Chinese Canton Famille Rose bowl of deep form, brightly and beautifully enamelled, on both the interior and the exterior, with figures of green dragons dispersed among a dense floral pattern.
In order to be able to classify Chinese porcelain, a series of French terms are being commonly used, dividing items into 'families', or palettes of enamel colours.
Famille jaune, noire, rose and verte are terms used to classify Chinese porcelain by the dominant element in its colour palette.
Famille rose, known in Chinese as Fencai or Ruancai and meaning 'soft colours', and later as Yangcai meaning 'foreign colours', was introduced during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor (1654–1722), possibly around 1720. It used mainly pink or purple and remained popular throughout the 18th and the 19th centuries, it's style much based on the then emerging Rococo style in Europe, thus also being widely adopted by European factories. Famille rose enamel ware allows a greater range of colour and tone than was previously possible, enabling the depiction of more complex images, including flowers, figures and insects.
Wares were often produced for the Indian and Islamic markets and although the quantities originally produced were quite large, very few examples of Chinese export porcelain for these markets have survived to our days.