways.
00:36:44
Speaker
You say that this form has been largely overlooked.
00:36:49
Speaker
Is there much of a private market, a trade in reverse painted glass from 18th century China?
00:36:58
Speaker
There certainly is.
00:36:59
Speaker
Chinese export arts generally are subject to considerable scholarly attention at the moment from both Asian scholars and European.
00:37:10
Speaker
Both recognise their uniqueness and their importance in the artistic canon.
00:37:16
Speaker
But reverse painting on glass in particular has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the last few years.
00:37:22
Speaker
There's a great new publication that came out last year by Thierry Audric,
00:37:26
Speaker
which was the culmination of his PhD on Chinese reverse painted pictures.
00:37:32
Speaker
And that was followed shortly after by a conference at the Vitru Musée in Romand, Switzerland.
00:37:42
Speaker
And the proceedings of that will be coming out, I think, in 2021, later this year, offering diverse perspectives on Chinese reverse-painted pictures, again, from both Asian and European and American scholars.
00:37:57
Speaker
Excellent.
00:37:58
Speaker
Something to look forward to.
00:37:59
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:38:01
Speaker
Have we missed anything significant about this particular picture?
00:38:06
Speaker
Ah, let me see.
00:38:09
Speaker
I think we've covered...
00:38:11
Speaker
Most of it.
00:38:12
Speaker
I mean, there's so much more to say about glass generally in China.
00:38:18
Speaker
One thing that you mentioned in our call some weeks ago that caught my attention was you talked about the ingredients for the lead glass process coming from India.
00:38:37
Speaker
Could you just tell me a little more about that?
00:38:38
Speaker
Because it really ties into this idea of a truly global trade.
00:38:44
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:38:44
Speaker
One of the key ingredients to lead glass manufacture is saltpeter, which is potassium nitrate.
00:38:52
Speaker
And it helps to burn off impurities, essentially, in the process of glassmaking.
00:38:58
Speaker
So it's essential for the clear, refractive qualities that we associate with British lead glass.
00:39:06
Speaker
And for a long time, the saltpeter trade was a monopoly of the king.
00:39:12
Speaker
This was relaxed in the late 17th century, which really enabled
00:39:19
Speaker
the burgeoning of the glass industry had access to this raw ingredient, which incidentally was the key ingredient to gunpowder, which was why it was such a protecting trade.
00:39:30
Speaker
But after 1757, the British took Bengal and the saltpitter mines in Bengal and
00:39:37
Speaker
And by the end of the 18th century, they controlled something like 75% of the global trade in saltpeter.
00:39:43
Speaker
And the East India Company kept huge saltpeter warehouses on the south bank of the Thames, right next to the glass making, the glass house, the London glass houses.
00:39:56
Speaker
So the two were very much hand in hand.
00:39:58
Speaker
The saltpeter was key both to British glass making, but also to British colonial expansion through saltpeter.
00:40:06
Speaker
through gunpowder as well.
00:40:07
Speaker
Saltpeter was used in other industries like soap making too, but it was certainly crucial for the glass making industry.
00:40:15
Speaker
And the access to these saltpeter mines in Bengal was crucial to its success.
00:40:22
Speaker
All right.
00:40:23
Speaker
Well, thank you very much.
00:40:24
Speaker
This has been a fascinating little peek into the exhibition.
00:40:28
Speaker
And I wish you the best of luck with that opening.
00:40:32
Speaker
Thank you very much.
00:40:33
Speaker
Thank you for having me.
00:40:33
Speaker
It's been fun.
00:40:36
Speaker
That's our show.
00:40:37
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
00:40:38
Speaker
We'll be back next episode with a look at a series of dolls made as part of the Works Progress Administration.
00:40:44
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
00:40:48
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:40:49
Speaker
And I'm Ben Miller.