The Designs of Cornelis Pronk and Jan Luyken
The production of Chinese porcelain dates back to the Tang Dynasty (618–907), and its history as an export product is almost as extensive.
Beginning in the Middle Ages and amplifying through Silk Road trade, the rise of the Dutch East India Company, and 18th- and 19th-century intercontinental trade routes, Chinese porcelain became a treasured, valued commodity among Western audiences.
Perhaps no Western audiences were quite as enthusiastic about Chinese export porcelain as Gilded Age Americans, who increasingly looked to the East for luxury objects and home furnishings, from Persian rugs to Chinese dinnerware sets. This lushly patterned porcelain meshed well with the eclecticism of the day, which prized collections that came from a wide variety of cultural and aesthetic sources as a way of signaling worldliness.
This collecting enthusiasm was so pronounced that it began to shape the market itself: as early as the 16th century, Chinese makers and distributors began to cater their work specifically to European—and later, American—audiences. America first entered into direct trade with China in 1784, only a few decades after the creation of a group of three Chinese export porcelain plates featured in Freeman’s February 2022 Gilded Age auction.
Fashioned after designs by Cornelis Pronk, the three plates include two in Pronk’s “Dames au Parasol” pattern and one in his “Arbor” pattern. A Dutch draftsman and artist, Pronk was commissioned directly by the Dutch East India Company to design patterns for Chinese export works, specifically for European audiences.
With Chinese subjects, floral and botanical motifs, and bright blue, orange, and green hues, Pronk’s porcelain designs typified the chinoiserie of the day, and offered a Western interpretation of life in the East (the two birds featured in his “Dames au Parasol” pattern, for instance, are a ruff and a spoonbill—both native to Holland). These designs herald from a historical moment in which Chinese-European trade was fairly new, but the work retains strong market demand today; Chinese export works with Pronk designs have consistently outperformed estimates at Freeman’s.
Cornelis Pronk wasn’t the only Dutch artist whose designs graced 18th-century Chinese export porcelain; the 2022 sale also featured three Chinese export porcelain grisaille and gilt decorated plates by Jan Luyken, a Dutch poet and engraver known for his dramatic etchings of religious scenes. The set stands apart from the Pronk designs in both subject and color schemes: rendered en grisaille, the plates depict Christian Resurrection scenes after Luyken’s work. A testament to the strong trade ties and cultural crossovers between China and Europe by the mid-18th century, the set features a fine marriage of Chinese artistry and manufacturing and European cultural and religious tradition.
Though Chinese export porcelain has a rich and storied history—hearkening back to a time of the beginning of East-West trade, as well as the sumptuous Orientalism of America’s Gilded Age—there may be no better time than the present to collect such works. Citing a massive uptick from 2020 to 2021 in market demand for fine china, Hilary Reid wrote in the New York Times that...
“Fans of using fine china, which is usually made with porcelain, say it makes everyday meals far more celebratory than the minimalist earthenware popular in the past few years ever could.”