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- until the fifth century. At that time, Byzantium
began to slowly develop the art, and by the
tenth and eleventh centuries their cloisonne
enamel reached a high stage of development.
It is not certain as to when cloisonne made
its first appearance in China. Scholars in the
West and in Japan are sharply divided as to
whether it was first made in China during the
Tang dynasty (618-907) or the Yuan dynasty
(1271-1368).^
If cloisonne did make its first appearance in
China during the Tang dynasty, it would have
been a fairly isolated and short-lived appear-
ance. It may have been brought to China via
the Silk Route, and practised by Middle or
West Asian craftsmen who lived, worked and
traded in great numbers at the Tang capital of
Xian or at Canton. In the coming decades
Chinese archaeologists will undoubtedly solve
the controversy when they excavate the huge
Tang imperial mausoleums near Xian, which
were reportedly filled with exotic treasures of
all kinds.
The sophisticated cloisonne technique dealt
with in this booklet was first made in China
during the latter part of the Mongol Yuan
period (1271-1368). The Chinese never claimed
the independent invention of the art of cloi-
sonne and ascribe its introduction to China
from the West to Mohammedan intermediaries
at the end of the Yuan period. Mongol victories
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries forced
vast migrations of Asian craftsmen to move to
Mongolia and later to North China where they
were patronized by the Mongol imperial court.
Some of these artisans who came to China, may
have been skilled in the art of cloisonne enamel-
ling. Unfortunately, no cloisonne examples from
the Yuan dynasty have, as of yet, been posi-
tively authenticated. The mentioning of cloi-
sonne in a Chinese text of 1386, only 20 years
after the fall of the Yuan dynasty, supports the
theory that the manufacture of cloisonne was
first introduced into China during the Yuan
period.
Judging from surviving cloisonne objects, we
can see that the art of cloisonne reached a very
high standard during the Ming dynasty (1368-
1644). The oldest surviving Ming pieces are
dateable to the reign of Emperor Xuande
(1426-1436). They include incense burners, cir-
cular boxes, dishes and jars.
During the reign of Emperor Jingtai (1450-
1456), the manufacture of cloisonne enamel
supposedly reached an unprecedented peak; for
the Chinese term for cloisonne is Jingtai Lan
(Jingtai blue wares). However, this has yet to
be substantiated. It is possible that cloisonne
became popular and more refined in the reign
of Jingtai due to the arrival of a large number
of Greek artisans, who were skilled in making
Byzantine cloisonne, and who sought refuge in
China when Constantinople fell to the Turks
in 1453. In any case, the Jingtai reign mark
came to be regarded as a mark of commenda-
tion, and in later centuries the characters of his
reign mark were affixed to many Ming cloi-
sonne pieces, falsely giving them added lustre.
Cloisonne manufacture during the Ming
reached high levels also during the reigns of
Jiajing (1522-1566) and Wanli (1573-1619).
The location where Ming cloisonne was manu-
factured is not known, but the most likely
centre would have been in the capital, Peking.
After the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644,
the manufacture of cloisonne was greatly en-
couraged by the new Qingdynasty (1644-1911),
especially during the reign of Emperor Kangxi
(1662-1722). By 1680, Kangxi had established
twenty-seven imperial factories, one of which
was devoted to the production of enamel wares,
on the grounds of the Imperial Palace in Peking.
This act of imperial recognition elevated cloi-
sonne to its greatest importance. Skilled artisans
gathered in the palace workshops and their
talents resulted in significant refinement in the
art of cloisonne by the eighteenth century. The
cloisonne made during the reign of Qianlong
(1736-1795) is especially distinguished for its
excellence and perfection.
Fine examples of cloisonne were still made in
the early nineteenth century, but after that the
quality began to decline, largely due to the end
of imperial patronage and financial support of
the craft.
Westerners first became familiar with Chinese
cloisonne after a large number of very fine
pieces reached the West following the sack of
the old Summer Palace near Peking in i860 by
British and French troops, and following the
expedition against the Boxer Rebellion of 1900.
The Europeans, thus, acquired a taste for cloi-
sonne, and as a result a big export trade de-
veloped between Europe and China in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Chinese cloisonne artists of the twentieth
century produce very intricate examples of cloi-
sonne with no pitting or split wires, but they do
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