DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68274#0322
Dutch and Flemish Furniture
beautifully wrought coffres; elephant tusks, with which
they make beautiful seats that are esteemed as much
as if they were of silver, and that are used by Mandarins
and Viceroys."
The importations were indeed enormous, as the
bills of lading of the Dutch vessels prove. For exam-
ple, among the cargoes of eleven Dutch ships that arrived
in Holland from the East Indies in July, 1664, were
44,943 pieces of very rare Japanese porcelain and 101
Japan cabinets. The eleven ships that left Batavia
on December 24 of the same year, brought home 16,580
pieces of porcelain of divers kinds.
The Dutch brought to Europe such vast quantities
of porcelain in the first quarter of the seventeenth century
as practically to monopolize the trade and undersell
the English. Thus, Methwold, writing from Masulipatam
to the East India Company in 1619, says : " The great
profit first obtained on porcelain has filled all men's
hands with plenty (by the Dutch), which makes theirs
(the East India Company's) not sought after."
Turning now, for a moment, to tea, we find that
it made its way into public favour somewhat slowly-
far more so than porcelain. It was known to the Dutch
before 1600, but was not in general use till half a century
later.
J. H. van Linschoten, describing the manners and
customs of the Island Japan (1598), says:
" After their meat, they use a certain drinke, which
is a pot with hote water, which they drinke as hote
as ever they may indure, whether it be Winter or Sum-
mer . . . and the gentlemen make it themselves; and
226
beautifully wrought coffres; elephant tusks, with which
they make beautiful seats that are esteemed as much
as if they were of silver, and that are used by Mandarins
and Viceroys."
The importations were indeed enormous, as the
bills of lading of the Dutch vessels prove. For exam-
ple, among the cargoes of eleven Dutch ships that arrived
in Holland from the East Indies in July, 1664, were
44,943 pieces of very rare Japanese porcelain and 101
Japan cabinets. The eleven ships that left Batavia
on December 24 of the same year, brought home 16,580
pieces of porcelain of divers kinds.
The Dutch brought to Europe such vast quantities
of porcelain in the first quarter of the seventeenth century
as practically to monopolize the trade and undersell
the English. Thus, Methwold, writing from Masulipatam
to the East India Company in 1619, says : " The great
profit first obtained on porcelain has filled all men's
hands with plenty (by the Dutch), which makes theirs
(the East India Company's) not sought after."
Turning now, for a moment, to tea, we find that
it made its way into public favour somewhat slowly-
far more so than porcelain. It was known to the Dutch
before 1600, but was not in general use till half a century
later.
J. H. van Linschoten, describing the manners and
customs of the Island Japan (1598), says:
" After their meat, they use a certain drinke, which
is a pot with hote water, which they drinke as hote
as ever they may indure, whether it be Winter or Sum-
mer . . . and the gentlemen make it themselves; and
226