Celadon is just one of the beautiful glazes used on Chinese ceramics. The colour is derived from iron and ranges in tone from putty to sea-green. It is also intended to reflect the wide range of greens found in jade. It is usually greenish, high fired and applied to the surface of white porcelain.

We should remember that in 17th century Europe, porcelain was known only by rare examples from China. No one is sure of the real story behind the name ”Celadon”, but two rather romantic stories survive.

The first entails the French, who were captivated with this new and refined ceramic ware. The story tells of the name being derived from a shepherd, the principal character in a popular 17th century, French pastoral romance, L’Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé. In this early operatic style production, the hero “Celadon” was characterized by a pale green cloak and it is supposedly from this cloak that we now identify the  jade green glaze!



It was the French, who, in fact, not only gave us the name for this colour but also a full range of other sublime coloured glazes, still used as standards in the West today to identify the major range of Chinese ceramic colours. Some of these names will be familiar such as “Famille Jaune”, or, the yellow family of glazes in which yellow is the predominant colour, “Famille Noir”, or the black family of coloured glazes, “Famille Rose”, or the pink family of colours and “Famille Verte”, or the green range of glazes.

The second story that persists is another romantic tale, this time set in the Middle East. This jade green porcelain was greatly prized throughout the East and we know from court records that in the year 1171 Salah-ed-din (Saladin) Sultan of Egypt, sent as a gift, 40 pieces of this ware to Nur-ed-din, Sultan of Damascus. It is from the name of the Sultan “Salah-ed-din” that the name “Celadon” is said to have been derived.

This version of the two stories is thought to be the most probable, however, it really is a case of which story you prefer!

Wherever the name originates, the glaze we know as “Celadon” is today still as popular as ever with its elegant, cool, jade green depth of colour



A very decorative pair of mirror image, Chinese Celadon table lamps.

The shaped lamps with a pale Celadon glaze and fitted with naturalistic handles.

The lamps decorated with mirror shaped reserves well painted in polychrome enamels with subjects of Mandarin pheasants perched in peonies and water birds at a lotus pond. The lamps with original gilded copper caps, standing on well carved custom made rosewood bases.

This pair of well proportioned lamps were made around the turn of the 20th century and have been  restored and rewired to original condition.

Overall height (including shades) 19″/48cm                Circa 1900

The Antique & Vintage Table Lamp Co specialise in antique table lamp lighting with an on-line range of over 100 unique, antique and vintage lamps on view.

Lamps are shipped ready wired for the U.S, the U.K and Australia.

You are invited to visit their web site at www.antiquelampshop.com

© The Antique & Vintage Table Lamp Co 2009

Over the past few decades international trade and e-commerce have grown at a phenomenal rate combined with rising import/export and global sourcing policies. International trade also took place long time back even when there were not advanced telecommunications or other networks and goods were exchanged in import/export in those days. With the advancement of technology the impetus given to import/export of trade and global sourcing was tremendous and one of the latest tools in the armour is that of e-commerce. Basically e-commerce refers to the carrying out of trade by use of electronic media mainly the internet for doing international trade, import/export and global sourcing. Obviously the advantages of this are many and will be discussed separately in a different article but it should be sufficient to know at this stage that various activities related to import/export, global sourcing, international trade and procurement and sales of goods and services comes under the purview of e-commerce mainly because of the ease of communication and the wide and extensive reach it provides, combined with huge savings both in terms of time as well as money, which together constitute one of the biggest factors in the life of any business or organisation.

The range of businesses which are involved in active utilisation of e-commerce is quite broad and includes those of e-banking, e-logistics, offshore manufacturing to name a few. It can be noticed that the common factor amongst most of these is the ‘e’ which stands as an acronym for the word ‘electronic’. Nevertheless it must be kept in mind that more often than not, the word electronic refers to the medium of internet and other networks, when the current times of e-commerce, import/export, global sourcing and international trade are considered. In fact the term has become so popular now that even small scale individual entrepreneurs are utilising the technology of e-commerce to carry out international trade, import/export and global sourcing targets.

Last but not least it can be concluded that e-commerce has made the world a global village where tasks like import/export, global sourcing and international trade which were hitherto quite tedious, costly and time consuming to carry out, are not done within the flick of an eye at relatively much lower costs. It is hoped that in the times to come the technology of e-commerce will prosper even more and will contribute much more to the carrying out of international trade between various nations, global sourcing to find out the best suited commodity or service at the most reasonable price and import/export of goods and services freely across the border making the earth a single unit at least commercially speaking if not politically.

When it comes to FREE open source e-commerce solutions, OS-Commerce and Zen-Cart are the first names that come to mind. They were and still are the standard for shopping carts and online stores. But like everything else, things change and evolve over time. And one software almost nobody ever mentions is rising up to become the new standard for the next generation of e-commerce platforms – Magento.

At first glance there doesn’t seem to be a big difference between Magento and Zen-Cart. They are both FREE to download and use, they are highly functional, integrated, and customizable solutions. Both have sophisticated shopping carts, product catalogues, and pricing features. Both support multiple languages and currencies, secure payment gateway options, and newsletter marketing campaigns. So why choose a new software if Zen-Cart has been around for so long and made so many people happy?

Well, the truth is that Zen-Cart has not undergone a major change in recent years to make it user-friendlier and to modernize the interface. So other programmers have jumped in and created a similar software but with better features and more modern interface. Magento was designed to be much more intuitive when it comes to setting up your products and prices, etc. It allows for easy bulk upload of your products, something you have to do manually in Zen-Cart (or find a working plugin). That becomes a vital time saver when you have more than 20 products or are creating lots of new products each month. The Zen-Cart interface was designed to be highly functional, but you really gotta be careful what you are doing and without programming skills you’re almost doomed. Magento not only looks more modern, but the user interface is also much more user-friendly and easier to use.

There are other subtle differences that make Magento stand out from the crowd. First, you have more options in customizing your product search categories. Very important if you want to make it easy for people to find what they are looking for fast. Second, if you have a small business and need to integrate your data with say QuickBooks or your ERP Software, Magento will allow you to do that. Next, Magento’s one-page checkout beats Zen-Cart’s 3-page checkout any day. Finally, Magento has a built-in CMS (Content Management System) that lets you customize your static pages with ease. Sure, Zen-Cart has the “EZ Pages”, which are nice but you still have to put HTML code in there. With Magento you have a bult-in editor that allows you to style your page without having to write HTML code. All in all, it just seems like Magento is more up-to-date and uses technologically advanced features.

There are of cause downsides to it. Magento, being a relatively new software on the market, doesn’t have as many extensions and plugins as Zen-Cart has. To customize the software to your liking you might have to hire a programmer or web developer. Zen-Cart’s Banner Manager makes it easier for you to track your advertising campaigns on your site, and there is no current lightbox feature included in Magento, if you’re a big fan of lightboxes you should use Zen-Cart. But then you are probably a web designer and know what you are doing. Magento was designed for people who have little HTML or php knowledge, which of cause doesn’t mean web designers shouldn’t use it ☺

Whether or not Magento will become the new standard for Online Stores remains to be seen. I have been in the web design business for over 5 years and have seen many new things come and go. And one thing is certain; Magento gets me excited and motivated! These guys have taken steps into the right direction and with more people catching on (spread the word!) and developing open source extensions for this software I have no doubt it will ultimately succeed. If nothing else it’s good to see that some people still believe in a good cause and allow you to use their product for FREE. Just think how many hours or painstakingly programming, troubleshooting and testing they have put into this software, just so you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars elsewhere. Isn’t that nice?! Be thankful!