Chinese porcelain was the most popular and valuable item imported from China to Europe and North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. European merchants, allowed to have their trade office only in Canton, bought available porcelains from Chinese merchants. Europeans also ordered porcelain specially designed for Western use. Distinguished from traditional Chinese porcelain, these specially-ordered porcelain are called Chinese Export Porcelain. They were decorated with European motifs and forms copied by Chinese craftsmen from drawings and prints sent with instructions to Chinese factories.