The short answer is that Chinese export ceramics were usually made from the same clay and of the same quality as local ceramics. However, their design and/or artwork was created with a foreign market in mind, and were thus not sold domestically.

One of the best examples to illustrate this is the story of blue and white ceramics.

Though the layman today strongly associates blue and white with imperial China, during the early Tang, it didn’t exist. Chinese blue and white ware was first created purely for the export market!

During the Tang period (618 - 907AD), trade with the Middle East expanded, first with the Umayyad (661 - 750AD) and then with the Abbasid dynasty (750 - 1258AD). Trade was conducted via sea, and one advantage of shipping rather than overland caravan is that it is far easier for a ship to carry large quantities of ceramics with less risk of breakage.

Thus, in Central Asia, which conducted its trade with China via overland routes, we hardly find any ceramics prior to the 14th century.

In the Middle East, by contrast, we find the remains of many Chinese ceramic exports. Some of these were cheap, mass produced bowls that were probably for daily use. Others were finer, higher end pieces, including green celadon ware (apparently prized in China for its resemblance to jade) and white ceramics (apparently considered the best ceramics for drinking tea from). None of these were ‘true porcelain’, which hadn’t been developed yet, and none of these were made specifically for export. Numerous examples of all 3 have also been discovered across China.

The arrival of Chinese ceramics in the Middle East and the high prices for which they were sold, especially the green and white wares, spurred local kilns to try and replicate Chinese ceramics. However, replicating white wares was at first glance impossible. The clays available in the area were different from those in China, and tended to be light yellow. Local kilns also could not achieve temperatures as high as the Chinese kilns.

However, kilns around Basra and Siraf were later able to achieve a white exterior by using a tin oxide glaze. Tin oxide was imported from Southeast Asia, and when added to a glaze in the right quantities, created a white, opaque glaze that covered the yellow clay.

Having figured out a way to create white ceramics, local kilns added blue artwork to them as decoration. They did this by applying a cobalt paint directly onto the wet glaze.

Word of this got back to the Chinese, presumably through networks of merchants eager to ship new, profitable products. The Chinese thus began to also produce blue and white ceramics.

However, blue and white ceramics were not popular with the domestic market, and hardly any remains of Tang blue and white ware have been found in China. Blue and white ware was produced purely for export, a prime example of ‘Chinese export ceramics’, leading to relatively low production numbers. Indeed, almost all Tang blue and white ware found is in fragments. Only 3 intact pieces of Tang blue and white have ever been found. These 3 dishes were part of the cargo of the Belitung shipwreck, found off the coast of Java in 1998, and are now on permanent display in the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore.

Some interesting points about these ceramics:

• They were determined to have originated from Baihe in Gongyi county (modern day Henan).
• They were on board a ship going from China to the Middle East, showing conclusively that they were being exported.
• The blue artwork on the dishes is of a stylised palm frond design, very similar to the locally produced designs in the Middle East. This shows that the Chinese were manufacturing these dishes with Middle Eastern tastes in mind.
• The blue cobalt paint had been applied directly to the wet glaze in the style of the Middle Eastern kilns, showing that technology and techniques from the MIddle East had travelled to China.
• No other blue and white was discovered on the shipwreck, thus these 3 dishes could have been a test sample to be evaluated before production in larger numbers started.

This does beg the question, why would anyone buy imported Chinese blue and white instead of the local stuff, which was presumably cheaper and more readily available? Our guess is that at that time, Made in China actually stood for luxury and fine quality.

In the early 10th century, the imam Al-Sirafi wrote

The Chinese are the most skilful of God’s entire creation in designing, crafting and every type of work. They are not surpassed in this by any other nation. A Chinese man can craft with his hand what others would seem incapable of.

And, regarding ceramics specifically, the writer Al Jahiz wrote

Were the ceramics of China not on the face of the earth, you would not have known ceramics. What you appear to have created is below the perfection of Chinese.

On board the ship as well were green wares that had motifs inspired by Middle Eastern pottery of the time. These also look likely to have been ‘for export only’.

Export ceramics continued to be created for hundreds of years thereafter. Chinese ceramic technology continued to advance, eventually creating ‘true porcelain’. During the Yuan dynasty, blue and white also grew in popularity in China, and by the Ming dynasty the blue and white ‘true porcelain’ that we associate with China had become very common domestically.

Special designs continued to be produced for export. Between 1517 and 1521, Portuguese traders exported the first blue and white porcelain meant specifically for the European market. Among porcelain pieces from this period are ewers bearing the coats of arms of prominent Portuguese operating in Asia, large dishes with Christian emblems, and a bowl with Renaissance grotesque masks. These were quite clearly unsuitable for China’s domestic market and were created purely for export, thus providing another fine example of ‘Chinese export ceramics’.

GEORGE, A. (2015). Direct Sea Trade Between Early Islamic Iraq and Tang China: from the Exchange of Goods to the Transmission of Ideas. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 25(4), 579–624. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24755980

Le Corbeiller, C., & Frelinghuysen, A. C. (2003). Chinese Export Porcelain. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 60(3), 1–60. https://doi.org/10.2307/3269266