On 28 November 1709, Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, dispatched seven or eight Dehua Blanc de Chine Guanyin figures to the Meissen porcelain factory. These pieces would prove to be among the earliest direct imitation models for the European porcelain industry.
As of 2026, multiple developments surrounding the historical connection between Dehua white porcelain and the European ceramic industry are converging.
ICAA has brought ceramic artists from nearly sixty countries under the Dehua name. Peter Ting stands in the V&A telling the story of the porcelain that “first reached Europe and inspired Meissen.” Su Xianzhong places his contemporary white porcelain on kiln bricks from his great-grandfather’s workshop, folding four generations into a single exhibit. Output grew from ¥66.3 billion to ¥76 billion—the resilience of manufacturing has not broken. The EUIPO registration number locks the legal boundary of “Blanc de Chine” in the European Union market.
From “making for the world” to “making the world recognise”—the essence of this shift is a question of identity.
For 3,700 years, Dehua has been making porcelain. The historical impact of its manufacturing capabilities has been confirmed through multiple evidence chains: at least six European porcelain centres used Dehua Blanc de Chine as direct models to launch imitation (European Imitation Evidence Chain); Meissen agent Hoym-Lemaire ground off the Meissen mark to pass pieces as Chinese originals; Dutch Delft used tin-glazed earthenware to imitate the appearance of white porcelain; French marchands-merciers added gilt-bronze mounts and resold at ten times the price.
Yet a significant gap exists between manufacturing capability and international brand recognition.
Jingdezhen is known worldwide—the word “China” itself means porcelain. Meissen’s crossed swords have remained unchanged for 304 years. Royal Copenhagen’s Christmas plates have allowed three generations to accumulate emotional attachment to a single brand. Sèvres invited Yayoi Kusama to fire polka-dot porcelain in their own kilns. Arita invited sixteen foreign designers to relaunch in Milan.
Dehua’s corresponding assets include: 3,700 years of ceramic history, porcelain clay with Fe₂O₃ below 0.5% that no other region can replicate, holdings in over a dozen premier museums including the V&A, British Museum, and Metropolitan Museum, a manufacturing scale of ¥76 billion, and legal protection completed through the 2025 EUIPO registration.
The missing link between these assets and international brand building is: re-establishing definitional authority through professional research and academic discourse.
Who defines what “Blanc de Chine” means? For 163 years, the answer has been Jacquemart and Donnelly and Blumenfield and Kerr and Wood—French, British, American, British, British. They defined the terminology, established the classification framework, wrote the reference literature, and curated the exhibitions. They produced excellent academic work, and this report’s twelve dimensions draw extensively on their scholarship.
The ownership of this definitional authority is changing.
The ICAA jury—former director of the Musée Rodin, director of the Faenza museum, director of Sèvres, director of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco—represents the deployment of the highest tier of international professional authority to rebuild Dehua’s position in global ceramic discourse. Su Xianzhong entering the collections of the V&A, the National Museum of China, and the Metropolitan Museum—this proves through contemporary creation that the tradition has not died. Peter Ting’s “continuing dialogue”—this uses an outsider’s eyes to help Dehua see its own value. The EUIPO registration—this uses legal instruments to secure a name that has belonged to Dehua for 163 years but was never legally protected.
Global ceramic supply chain management centre. Michelin Guide partnership. Premium export exhibitions from Frankfurt to Delft to Kyoto to Puebla.
The temporal and directional convergence of these events points to a single systemic trend: Dehua is transforming from a passive object of study into an active participant in defining its own identity.
This transformation is characterised not by retrospective claims against historical imitation, but by the re-establishment of origin-place authority in global ceramic discourse through independent academic research, brand legal protection, and international curatorial participation.
Porcelain clay with Fe₂O₃ below 0.5%, industrial clustering within a single valley, and 3,700 years of unbroken ceramic tradition—these constitute the entire material and historical foundation for the transformation of “Blanc de Chine” from an academic term into an origin brand.