X-Nico

2 unusual facts about François Xavier d'Entrecolles


Chinese export porcelain

Writing from the city in 1712 the French Jesuit missionary Père François Xavier d'Entrecolles records that "...the porcelain that is sent to Europe is made after new models that are often eccentric and difficult to reproduce; for the least defect they are refused by the merchants, and so they remain in the hands of the potters, who cannot sell them to the Chinese, for they do not like such pieces".

François Xavier d'Entrecolles

Josiah Wedgwood, the famous English porcelain manufacturer, is known to have copied extracts of d'Entrecolles' work in his Commonplace Book.


Plymouth porcelain

William Cookworthy, a Quaker Pharmacist of Plymouth, was greatly interested in locating in Cornwall and Devon minerals similar to those described by Père François Xavier d'Entrecolles, a Jesuit missionary who worked in China during the early eighteenth century, as forming the basis of Chinese porcelain.


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