Between Script and Ornament: Delftware Decorated with Pseudo-Chinese Characters, 1680–1720

Abstract

Abstract In the late seventeenth century, Dutch Delftware manufacturers developed refined ceramics with an entirely new decoration of pseudo-Chinese characters. The application of this extraordinary design did not replicate Chinese porcelain examples and today it is usually dismissed as made up and meaningless. However, illegible script—be it foreign or ‘pseudo’—in any form of art has, if not a specific semantic meaning, a certain agency to evoke particular spheres of authenticity and remoteness and therefore deserves further investigation. Moreover, closer examination of these decorations and their sources of inspiration—both Dutch and Chinese, ceramic and print—reveals that there is a wide spectrum of authenticity and intentionality that ranges between script that appears to have been invented and symbols that show resemblance to actual Chinese characters. This article focusses on the transfer and reinterpretation of script as a decorative design, and how the presence of characters negotiates the relationship between Delftware and Chinese porcelain. By comparing the pseudo-characters on Delftware to pseudo-scripts on other materials, the function of pseudo-script as a design and its relationship to materiality is explored. As characters were appropriated and applied in different contexts, their connotations swayed between Chineseness and foreignness, script and ornament.