Chinese porcelain and other orientalia and exotica in Spain during the Habsburg dynasty

Abstract

The reception of Chinese and Japanese export porcelain in Europe and the Americas has been the subject of much research, many publications and a number of exhibitions. The scholars and researchers involved could base themselves on a solid corpus of data, gathered in the past from a miscellany of sources. Although Spain was one of the most important commercial and colonial powers in the East during the 16th and 17th centuries, its role in the porcelain trade was far from clear, mainly due to the lack of research in the relevant primary sources. In fact, Spain was more or less a blank spot on the Western map relating to imports of Oriental porcelain.1 This thesis aims to make a modest start to rectify this situation, offering an eclectic survey of hitherto unknown or unused sources, as well as a large collection of new data.