Materialising China Material culture and perceptions of China in the late seventeenth-century Dutch Republic

This dissertation examines the relationship between material culture and images and ideas of China in the Dutch Republic during the second half of the seventeenth century. Through qualitative case-studies, this study analyses the availability of Chinese objects (how and where one could encounter and acquire them), written responses to specific Chinese artefacts, and material responses to a variety of Chinese(-looking) artefacts and imagery. These case-studies demonstrate how the unprecedented increase of the availability of Chinese artefacts encouraged those who encountered them in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic to adjust or develop their views of China and of themselves, how in turn such views could be expressed in the domestic production of Dutch material culture.
Written responses from Constantijn Huygens, Nicolaas Witsen, and their correspondents to a kuancai lacquer screen and a Han-dynasty bronze mirror, reveal how such Chinese objects were used both to test existing knowledge and to acquire new knowledge of China in a vast network of informants. The artefacts challenged and contributed to transforming world views in the early modern period and helped materialise an imagined China. Tracing the origins and adaptations of the Chinese-looking motifs applied on Dutch material culture showed how something as integrally Chinese as character script could become disconnected from its cultural connotation and absorbed into the design repertoire of Delftware artisans, and how the applications of Chinese-looking iconography onto a medium interlinked with Dutch domesticity (tin-glazed tiles) impacted its effect. The latter materialised a new kind of Dutchness.