Lidded Jar

A long and bloody civil war halted exports of Chinese porcelain in the mid-17th century. Peace was restored only several decades later, in the 1680s, by the first Kangxi emperor. Unprecedented amounts of blue-and-white and polychrome porcelain then began to be exported to Europe. The blue around the painted scenes on this lidded jar was applied in powder form: such ware is called ‘powder blue’ porcelain.