During the late 19th century, there was a craze for famille-noire porcelains, which refers to famille verte with a black background. The term “famille-noire” was coined by French author Albert Jacquemart in 1873. This period saw a renewed interest in Kangxi porcelains, with Kangxi blue and white porcelains being avidly collected by famous artists Dante Gabriel Rosetti and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The popularity of famille-noire was also influenced by Japonisme, which emerged with the opening of Japan in 1853, and the Aesthetic movement in Britain.
Newly minted millionaires in England and America vied with each other to acquire the best art to fill the enormous rooms of their grand estates. The names of the great dealers of the period, such as Edgar Gorer, Joseph Duveen, and Frank Partridge, are most frequently credited with providing many of the greatest Chinese porcelain collectors of the day with Kangxi period examples, including numerous famille-noire vessels.
However, the issue of supply became a problem as commissions were disappearing for the potters of Jingdezhen due to the political and social turmoil that defined China in the last years of the Qing dynasty. Black was also the natal color of the Empress Dowager Cixi, and it is rumored that the palace eunuchs added black grounds to famille-verte wares to please her. Others may have engaged potters at Jingdezhen to create wares of this palette as gifts to the Empress Dowager. Both genuine Kangxi wares with bodies scraped and re-enameled, and entirely new wares were sold to the West as Kangxi period.
It was not until the 1990s and early 2000s that there was widespread agreement and reattribution of large famille-noire wares to the late 19th century. Famille-noire wares comprised many of the most expensive porcelains sold in the first decades of the 20th century. However, most extant examples are fakes, and the best fakes have the black enamel added on real Kangxi pieces in the early 20th century.
To tell the difference between genuine Kangxi famille noire and 19th century famille noire, look for pieces that have the black color achieved by applying a copper-green lead-based enamel over an unfired coating of the dry black cobalt, which are also used for black outlines. During firing, the two enamels fuse, resulting in a deep black effect with a hint of green, especially visible where the two layers don’t fully cover each other. The general view is that all pieces where the black is not made up of two layers like this are later.
