i
So I finish Saxony and write Good Work.
France: Shows Promise. In France, the porcelain factory at Saint-Cloud continues to make contre-façon wares. They are still beautiful, still wrong. The grand dauphin with all his beautiful Chinese porcelains in the rooms at Versailles has died. The Fonthill vase, recorded in a drawing by the aristocratic antiquarian M. de Gaignières, has disappeared. There is a new king, Louis XV, nine years old.
Delft is simple. Nothing much has happened in the twenty years since Tschirnhaus visited. There is still no proper porcelain. Must Try Harder.
ii
And then I get to China 1719.
In China, Père d’Entrecolles looks after his parishioners. And his fellow Jesuits too, who are a quarrelsome lot. Rome isn’t helping. The archives stress how loved he is. He is still in Jiangxi Province, still travelling to Jingdezhen.
His first great letter from Jingdezhen has been printed in the Jesuit Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, edited by Father Du Halde, and is attracting attention.
His great friend, the Mandarin Lang Tingji, the maker of porcelains for the emperor, is now very grand indeed. He is not only the governor, but he is responsible for the 1,100 mile long Grand Canal that links Beijing to Hangzhou.
The French have done the Kangxi emperor proud. He loves the way that the enamels work on porcelain, he loves his harpsichord, his mathematics. They sent him a good Jesuit glass expert, a Bavarian, and there are now Imperial Glassworks. These are a great success. The emperor has sent this new glass to Peter the Great in Moscow, and forty-two pieces to the pope.
But it is enamels which have been the greatest success with the Kangxi emperor.
At this moment, Father Matteo Ripa writes that:
His Majesty having become fascinated by our European enamel and by the new method of enamel painting, tried by every possible means to introduce the latter to his Imperial Workshops, which he had set up for this purpose within the palace, with the result that with the colours used there to paint porcelain and with several large pieces of enamel which he had brought from Europe, it became possible to do something. In order also to have the European painters, he ordered me and Castiglione to paint in enamels.
Unwilling to be enamel painters, they have painted so badly that the emperor has excused them.
Others have learnt with dispatch. And these porcelains, with their soft pink and carmine colours, famille rose, are remarkable. This new palette brings new stories. The first examples to reach the West have been met with astonishment.
I read a description of the emperor. He is Kang-hi, that is, the Peaceable.
then in the forty-third Year of his Age: His Stature was proportionable; his Countenance comely; his Eyes sparkling, and larger than generally his Countrymen have them; his Nose somewhat hawked, and a little round at the End: He had some Marks of the Small-Pox, which yet did not lessen the Beauty of his Countenance.
I look hard at his portrait. All emperors look like Dorothy L. Sayers, legs planted firmly apart, hands on lap, solid, unknowable.
iii
And then I reach England 1719.
A German prince, George of Hanover, has been king of Great Britain for five years. He is possibly the only German prince uninterested in porcelain. He brings his servants, wisely imports his cook and a few bits of Meissen. There are no porcelain factories in England.
And a young boy is starting out on the long walk from Devon to London. It is 207 miles, a week’s solid trudge, from Kingsbridge church to No. 2 Plough Court Pharmacy, off Lombard Street. William Cookworthy is to be a working lodger. He cannot pay the fees for something so formal as an apprenticeship. He is a charity case, who is to have six years of training in chemistry.