Vermeer's Hat Case Study

“Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World”, by Timothy Brook shows how Europe got a hold of the commodities that is porcelain and tobacco and different ways that they were used. Porcelain has traveled through many countries over many years. It first originated in China but was then traded into India. It was sent to Persia because of restrictions in the Koran forced people to find other things to serve their guests. The porcelain was mostly in Europe because of the need to show how wealthy they were and because of curiosity. Not many Chinese merchants were willing to trade with the Europeans, but some private sellers and some Chinese officials like Gao Cai, who was an imperial eunuch in charge of collecting maritime

Due to the scarce amount of porcelain available in Europe, only the wealthy were able to acquire it. Brooks explains more of this when he says,“The Porcelains that VOC ships brought back to Europe were expensive items of conspicuous consumption that fell into the hands only of those who could afford them. For everyone else, European ceramics producers came up with import substitutes to cash in on the taste for things Chinese”(pg 78). This quote shows how the porcelain that was acquired by the Europeans, was such a sought out commodity that imitations had to be made to ease the curiosity of the public. Porcelain became such a rare commodity and became much more valuable in Europe as compared to China, where one could get porcelain anywhere. Although there were many imitations made, they could never compare to the original Chinese design, but it was not a concern because no one knew what the original design exactly looked like, except the people who had the real porcelain pieces. Tobacco was always valuable in China, more so when it was banned. It was banned because there was fear that the growing of tobacco would cause a decrease in the growing of other crops. Anything that is banned will automatically increase in value because it is so much harder to get. Once the ban was lifted, however, the value did decrease because almost everyone was consistently using tobacco for

The Chinese potters made changes to their original model of porcelain in order to fit the needs of the Europeans. Brook explains more on the Chinese dish when he says, “The Chinese had no use for such a dish. The problem was soup. Unlike European soup, Chinese soup is closer to broth than stew; it is a drink, not an entree. Etiquette, therefore, permits lifting your bowl to your lips to drink it. This is why the Chinese soup bowls have steep vertical sides: to make it easier to drink from the brim. European etiquette forbids lifting the bowl, hence the need for a big spoon in a Chinese soup bowl and over it goes: the sides are too high and the center of gravity not low enough to balance the weight of the handle. Chinese consumers were not much interested in the export were made for the Europeans. If the odd piece circulated within China, it did so purely as a curiosity”(pgs 75-6). Due to cultural differences, the Chinese potters were forced to make a fundamental change to the design in order to accommodate the Europeans. This led to the Chinese people having European style porcelain in their country, not for use but for curiosity because no one in China really had a use for the European porcelain. Tobacco was used the same way globally. It became an additive wave that everyone began to follow. It was mostly used for smoking and the supernatural practices that were