The long and colorful journey of enamel

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To further complicate the scene, the center of the bowl's interior base is taken up by the stylized symbol of taiji (yin-yang), a primary force of the universe in Chinese philosophy. If anything, the bowl is the result of a continual effort to adopt, acquire and assimilate, to incorporate something foreign into China's ever-expanding visual art vocabulary.

The most salient examples of this effort lie with a small collection of cloisonne and porcelain enamel vases Lu has put on view. Taking the elegant shapes of the ancient ritual bronzes from the Shang Dynasty (c.16th century-11th century BC), these late reincarnations traded their predecessors' time-honored patina for a vibrant palette exuding a more worldly charm. The ornate patterns, on the other hand, somehow evoke the eye-bewildering and precise surface designs the original vessels had borne.

Around the time several of these vases were made, in the late 17th to 18th century, what Lu calls "the second transformation" was taking place, with the introduction to China of new European enameling materials and techniques.

The new approach, fittingly called painted enamel, offered a much wider range of colors and shades while allowing one to blend seamlessly into another in a way that made possible the vivid depiction of ripening peaches on an 18th-century porcelain plate. The tip of the peach is drenched in a deep rouge, which then gradually dissipates and melts into a pool of light, translucent green as it progresses toward the stem end of the fruit, an effect unimaginable with the previous materials that produced solid, non-mixable colors.

Apart from porcelain, copper-alloy wares also provided canvases for such painterly expressions. The exhibition's accompanying catalogue describes two flower-patterned painted-enamel-on-copper-alloy dishes as having an appeal to "Western traders interested in natural history".

"While royal endorsement had once again proved crucial for the flourishing of this new trend, when it comes to export, the market rules," says Lu, who has deftly woven into the second episode of his color story a narrative strand whose far end extends well beyond the border of China's last feudal empire.

Several painted-enamel-on-copper-alloy exhibits, all from the late 18th and early 19th century, stand out to shed light on this market. One is a moth-shaped inkstand with many compartments that are believed to have held, among other things, ink for a quill pen and wax with which the letter writer could stamp-seal his message. Another is a kettle and its matching stand. Adopting a typical European silverware design, the kettle features blossoms and leaves that echo English country-style tea sets.

"The European market's infatuation with China had already been evidenced by the popularity of Chinoiserie," Lu says, referring to the interpretation and imitation of Chinese style by European artists and artisans through the late 17th century and 18th century, in everything from home deco to garden design. "These Chinese exports, meant to satisfy the same desire, were feeding into and being fed by that phenomenon."

That said, the same creations were aimed at China's domestic market as well, a brightly colored 18th-century porcelain vase that once lit up a Chinese home being graced on its side by two Western women holding a parasol. Its maker used opaque enamels to create shading, giving the images a three-dimensional effect that could also be found in Chinese paintings at the time, thanks in part to the Western missionary-artists who worked in the Qing court.

"The fascination is mutual," Lu says. "But China in the late 18th century was not China in the 14th century."

After banning their ships from the sea and barring foreign ones from coming for more than 400 years, a policy imposed by Ming emperors and reinforced during the Qing Dynasty, China's door was pounded open by British cannonballs during the First Opium War (1840-42). The defeat forced China to open five of its important ports to foreign trade.

These included Canton (Guangzhou in Guangdong), long the sole point of contact between China and Europe. The city, a center of enamel production and distribution for what is known in the West as Canton enamel, retained its position throughout the 19th century. But other enamel works were to leave the country.

In an exhibition of ancient Chinese cloisonne wares at Bard Graduate Center in New York in 2011, two of the exhibits were an art nouveau jardiniere — a decorative flower box or planter — made around 1870 by the Frenchman James Tissot, and another the artist's inspiration: a similar-looking Ming creation he acquired after it was taken when invading Anglo-French troops sacked the Old Summer Palace in Beijing 10 years earlier.

The current exhibition has two painted-enamel-on-copper-plate dishes intended for the Japanese market. Script on the bottom of the dishes reads: "made in the period of Man'en" — Man'en being a reign of the Japanese emperor Komei (1831-67) during whose rule Japan's first major contact with the United States was made, followed by the country's forced reopening to the West. Komei was succeeded by Emperor Meiji, who oversaw a series of rapid social changes that enabled Japan's transformation from an isolated feudal state to an industrialized power.

For some, the dishes serve as poignant reminders of a China whose luster, that once dazzled and captivated just as the painted enamel did, was about to fade.

Since then China has been transformed, while Chinese cloisonne has been reduced to the category of "crafts", indicating an activity inferior to art-making. What was once hailed for its sophistication is now often viewed as ostentatious and garish, if not banal.

"Tastes change," Lu says. "It's not conducive to our understanding of art history to look at a certain moment merely through the contemporary lens. To do that would be to miss the thrill people at the time must have felt, and the pride they took, at being able to create something that could rival the accomplishments of their ancestors, and hopefully make them proud."

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