ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses how porcelain became a tool of power for early modern women and men, in specific and distinct ways, over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It explores that porcelain was employed by elite women and men to signal European leader's achievements in diplomatic relations, access to global markets, new knowledge, economic industries and their current, aspirational and changing political affiliations. European rulers responded to their lack of direct access to porcelain by supporting local products that could rebalance ceramic economic and cultural power in their favour. The cultural significance of porcelain and earthenware objects in the early modern European political world provides evidence of the gendered nature of power relations in and between early modern dynasties. The lower floor of Augustus Japanese palace was dedicated to his Asian collection that he had gained through a careful acquisition strategy, while the upper floor celebrated his new contribution to the European earthenware market, Meissen.
