
DATE: Sunday, July 20, 1997                 TAG: 9707190044

SECTION: HOME                    PAGE: G1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ANN WRIGHT, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:  215 lines

THE CHINA CONNECTIONTHE CHRYSLER MUSEUM AND THE MOSES MYERS HOUSE SHOW NORFOLK'S HISTORY REFLECTED IN CHINESE TRADE PORCELAIN

THE SPICES AND teas are long gone, much of the silk has disintegrated, but porcelain remains to remind us of the romance of the China trade.

Italian explorer Marco Polo was so impressed with porcelain that he brought back a piece from his trek to China. He's credited with naming it porcellana, because its white, translucent hardness reminded him of a cowrie shell.

Western fascination with the Chinese decorative arts, especially porcelain, is a recurrent theme throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.

Chinese motifs became so much a part of our decorative vocabulary that the French coined the word ``chinoiserie'' to describe objects made in the Chinese style. China became the generic term for dinnerware.

The Chrysler Museum's latest exhibition examines the phenomenon of China trade porcelain and brings it home to Norfolk. Moses Myers, one of the most influential merchants in the young United States, chose Norfolk as a place to live and do business. His house, now operated as one of The Chrysler Museum's three historic houses, is a window on Norfolk 200 years ago.

The first-ever exhibition linking The Chrysler's collections and the historic house is described by Dr. William J. Hennessey, the Chrysler's new director, as an opportunity to tie the two together. ``It makes great sense to talk about export porcelain from an aesthetic view at the museum and then go to our houses to show how people really used it and how it pertains to the history of Norfolk,'' he says.

During The Chrysler's exhibition, the Myers House will have special tours at 3 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays relating to trade with China, called ``When My Ship Comes In.''

In the mid-1780s, Moses Myers decided to leave New York and move to Norfolk with his bride, Eliza. He possessed an intrepid entrepreneurial spirit and sensed that Norfolk was due to boom. After the Revolutionary War, Norfolk had no where to go but up. The city was burned in 1776 and skeletal chimneys still haunted the skyline when Myers arrived. But not even Lord Dunmore or ill-disciplined Virginia troops had been able to destroy its greatest asset - an incomparable harbor at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

Restrictive British mercantile policies had effectively shut the Colonies out of international trade, but the American Revolution freed U.S. shippers from those restraints.

In 1784, the Empress of China, an American vessel built for the lucrative China trade, set sail from New York and returned the following year to great excitement. Two Norfolk ships made successful voyages to China, but most Chinese goods imported to Virginia came indirectly by way of Europe or northern U.S. ports. Norfolk merchants had found they could make good money closer home.

With England distracted by events in Europe, Norfolk moved into the lucrative trade with British and French colonies in the Caribbean. Norfolk captains carried grain and naval stores to exchange for molasses, sugar, rum and coffee.

``Moses Myers was a well-connected merchant and shipowner always on the lookout for new business opportunities,'' according to Joe Mosier, a naval historian who has been cataloging Moses Myers' voluminous business records and correspondence. ``He sent wheat, corn, flour and rough clothing from Virginia and turpentine and tar from North Carolina to the Caribbean. Tobacco was a major cargo to Amsterdam and English ports, and his ships returned loaded with assorted goods, including gin and Chinese porcelain.''

By this time, ship design and navigation had so improved that the trip out and back from Europe could be accomplished in weeks in favorable weather.

Eliza Myers and women of similar position in all the coastal cities were able to keep abreast of the latest fashions. A Gilbert Stuart portrait of Eliza shows her in a chemise-style dress. ``It was all the rage in Paris, but Eliza was the first to wear it in Norfolk,'' according to Harriet Collins, manager of the Moses Myers house.

Eliza Myers' Federal-style brick townhouse reflected her style and taste. It was a comfortable home for the Myers and their nine children and a gracious place to entertain. They were hosts to many foreign visitors, because Moses Myers was the Dutch consul and the Danish vice-consul. He also was active in city government and many local causes, and the Myers' dining room accommodated numerous civic gatherings and celebratory dinners.

From the time the house was built in 1792 until 1930, it was occupied by five generations of the Myers family. An amazing 70 percent of the furnishings are original to the house, including an exceptional pair of China trade porcelain toddy bowls in the hallway.

``These bowls were valuable, but the Myers would not have been afraid to use them,'' Collins says. ``People in the 18th century loved beautiful things as long as they justified the space they occupied.''

Other Chinese imports include Eliza's red lacquer work table and ivory netting set, Moses' field desk of rosewood inlaid with brass and his leather sea chest lined in camphor wood.

The first Chinese trade porcelain in Virginia pre-dated the Myers house by 160 years, according to Janine Skerry, ceramics curator at Colonial Williamsburg.

``Shards have been found at the earliest Virginia sites, perhaps brought from England as a small elegance in a rough new world or bought from Dutch traders. Throughout the Colonial period, Chinese porcelain was highly prized even for its quality and durability.''

It takes some imagining to realize the extraordinary impact Chinese porcelain had in the early 17th century when most Europeans were eating and drinking from pewter or wooden plates and tankards. Earthenware pottery, made mainly into crocks for food storage, was crudely made, leaky and easily broken. Glass for the table was a rarity.

``China invented the process of making porcelain about 800 A.D. and jealously guarded the secret for centuries,'' explains Mark Clark, The Chrysler's decorative arts curator who organized the exhibition.

Two main ingredients are required for porcelain - china clay (kaolin) and china stone (petunse). Kaolin, named for the region in China where it was discovered, is a fine white clay that contains aluminum silicate from decayed feldspar. Petunse, a white fusible quartz, is mined and left to weather before it is crushed, washed and sieved. After it is combined with the kaolin and water to make a paste it is either shaped on a potter's wheel or molded. The objects are allowed to dry before being glazed and fired at a high temperature, between 1300 and 2000 degrees Celsius.

``The high temperature of the kiln - much higher than for any other ceramic - fuses the kaolin and china stone into a hard translucent material. The color is naturally white with a grayish or bluish cast,'' Clark says.

The Chinese also discovered that the blue color obtained from cobalt was not altered by the high firing temperature. Blue designs could be painted on the piece before the glaze was applied. With this technique, which is known as underglaze decoration, the design fuses with the clay and is protected by the hard, glassy glaze.

Colors that couldn't withstand such high temperatures were painted on afterward and fired again at a low temperature. By running a finger over a piece of porcelain, it's easy to tell if the painted design is under or over the glaze. Underglaze painting is smooth but overglaze decorations have a slight relief.

From the beginning, making Chinese porcelain was labor-intensive and was soon broken down into specialized tasks. Some workers refined the clay and china stone, others worked at the wheel or filled molds, and it took a crew to feed the kiln fires.

``The most revered of the craftsmen were the painters,'' says Robert W. Eagan Jr., a retired oil company executive and longtime collector of Chinese export in Goochland, Va. ``Occasionally they signed their work, but the potters never did.''

By law, the finest quality porcelain was reserved for the use of the Chinese emperor and his court. A European ambassador might be presented with a piece as a gift to take to his monarch, but that was about the only way imperial porcelain could leave the country legally.

Porcelain for the Chinese market varied in quality and price, but the most ordinary examples far exceeded anything the rest of the world had seen in the 17th century.

Europeans were so dazzled with the beauty, the whiteness and the durability of porcelain that unlocking its secrets ranked with alchemy as a scientific pursuit.

Dutch and English potters produced Delft in imitation of Chinese blue and white. They painted earthenware with a tin glaze to imitate the whiteness of porcelain and decorated it with blue and polychrome designs. The look was appealing but the earthenware was as susceptible to chipping as ever.

Soft-paste porcelain was developed at a Medici-owned factory in Florence in 1575. It imitated the translucence but could not match the intrinsic quality of true, or hard-paste, porcelain. The secret of hard-paste was discovered at the Meissen factory in Saxony in 1708. Within fifty years, there were competing porcelain centers across Europe.

The first items bought by Portuguese and Dutch were Ming dynasty pieces made for the domestic Chinese market. By the beginning of the 18th century and throughout the 19th, the Chinese tailored their production to Westerners. This is what is referred to as China trade or Chinese export porcelain.

The Chinese did not make cups with handles and saucers for their own use. That was a Western notion, according to John Austin, who retired as Colonial Williamsburg's glass and ceramics curator.

``There is nothing Chinese about an export cream jug,'' Austin explains. ``Sugars and creamers were strictly for the European market because the Chinese didn't use sugar or cream in their tea.''

When the Chinese began painting designs to appeal to the European and American markets, the results were often amusing. Given a drawing or print depicting a European scene, the artist copying it always unwittingly allowed a few anomalies. An English hunting scene might have riders in hunt attire but with Chinese faces. American scenes, such as Mount Vernon, are just enough off-base to be appealing. American eagles tend to look like doves on steroids or skinny chickens. The Chinese, never especially interested in the rules of perspective, rendered Western landscapes awkwardly.

This was also a time when European ceramic makers copied the Chinese who copied European designs, making it difficult for the untrained observer to distinguish Oriental ceramics from European ceramics.

``In the 18th century, special orders, also known as `chine de commande,' were quite the thing among the moneyed classes,'' Clark says. It took a minimum of two years to receive an order for specially decorated dinnerware. Coats of arms, initials and pictures of ships were popular.

The FitzHugh pattern, a monochromatic border design available in half a dozen colors, was quite expensive and highly regarded. The Myers house has dinnerware in FitzHugh green. ``Rose medallion, or rose famille as the French termed it, is another pattern created especially for export,'' Clark continues. ``The Chinese referred to it as yangcai which translates `foreign colors.' ''

The long-lasting popularity of China trade porcelain at the time of Moses Myers and later is still evident in many Norfolk and Portsmouth homes. A collection of blue Canton or rose medallion is often an indication of an old Hampton Roads family that dates back to the days when Norfolk began extending its ties to a suddenly larger world. MEMO: Combination tickets are available for the joint show. Cost for The

Chrysler Museum and one historic house is $5.50; or with two houses, $7 ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot

This porcelain plate from China...

A special-order pitcher from Liverpool depicts one of Moses Myers'

brigs...

Musician figurine, ca. 1690-1700

Graphic

IF YOU GO

[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]

Photos

THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM

Eliza Myers wears a stylish chemise in this Gilbert Stuart portrait.