‘China of the Most Fashionable Sort’: Chinese Export Porcelain in Colonial America

From its first introduction into Western homes, Chinese porcelain held mystique and value. Treasured for translucency and beautiful decoration, porcelain crossed the Atlantic with the first settlers at Jamestown who brought with them wine cups and other pieces of Chinese porcelain as symbols of the society they had left behind. These valuable commodities were signs of the wealth and status of those who owned them. Chinese porcelain continued to represent these qualities into the 18th century, even as it became more widely available to colonists. In fact, Chinese porcelain constitutes one of the largest groups of artifacts recovered from archaeological sites. This lecture will highlight how archaeological evidence brings complexity and nuance to the curatorial understanding of the Chinese porcelain that was present in the Colonial South and how a decorative arts perspective can broaden the stories archaeology can tell.