CHINESE PORCELAIN IN WEST
English East India Company was formed. By the agency of this association the trade in Chinese porcelain may be said to have been inaugurated. Any specimens that had previously come westward are attributable to special and infrequent opportunities. The chief station of the East India Company was at Cambron in the Persian Gulf. Thither were brought keramic productions of Persia and China, and thence they were exported together to Europe. So little was then known about the resources of the Middle Kingdom and the great industry at Ching-tê-chên that the Chinese wares sent westward in the Company's ships were generally described as "Cambron ware." It was not until 1840 that an English factory, established at Canton, began to send porcelain direct to Europe, calling it "China ware." Exportation by the Portuguese from Macao is said to have gone on about the same period. Another source of supply was the Dutch Compagnie des Indes. From Deshima, at Nagasaki, in Japan, considerable quantities of Japanese porcelain were exported by the agents of this company, between 1698 and 1722. At the same time Chinese porcelain came to Deshima in Chinese junks, and was despatched westward together with the Japanese product. This source of Chinese supply must have been small and fitful, but to the mixture of the two porcelains and their simultaneous despatch to Europe may probably be attributed the origin of the remarkable confusion that has always existed among Western amateurs in respect of the keramic wares of China and Japan—confusion which reaches its acme in the writings of M. Jacquemart. The agents of the Compagnie des Indes seem to have been the first to conceive the idea of pro-
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