Beginning about 1635, Dutch East India Company merchants placed orders for specific types of porcelain vessels from kilns in Jingdezhen, sometimes including drawings and wood models. Dutch merchants often requested familiar European shapes decorated with Chinese motifs. The form of these porcelain bottles is possibly based on European glass bottles that were conveniently stackable for transport in crates.
The figural scenes on each side are characteristic of narrative images painted on porcelain objects made for the domestic Chinese market during the reign of the Chongzhen emperor (1628−44). In one scene, a boy holds a touhu (vase of arrows) up to a scholar-official; this refers to a drinking game known in English as pitch-pot, in which players try to throw arrows into the neck of a tall, narrow vase. Other scenes include the education of Mengzi, an early Confucian scholar, and a herd boy riding a water buffalo, an animal that, when tamed, symbolizes the enlightened mind in Zen Buddhism. Although these scenes are not directly related, they all center on upright human behavior and good government, focal points of Confucian teachings that reflect a nostalgia for the more stable rule of China’s remote antiquity.
Such bottles circulated within Dutch East India Company networks. Company officials would commission sets of these rectangular bottles, usually containing liquor or scented oils, to give as diplomatic gifts when meeting with rulers and dignitaries across Asia and Africa. Consumers in Europe often referred generically to imported blue-and-white porcelain as “Chinese,” regardless of actual origin. In response to the growing demand for porcelain, Dutch ceramists began producing glazed earthenware, known as Delftware, which imitated Chinese motifs and sometimes intermingled them with European decorations. In this process, the motifs’ original meanings were effaced, and “Chineseness” in the European imaginary grew increasingly aestheticized and removed from cultural specificity.
Diva Zumaya, The World Made Wondrous (2023), 90
