Name: Shivansh Agarwal
Roll no: B10031
Quiz 2 paper
The picture which has been shown in the paper clearly represents that the women sitting belongs to rich family and are enjoying their time drinking tea in porcelain dishes. The tea is sweetened by sugar. The background given in the picture also gives a good idea that these women belong to rich family. The wooden equipment could be interpreted as a musical instrument which can be acquired from a foreign country. While the Chinese people would feel fear in displaying things which they would get as a part of trade or gifts Europeans were quite fond of displaying artifacts which they would acquire from different countries as a result of trade or whatever means they could, be it war or raid or exploitation of people. The porcelain dishes displayed all came from china and were synonymy as china or chinaware. The sweetener which is used to sweeten tea had come from the European colonies in America. This represents that by the seventeenth century Europeans had established their networks in all part of the world.
Porcelain is a ceramic which is obtained at heating ceramics at a very high temperature around 1300 degree high enough to give it a glassy appearance and in the middle is fused with cobalt blue. Europeans were quite impressed by this blue and white mixture and thought of them as classy. Chinese Porcelain was so thin that you could see the impression of your fingers from the other side in presence of light. When Porcelain first reached Europe in 1602, people were so amazed and a huge crowd of people was there to buy this newly acquired possession and display them in their houses. The prices went so high that only few wealthy people were able to afford them. It was only after a decade when the high quantity of porcelain was imported in Europe that lead to drop of prices and common people were able to afford them,