‘Chinamania’ in Britain: The Blue-and-White Revival of 1860–1900

From the 1860’s, Chinese blue-and-white porcelain enjoyed a renaissance in Britain. Promoted by the artists James McNeil Whistler (1834–1903) and Dante Gabrielle Rosetti (1828–1882), the craze for ‘old blue’ swiftly spread amongst artistic circles, becoming a key inspiration for the emerging Aesthetic Movement and subsequent Arts and Crafts style. Social and commercial networks connected individual and groups of artists and collectors to dealers and agents who fuelled the fashion, evident in archival sources and the popular press where the trend was ridiculed for its excessive extravagance and potential dangers. This paper seeks to examine how perceptions of authenticity and aesthetics sparked a revival of interest in Chinese blue-and-white porcelain – or ‘Chinamania’ – which took hold in England between 1860 and 1900. Why did artists and designers instrumental in the Aesthetic Movement turn to blue-and-white porcelain to inspire their work and how did their motivations and interests differ to those who preceded them? Taking the ‘ginger jar’ and ‘Hawthorne pattern’ as a starting point, with its distinctive ‘ice-crackle and prunus’ decoration, this paper will question why this popular Chinese design was so desirable to Victorian painters. Beyond the inner circle of successful artists and tastemakers, the fashion filtered down to the growing middle classes, through interior design and decor, theatrical performance and the popular press. The department store Liberty’s offered a range of ‘oriental’ objects to furnish the artistic home, including an array of blue-and-white Chinese ceramics. Display was an important aspect of the interior and advice was readily available through a growing body of style manuals which today allow us to observe the prominence of blue-and-white ceramics within the British interior. As the range of the Chinese art objects available in Britain increased in number and diversified in scope, incorporating ceramics of earlier date and in some cases imperial provenance, this paper will consider the role of classification and nomenclature in reframing concepts of China and Chinese art in Britain, and the enduring appeal of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain in the final quarter of the 19th century.