For three decades he was a leading authority on the Chinese export-art market. His Chinese Armorial Porcelain (1974), the result of 20 years’ research, redefined the dating of 18th and early 19th-century Chinese export porcelain by linking it to the incontrovertible evidence of heraldry. This created a chronological framework of decorative styles which charted the development of the porcelain trade between the East India Company and China. The equally monumental second volume was published in 2003, and between them the two volumes catalogue and illustrate some 4,000 services made for the British market.

David Sanctuary Howard was born in Manchester in 1928. At the start of the war his prep school, Belmont, was evacuated to the Bahamas, where he and his sister, Hazel, spent almost four years. Holidays were spent with local friends, including the family of Sir Frank Goldsmith, and his sons Jimmy and Teddy.

Howard then went to Stowe, where he excelled academically and in sport (later becoming captain of Dorchester Rugby Club). In 1947 he was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards with whom he served in Palestine. Leaving the army he decided, to his later regret, to turn down a scholarship to Cambridge in favour of a position with Bridport Industries. However, he valued the marketing and management skills he learned in the rope industry. Perhaps more importantly, it was a time in which he developed his interest in heraldry. In the early 1950s he met Cecil Bullivant who was to be a defining influence, introducing him to a type of Chinese porcelain decorated with coats of arms. Howard set about photographing and cataloguing every example that he could find, travelling to view collections all over Britain.

In 1962 he joined the educational publishers E. J. Arnold in Leeds as export director. The next decade saw a whirlwind of travel through Africa, India, the Far East and the West Indies.

In 1973 he opened Heirloom & Howard, an antiques gallery in Mayfair (it later moved to Wiltshire). The gallery became a magnet for those interested in heraldry and in porcelain, or who just wanted to consult on questions of family genealogy and heraldic research, which Howard answered at length and with unfailing courtesy.

Early marketing ploys included light-hearted advertisements in the personal columns of The Times, offering heraldic objects to the families for whom they had been made.

The acclaim which greeted his first book led to lecture tours in the US where he he was introduced to Rafi and Mildred Mottahedeh. In 1978 he and John Ayers of the V & A, published the two-volume China for the West on their collection. This encompassed the field of Chinese export porcelain and was another milestone in the charting of the China trade.

In 1979 Howard was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He wrote articles for academic journals; joined Arthur Negus as a visiting expert for several BBC programmes; and advised on heraldry at Speaker’s House. Exhibitions followed, and he was guest curator for New York and the China Trade (1984), and A Pageant of Heraldry in Britain and America (1985) celebrating the quincentenary of the College of Arms. In 1994 he published The Choice of the Private Trader, based on the Hodroff collection.

While curating A Tale of Three Cities: Canton, Shanghai and Hong Kong for Sotheby’s in London in 1996, Howard discovered that he had cancer. He continued to organise the exhibition and write the catalogue while undergoing chemotherapy.

With this warning in mind, he turned to the second volume of Chinese Armorial Porcelain, which took six years to complete. As it was being published, he discovered that he again had cancer, this time an incurable form of leukaemia. His response was to write his autobiography, The Unforgiving Minute, to the delight of his family and friends.

He married first Elizabeth North, second Anna-Maria Bocci, and third his business partner, Angela Postlethwaite, who survives him, with the four children of his first marriage.

David Sanctuary Howard, expert on Chinese porcelain, was born on January 22, 1928. He died on March 25, 2005, aged 77.