CHINA SILVER SHOWS SKILL OF ARTISANS

“From China, with love--and great respect.”

You don’t see that inscription on many products exported from the world’s most populous nation these days, the political climate and the world trade balance being what they are.

As an exhibit beginning Saturday at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana shows, though, such a sentiment was much more common in the 18th and 19th centuries, when China’s metalsmiths and potters supplied the Occident with inexpensive, yet striking, works of arts.

Margaret Key, the museum’s registrar, said the new Chinese silver exhibit demonstrates the volatile feelings the ancient nation’s people had toward their Western trading partners during a time of immense change in the Oriental world.

“The early trade--in the late 17th and 18th centuries, say--centered in Canton because the Western traders were considered very dangerous and were kept apart from the populace by the imperial government,” Key said. At the same time, she continued, the coins and raw silver that Western sea captains brought with them not only enriched the country’s fluctuating economy, they also provided a real challenge to the Chinese craftsmen, most of whom utilized no silver themselves.

“The Chinese never seemed to be as interested in silver as we in the West were,” Key said. “They still don’t use it much--they prefer to use chopsticks at table and porcelain for ornamental purposes.”

But it was no coincidence that the rise in the silver-working trade was simultaneous with the upturn in civil unrest in China during the 19th Century. The Opium Wars and various factional conflicts depleted the imperial treasury, and the small silver mines the government maintained in northern Korea and what is now northern Vietnam were not providing the rulers with enough hard specie. And since China was being forced to open its ports to the West, the huge influx of precious metals seemed a logical solution to these economic problems.

Once again, Key said, craftsmen were responding to cultural and economic pressures with their aesthetic sense fully intact.

“It had to be pride in workmanship that created the beauty of these pieces, because the Chinese never kept them for themselves,” she said. “They only kept some of the silver for payment.”

The exhibit, which comes to the Bowers Museum from the China Trade Museum in Milton, Mass., contains more than 60 items of handcrafted silver items, from tableware and spice grinders to jewelry, ornamental boxes and even a fancy walking stick. The exhibit’s Orange County appearance is sponsored by the International Exhibitions Foundation, based in Washington.

Key added that the Chinese silver-working display has resonance in today’s high-tech world trade situation.

“In the 19th Century, China was taking Western designs and oftentimes outdoing them in the crafting, adding their own particular ingenuity, yet delivering the finished product at a far lower price than was possible in the West,” she said. “Doesn’t that remind you an awful lot of the relationship the Japanese had with this country after World War II? There are two big differences: one, the Chinese of the 18th and 19th centuries were dealing in precious metals, not electronics; and second, they never heard of the assembly line in China. These items are all very handmade.”

The exhibit runs at the museum through Nov. 2. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and from noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is free.