Awesome question. An answer to your question lies at the crossroads of the rising middle class in 19th century Western society, Western fascination with the Orient, and noir detective novels. I'll refer you to Stacey Pierson's From Object to Concept: Global Consumption and the Transformation of Ming Porcelain, which is spot-on what you're looking for, and some of the works of Maxine Berg, who edited Goods from the East, 1600-1800 and has written extensively on trade between East Asia and western Europe.

From the 17th century onward, Chinese porcelain was exported in bulk to Western Europe, which saw it as a luxury commodity. The Dutch East India Company was a huge importer, and other European nations were eager to follow suit. Chinese porcelain was seen as a high-quality item when compared with contemporary European ceramics. Its delicacy, design and durability made porcelain a major consumer good in the Eurasian trade. Berg's "In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the 18th Century" (Past and Present, 2004) describes this trade and goes on to explain that when it came to Asian manufactured goods (including porcelain), "these goods were ... not the ancient or Persian luxuries of corruption and vice, the gold and rubies of the Indies. They were luxuries associated with a civilized way of life, appealing especially to the middling classes."

European manufacturers were no slouches, of course. When they saw the prices porcelain was fetching, they were eager to duplicate this "white gold." Starting in the 18th century, they managed to do just that. Porcelain moved from a luxury product to a bourgeois one. In the 19th century, mass production allowed it to become a lower-class consumer good as well. At the same time, the men and women who worked in the factories creating European ceramics (and a bewildering variety of other products) had the money for hobbies and interests beyond the means of the lower class.

One important thing to know about the middle class, and particularly the British middle class in the middle of the 19th century is the uncertainty of it all. Men and women alike were striving to join the upper classes, but they were uncertain whether their industrial employment was acceptable in polite society. I've written before about the rise of the beard in the 19th century West as a reaction to the crisis of masculinity among the urbanizing middle class.

This uncertainty about middle class life and constant striving toward respectability meant there was a surge in affectation: Middle-class households attempted to imitate aspects of upper-class society as best as they could afford. One of these affectations was the collecting of ceramics. The Chinese porcelain imported in the 17th century was extraordinarily high quality and highly collectible. In 1889, the New York Times quoted a Saturday Review piece that explained, "To a native collector an unquestionable piece of Sung Dynasty crackled porcelain is much what a Mazarin Bible is to a book collector among ourselves, and the best specimens of the products of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) are scarcely less valued. Vases within which are painted with lions rolling balls, or dragons with phoenixes, fetch prices which would astonish even the eager buyers at the salesrooms in King Street; and when genuine pieces of blue and white of this period are offered for sale they find a constantly rising market. It is recorded that about a hundred years ago a pair of cups of this last kind was valued by native collectors at £300."

As Pierson writes on page 62 of her book, "the notion of connoisseurship of such ceramics ... was not novel at this time at all, especially when connoisseurship as an activity was gaining in popularity and recognition through collector's clubs and related literature. ... Art dealers were also active in this arena with a number of shops in London featuring what were still often called 'oriental ceramics'. The art market was well developed and connoisseurship naturally accompanied this."

Chinese porcelain, not just the high-quality material manufactured at Sevres or by Wedgwood, had a special cachet in this time period. During the 19th century, there was a surprising affinity for Chinese products and Western products that imitated Chinese styles in the technique known as chinoiserie. Authenticity was prized just as it is today, and the combination of the period's Sinophilia with the Euro-American penchant for antiquarianism meant older Chinese porcelain was valued.

Ming porcelain itself was singled out for particular treatment starting in the 1870s. Charles Dickens' periodical, All the Year Round, mentions it specifically in its April 1875 issue, and the Art Journal references it as well that same year. Now, that's different from the Ming vase, which develops out of the general idea of Ming porcelain a few years later.

In 1885, The Decorator and Furnisher, in a series of essays about Boston artists' studios, discusses the way high-quality Japanese and Chinese porcelain is displayed: "You notice there is nothing in the room of a very white tone that is exposed to the light. A bust of Venus, in plaster, is in the dark corner on the piano top, side of it rests a brass tray and nearby is a Ming vase catching the light in silvery spots."

As Pierson points out, this description is unusual for the time because it doesn't identify the porcelain as a "Chinese vase" or "Old China" or "Blue China," but literally as a Ming vase. This is the period when we start to see people come to think of the Ming vase as a particularly high quality piece of art.

Three years later, the New York Times publishes its first mention of the Ming vase in a short story entitled (appropriately enough) The Ming Vase, which awards that vase special, magical qualities appropriate for the Orientalist beliefs of the period in the West.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, ceramics collecting guides take pains to point out the details of specific kinds of porcelain, including Ming. Moreover, there's evidence that even though Ming is considered a quality item, it's not beyond the means of particularly focused middle-class buyers or of upper-middle-class buyers (at least in the early stages). In 1886, there's an account of an 8-inch Ming vase being sold for £13 in London.

As Pierson shows, Ming porcelain starts to show up in fiction at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century. Edith Wharton's stories are a good example of this. In The Fruit of the Tree (published in 1907), there are shorthand references to "Ming," referencing Ming porcelain and thus demonstrating its position as a high-class object. Fascinatingly, Pierson says that there's actually a divide between fiction and reality at this point. Qing porcelain, according to auction records, was fetching higher prices than Ming.

Discussing a new show at the Metropolitan Museum in 1916, the Times wrote, "A very considerable public is acquainted with the polished beauties of Chinese porcelain, but as yet comparatively few have had opportunity to become even superficially familiar with the noble line of Chinese ware antecedent to the true porcelain, although possessing certain of its characteristics. ... When the public learns the game it ardently pursues it, and one may predict in the near future a public hot on the trail of Sung and Tang."

Instead, it was Ming porcelain that took the title and the public's interest, continuing to feature in popular fiction. In the 1920s, Pierson writes, there are repeated stories about unscrupulous art and antique dealers, mysteries involving murders or crimes targeting the Ming vase, and more. There's Quinney's Adventures in 1924, with a story involving a Ming vase fought over by two collectors. The winning collector lords his victory over the other, only to accidentally drop it and shatter it. For many of these stories, the Ming vase takes the role that the Maltese Falcon would hold in Dashell Hammett's eponymous work.

Now, what about the smashing of the Ming vase in comedy? Well, there's nothing particularly unique about the vase in that regard. It's simply a widely known object that's both fragile and valuable. The comedy comes from its accidental destruction. It might as well be a crystal football. As Pierson writes, "By 1968, it had become a widespread literary and colloquial stereotype for something rare, precious, priceless, elegant or sophisticated."