A Cross-Culture Research Of Using Contexts And Creation Features Of Ancient Export Boccaros

I-Hsing Boccaro is one special type of ancient Chinese product design. From being designed and produced 500 years ago till now, it is aimed at servicing tea drinking, and constantly changing its details of design. After being created in late Ming Dynasty, Boccaro began its history of export trading to the Western, Eastern and Southern world to China.This phenomena made the design of China on the board of the earliest merchant ship of world-wide trade. The classical design of China derived several new types of design that aimed at different markets overseas. The new types of Boccaro design showed their characters of aspects of design, and the principle, logic and thinking mind of design as well. When facing the users from different culture backgrounds, the potters of I-Hsing adjusted the Boccaros to different usages. As a kind of Chinese product design, it is the first time Boccaro accommodated itself for the reason above, in the background of human firstly began theirs world-wide trade.The usages of Boccaro in the tea party of the West, the tea ceremony of the East and Chinese immigrants’ ’ tea ceremony of the South are extremely different. People had different design purposes for their European Black Tea culture, Japanses Green Tea ceremony and Kong Fu Tea ceremony of Chinese immigrants. The potters of I-Hsing re-design the Boccaros for the three requirements, and shaped three types of export Boccaros with obvious features.Sourcing the social culture backgrounds of the three markets and their tea-drinking context, the real requirements of users in different oversea markets could be understood. Comparing the design requirements and the features of export Boccaros of different markets, it could be seen that the principle, logic and thinking mind of ancient Chinese potters were similar with those of modern design.For different market, the function, contract, material, color and decoration of design differed from each other market. These features of design were related to the culture backgrounds and requirements of users.Some of the design features of export Boccaros were applied in domestic market. This phenomena showed the design symbols and semantics are bleded in domestic and foreign markets. In the other aspect, Europe and Japan existed the porcelain design based on I-Hsing Boccaro.