Example of Amsterdam Bont decoration — a Chinese export porcelain cup and saucer originally painted in underglaze blue and later over-decorated in red, green, and gold enamels in Europe. Image © Jan-Erik Nilsson, Gotheborg.com, 2025)
Tea cup, Chinese, Kangxi period c. 1710-20. Enamel decoration in Imari style added in Europe. The reason for this cold have been several. One reason could be that a service could be created with one dominating decoration on top of odd blue and white pieces. Another reason could be to add value to a second quality porcelain. This cup, for example, have a fire crack at its foot rim.
Definition on this site
Clobb’d refers strictly to a historical repair practice in Britain and elsewhere in Europe where damaged or cosmetically flawed Chinese porcelain was patched up by adding small enamel motifs over the original decoration to disguise blemishes, firing spots, wear, hairlines, or filled losses. Typical additions include scattered flowers, insects, birds, or small cartouches painted in low temperature enamels and sometimes a little gilding. The purpose was remedial, to make the object saleable again.
The workshop term was transmitted orally in the trade and aligns with the sense of cobbling or to clobber up meaning to patch together or to daub on, that is, to mend. The later colloquial English meaning to beat soundly belongs to a different register and period, and should not be imported into porcelain terminology. Modern blanket use of clobbered for any European over decoration obscures this original repair meaning.
Neutral umbrella term for any planned, studio level enamelling done in Europe on Chinese blanks or on already decorated wares, for fashion and commerce rather than repair.
Amsterdam Bont
Dutch trade term for brightly coloured enamelling applied in the Netherlands, often over underglaze blue, sometimes largely covering it. Schemes are planned, repeating, and commercial in intent. Borders, reserves, and panels are laid out as a complete design, not as spot repairs.
Hausmaler type work
Independent European decorators working on imported Chinese blanks in a manner that parallels German hausmaler traditions. Again, a full decorative concept, not remedial touches.
How to tell
Planned over decoration shows symmetry, coherent borders, and repeated panels. Paint sits evenly across the surface, not only where flaws would have been. There is no selective overlap with damage.
At times, especially when white blanks were scarce, Chinese workshops added enamels over existing blue and white to meet an order. The result can look mismatched, but it is factory work in China, not European repair.
How to tell
Chinese palette and brush habits, even refire, and integration with Chinese border grammar are clues. Touch ups do not target specific flaws.
| Category | Purpose | Typical features | Where applied |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clobb’d | Repair, conceal defects | Small scattered motifs, overlap with flaws, palette mismatch, local gilding | Europe, repair shops and restorers |
| European over decoration including Amsterdam Bont and hausmaler type work | Fashion and commerce, new planned schemes | Coherent borders and panels, full surface treatment, no targeting of flaws | Europe, professional decorating studios |
| Chinese enamel over blue at source | Supply fulfilment in China when blanks were scarce | Chinese palette and brush habits, integrated factory layout, even refire | China, export workshops |
'Clobb'ed' is usually understood as when polychrome enamels is applied over an existing and complete underglaze blue motif and, a not intended part of the original design, usually to make an item more saleable. This term is today used on all Chinese porcelain to which an enamel decoration has been added in Europe. This practice should considering today's understanding of this porcelain group be avoided. The original meaning of Clobb'ed was when enamels was added as a repair to hide a defect, and should be distinguished from other over decorations on Chinese porcelain like Amsterdam Bont, German Hausmalerei, (German: "home painting"). English Gilding and I think, China Burners repairs.
Over time this traditionally derogative name has erroneously come to be used onto all Chinese export porcelain that has got its decoration added to in Europe with a later enamel decoration.
The origin of the word is uncertain since it was forwarded by oral traditions. It could be related to Cobbling. Later in the antiques trade this term clobb'd was used for all Chinese porcelain that somehow had got a new or secondary decoration in Europe. Over time it appears as if this practice grew in parallel to a pre-existing european industry that since early Qing date had produced European decorated Chinese export porcelain parallel to or sometimes mimicking the German hausmahler working on Meissen blancs.
A special case is when the secondary decoration were not limited to only a new or additional border but sometimes rough foliage, figures, animals, birds or full landscapes or sceneries, sometimes adding to the old decoration, sometimes randomly filling all available space and sometimes just disregarding the old underglaze blue and white decoration as if it wasn't there.
Pieces with the least merits seem to have been produced in London during the second quarter of the nineteenth century when apparently a great deal of indifferent and unsellable Chinese blue and white 18th century left over stock were embellished with anything that was colorful.
The practice seems to have originated in Holland but spread over Europe with the availability of items to decorate. This kind of work was extensively done both in Holland and in England during the 18th and early 19th century. The English establishments that offered this service were known as China burners and the enameling was referred to as that the colors was "burnt in and impossible to remove". Some of these "China burners" also seemed to have offered porcelain repairs where broken pieces was ceramically mended in a re-glazing process.
The original meaning of Clobb'ed is when damaged or second rate porcelain was improved or mended by hiding the flaws under newly added decorative elements such as random enameled flowers or insects.
By the end of the 19th century clobber was found in the English language (Oxford English Dictionary) together with clabber, while referring to "a paste used by the shoemakers to patch holes", which is not an unlikely origin
Cobbling is the classic term for shoe repair. A cobbler "cobbles" a cracked or worn-out sole, stitching, patching, or replacing parts of the leather. The verb to cobble (or cobbled) is still used colloquially to mean "patched together" or "fixed roughly". The word "Clobbered" or rather Clobb'ed could based on this, be understood as patched up or repaired.
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