Porcelain introduction

Porcelain in time became the only Chinese import to rival tea in popularity. The wealthy collected it on a grand scale and even middle class people became so carried away that Daniel Defoe could complain of china "on every chimney-piece, to the tops of ceilings, tit it became a grievance." Such abundance half the world away from its place of manufacture was due to its use as ships‘ ballast. The China trade came to rest on two water-sensitive, high-value commodities: silk and tea. These had to be carried in the middle of the ship to prevent water damage, but to trim the ship and make her sail properly, about half the cargo‘s weight (not volume) was needed below the waterline in the bilges. Very roughly, a quarter of all tea imported had to be matched by ballast and from the ships‘ records available, it appears that about a quarter of all ballast was porcelain. Over the course of the 1700s England probably imported twenty-four thousand tons of porcelain while a roughly equal amount would have been imported into Europe and the American colonies.