Made in China: Export Porcelain from the Leo and Doris Hodroff Collection on View at Winterthur

Although the exhibition officially covers a 300-year span, 1550-1850, the vast majority of the pieces on display date to the late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. During that period, Chinese Export porcelain was the ne plus ultra of dinnerware, and its perfection and translucence impelled ceramic innovation in the West. Potteries in Germany, France and England aspired and copied its attributes, and begged, borrowed or stole new formulas that promised to achieve them. Export porcelain could be more valuable than silver plate on the table, a fact not surprising in light of where it came from and the long journey it made as part of the China Trade.

The exhibition and its catalog open with a discussion of "What is Porcelain," that magical commodity that everyone sought to emulate. The main ingredients - fine white China clay and China stone, a feldspathic rock - both derive from the breakdown of granite but possess different qualities. When combined, the two form a material that can be easily shaped and continues to hold its shape when fired at high temperature (up to 2,462 degrees Fahrenheit). Because of the silica in the mixture, the resulting product fuses with the heat, making it hard, translucent and producing a ringing tone when struck.

A charming series of watercolor paintings in this section illustrates the process as performed by the Chinese, from gathering the clay to packing the final product. Mr Fuchs says, "The Chinese produced sets of watercolors showing porcelain production, tea cultivation, silk production and rice cultivation. They were meant for export, because, presumably, Europeans were curious how these things were made." The next portion of the exhibition makes it clear why traders never had the opportunity to view these activities in person on their journeys to the East.

Imports from the Far East first arrived in Europe after a long overland journey on the "Silk Road." The quest for a direct route to the spices and luxury goods of Asia impelled the flurry of global exploration in the Fifteenth Century, which led to Columbus running into the Americas. The Portuguese, making the long journey around Africa, were first to arrive in China in 1517, and later established a trading base at Macao. By the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, both the Dutch and the English had established East India companies to facilitate the trade of their respective countries with China.

China, for its part, strictly limited contact between its people and the barbarians from abroad. Early on, Western ships were allowed to dock at Macao, Amoy (modern-day Xiamen) or Canton, but after 1729, trade was restricted to Canton, where foreign merchants were confined to the "hongs" along the Pearl River, where they lived, worked and stored products for export. The scene is documented on a punch bowl, circa 1780-1790, in the exhibition, whose decoration depicts the hongs identified by the national flags of the trading companies. Now highly prized by collectors, these bowls were popular souvenirs to take back home after a "tour of duty" in Canton.

With an even longer journey to make, the United States did not have a single East India company with a monopoly on voyages to the Far East. Mr Fuchs explains, "There were ways to get around it, but in general, if things from China made it to England, they came via the East India Company. The American China Trade operated very differently. Americans sent independent ships, usually financed by a consortium of merchants, because very few people could afford to do that on their own. There does seem to have been an American hong, because on some punchbowls or paintings, you see an American flag."

The central section of "Made in China" focuses on the multitude of export porcelain forms for dining, drinking and decorating. What dishes were ordered gradually changed in response to changes in diet and eating customs. By the Seventeenth Century, upper class diners no longer wanted to share food or plates in the "family style" manner of the Middle Ages. Matching services developed with specific forms for holding different foods and individual plates for each diner.

Tea and coffee pots and cups were only necessary when drinking those beverages became popular in Europe. One of the earliest exhibits, a blue and white handled pot made 1575-1625, may have been used for wine or tea, first recorded in Europe in 1610 and regularly imported by midcentury. The silver repairs to the handle and spout demonstrate the value of the porcelain, still rare in the Western world at that time.

The Chinese became famous for their made-to-order patterns, often incorporating a family's coat of arms. Mr Fuchs comments, "One of my favorite objects in the whole exhibit is an armorial porcelain plate that was made in the 1720s for an English family. What is really extraordinary is that the original order survives. We actually have a small sheet of vellum that has the coat of arms painted on one side and on the back is written in English, 'I want two tea sets with my coat of arms.' Below the words in English is the text translated into Chinese. So it's this wonderful example of how European merchants communicated with the Chinese merchants and eventually the Chinese potters themselves. There once must have been documents like this for every order, but few of them have survived. The original is still in the family in England, but they have graciously allowed us to make photographic reproductions of it."

Not all export porcelain was utilitarian. In Western eyes, the exotic painted decoration executed in China was as admired as the porcelain material itself. The exhibition includes two five-piece garnitures with blue and white designs. One was retrieved from the wreck of a Chinese junk, probably bound for the Dutch trading center of Batavia (modern-day Jakarta, Indonesia). Goods purchased from enterprising Chinese traders at such ports served as a less expensive supplement to the wares picked up by European ships in China.

Rarest of all export porcelain decorative wares were figurines. The examples in the Hodroff collection include purely Chinese personages, such as a blanc-de-chine Guanyin or a set of the Eight Immortals with brightly painted robes. Lack of information about their religious significance apparently did not discourage European buyers from purchasing and admiring the figures as conversation pieces in the salon. Animals also made an appearance. A colorful rooster, circa 1750, displays a high degree of naturalism in its modeling. A pair of black dogs with white spots, circa 1770, on the other hand, is an interesting cross between English mantel ornaments and the foo dogs of China.

Most unusual are the Chinese-made figurines representing Europeans, such as a hatted man riding a diminutive horse made circa 1700-1720 in Dehua, a city known for figure modeling. Also on view are figures of a European merchant and lady, circa 1740 - wearing what the Chinese surely considered their characteristic national costume - which come from a small group taken from the same molds that may have been part of a special order.

Exhibits included in the section "Designed for the West" look at the various cross-cultural influences that intermingled in export porcelain's heyday. Mr Fuchs illustrates this point with a blue and white teapot made in Arita, Japan, around 1700: "It was made in Japan, for the Dutch, to imitate Chinese blue and white export porcelain, and it's decorated with Chinese landscape scenes, including one depicting the outskirts of Peking, now Beijing, with a pagoda. But the designs were actually copied from illustrations in a Seventeenth Century Dutch book. It sort of encapsulates all the different influences back and forth between countries involved in the export trade. The globalism that we talk about today is not all that new - all of these markets and people were in some way linked 300 years ago."

Winterthur Museum and Gardens is located six miles northwest of Wilmington. For information, 800-448-3883 or www.winterthur.org.