1 Electronic Theses and Dissertations UC San Diego Peer Reviewed Title: China’s china : Jingdezhen porcelain and the production of art in the Nineteenth Century Author: Huang, Ellen Acceptance Date: 2008 Series: UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Degree: Ph. D., HistoryUC San Diego Permalink: Local Identifier: b Abstract: My dissertation examines the interaction between global political-economic transformations and changing concepts of Chinese art in the nineteenth century. Its focus is on the porcelain from the renowned “porcelain city,” Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province of southeast China. Jingdezhen has been the center of world porcelain production since the thirteenth century. Although Jingdezhen’s porcelain industries experienced tremendous changes and upheaval during the nineteenth century- including expanding overseas trade, decimation by the Taiping rebels in 1853, reinstatement of imperial patronage by the Qing Court during the Tongzhi Restoration – scholars of science, art, and Jingdezhen history alike rarely investigate this period. Contrary to scholarly consensus, the nineteenth century witnessed a surge in the production of texts and visual images detailing the aesthetics, technology, and manufacturing of Jingdezhen porcelain. This study focuses on the systemic production of knowledge about a material object – Jingdezhen chinaware – by tracing the global trajectories of key documents and visual images on porcelain that circulated within and across boundaries of such places as China, France, and Japan. I will highlight the circulation of such texts and visual images at crucial historical junctures of the nineteenth century, concentrating on periods of industrialization, inter-state conflict, and changing trade patterns. Thus this project will attempt to articulate the global and political processes that negotiate and re-position an object’s materiality– specifically the materiality of Jingdezhen porcelain–in relation to its visual and textual aspects. By historicizing the discourse and practices of a specific object of trade and art, especially one that was and remains closely associated with a particular place and culture, I examine how concepts of self and other find material embodiment through representative objects of culture and exchange Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. escholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at escholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide.
2 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO China s china: Jingdezhen Porcelain and the Production of Art in the Nineteenth Century A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Ellen Huang Committee in charge: Professor Joseph W. Esherick, Co-Chair Professor Paul G. Pickowicz, Co-Chair Professor Weijing Lu Professor David Luft Professor Kuiyi Shen 2008
3 Copyright Ellen Huang, 2008 All rights reserved.
4 The dissertation of Ellen Huang is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Co-Chair Co-Chair University of California, San Diego 2008 iii
5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page… iii Table of Contents…iv List of Maps…v List of Tables…vi List of Figures…vii Acknowledgements…xii. Vita…xv Abstract…xvi Introduction Guo Baochang, Porcelain Objects, and the First International Exhibitions of Chinese Art, Texts on Jingdezhen: The Record of Jingdezhen Ceramics and the Development of a Canon Picturing Jingdezhen Porcelain in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Neither Empire Nor Nation: Understanding and Appreciating Porcelain in Tao Ya, Conclusion Appendix A Bibliography iv
6 LIST OF MAPS Map 1. Jingdezhen kilns location Map 2. Jiangxi province Map 3. Northern Jiangxi, Qing period (1820) v
7 LIST OF TABLES Chapter 4 Table 1. Average Annual Quantity of Export Porcelain from Jingdezhen, vi
8 LIST OF FIGURES Chapter 1 Figure 1. Cover and Academia Sinica Supplement, to the Chinese Organizing Committee s catalogue of objects sent to London, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art Figure 2. Actual letter accompanying catalogue given by Wang Shijie to Oscar Raphael. Fitzwilliam Museum Reference Library, Cambridge, UK Figure 3. Guo Baochang (right) standing in the garden of John C. Ferguson s (left) home in Beijing, April, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Archives Figure 4. Route map from Zhuang Yan, Shantang qingyu (Taipei: Gugong bowu yuan, 1980), Figure 5. Map of Gallery Layout Figure 6. Guo Baochang s privately printed Ciqi gai shuo. Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art Figure 7. Guo Baochang inscription in gift of Ciqi gaishuo to George Eumorfopoulos, April, Figure 8. Guo Baochang s hand-written inscription on first page of Ciqi gaishuo given to Percival David, April, Figure 9. List of lectures from the Royal Academy of Arts Figure 10. Cover of translation to Guo Baochang s Ciqi gaishuo Figure 11. Top: Cover of Guo Baochang and Ferguson s Noted Porcelain of Successive Dynasties. Bottom: added portrait of the supposed author and illustrator of the catalogue, Ming dynasty collector Xiang Yuanbian Figure 12. Top: Copy of two albums of the Xiang catalogue: one with notes and one without notes by Guo and Ferguson. Bottom: example of the notes in preparation for annotation. Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art vii
9 Figure 13. Picture of Guo Baochang s forty-volume personal porcelain collection catalogue Figure 14. Decorative stand on which Guo placed ceramic pieces Figure 15. The duobao che (car of many treasures) Chapter 2 Figure 1. Title page of second edition of Jingdezhen Tao lu, Shanghai Museum library Figure 2. Top: 1891 Jingdezhen Tao lu woodblock illustration – collecting the clay (qutu) Bottom: 1925 Jingdezhen Tao lu Zhaoji edition with new illustration collecting the clay (qutu) Figure 3. Stephen Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art, First edition, limited to Figure 4. Example of black-and-white photographs in Stephen Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art, Figure 5. Full-page chromolithographic plates in Oriental Ceramic Art, v. in 5 portfolios; 116 plates; 60 & 25 cm Figure 6. Last plate in Stanislas Julien s French translation, 1856, depicting China Figure 7. First plate, Collecting the clay, in Julien, Histoire et Fabrication de la Porcelaine chinoise, 1856, showing compressed vertical scene Figure 8. Inscription page signed at Tokyo Museum, in the Japanese translation, Keitokuchin tô roku, Figure 9. Last page of Temmioka Tessai s handwritten preface to Keitokuchin tô roku, Figure 10. Tiangong kaiwu woodblock illustrations: making tiles, making bricks, removing tiles from moulds Figure 11. First two woodblock illustrations in Jingdezhen Tao lu (1891[1815]), in order from top to bottom Chapter 3 viii
10 Figure 1. Literary Gathering (Wenhuitu, detail), ink and color on silk. National Palace Museum (Taipei) Figure 2. Lotus of a Thousand Pearls. Zhang Tingxi ( ), Qing Dynasty court painter Figure 3. Leaf from the Qing dynasty ceramic catalogue, Taoci puce, dr. circa Figure 4. The duobao ge (cabinets of many treasures) of the Qianlong period and Qing dynasty Figure 5. Two pages from Qianlong s illustrated inkstone catalogues Figure 6a. Image of text-image pairing from the album of porcelain production annotated by Tang Ying. Left: Tang Ying, Taoye tu bian ci (1743) Right: first painting leaf of album Taoye tu (circa 1730) Figure 6b. Left: Tang Ying, Taoye tu bian ci (1743) Right: second painting leaf of album Taoye tu (circa 1730) Figure 7a. First leaf of eight from incomplete painting album set Figure 7b. Second leaf of eight from incomplete painting album set. Beijing Palace Museum Figure 7c. Third leaf of eight from incomplete painting album set Figure 7d. Eighth leaf of eight from incomplete painting album set. Beijing Palace Museum Figure 8a and 8b. Leaves from export ink drawing set of 17 leaves. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Acsension # E E Gift of Mrs. Mary Goodman Figure 9. Jingdezhen taotuji. d Second painting leaf of an album set of fourteen. National Palace Museum (Taipei), guhua Figure 10. Preface to Jingdezhen taotu ji album. d First painting leaf of an album set of fourteen Figure 11. Pair of vases, circa Famille rose enamels with imperial kiln production process decoration. Shaanxi Museum ix
11 Figure 11a. Detail of flag bearing the phrase yuyao chang, (imperial kiln) on vase, circa Figure 12. Daoguang period large porcelain plate. Underglaze blue and white with Jingdezhen imperial kiln production process decoration. Beijing Capital Museum Figure 12a.Detail showing Daoguang period large porcelain plate, flag with characters yuyao chang, (imperial kiln) shown. Beijing Capital Museum Figure 13. Export painting set of porcelain production. 24 leaves, 7 shown, watercolor on paper, Victoria and Albert Museum Chapter 4 Figure 1. Cover of Tao Ya edition with the seal-script style calligraphy of Zhu Deyi. National Palace Museum (Taipei) Figure 2. Liu Jiaxi inscription of title page using another title, Guci huikao, for Tao Ya, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art Figure 3. Edition of Tao Ya printed under the aegis of the Shanghai Society for Research on Antique Porcelain (Shanghai Guci yanjiu hui). Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art Figure 4a. Advertisement for Tao Ya, Jingdezhen Tao lu, and Yinliuzhai shuo ci by publisher Zhaoji shuzhuang. Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art Figure 4b. Edition of Tao Ya (mid-1920s) by publisher Zhaoji shuzhuang. Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art Figure 5. Da Ming (Great Ming) Wanli mark Figure 6. Da Ming Jiajing mark Figure 7. Da Ming Zhengde mark Figure 8. Da Ming Xuande mark Figure 9. Great Qing Kangxi mark on famille verte dish Figure 10. Great Qing Yongzheng mark and pair of yellow-glazed bowls Figure 11. Qianlong mark for a covered jar with doucai glaze decoration x
12 Figure 12. Left: Mark on bottom of porcelain carving by Wang Bingrong ( ). Right: Porcelain Brush Holder by Wang Bingrong Figure 13. Chen Guozhi ( ) mark and carved brushpot made in Jingdezhen Figure 14. Snuff bottle made of carved porcelain between 1821 and 1850 in imitation of jadeite and landscape decoration. Jingdezhen. Mark: Hu Wenxiang zuo Figure 15. Wang Shaowei (active ), dated porcelain plaque decorated with qianjiang enamels Figure 16. Jin Pinqing (active ) porcelain plaque painted in qianjiang enamels Figure 17. Wang Qi, dated Porcelain plaque decorated with fencai enamels Figure 18. Pair of porcelain cups in fencai enamels with mark Jiangxi Porcelain Company ( ) Figure 19. Cover and title page of Stephen Bushell s translation of the illustrated catalogue, Lidai mingci tupu. Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art Figure 20. Comparison of two translations of purported Ming dynasty collector s porcelain catalogue: text and accompanying watercolor illustration of Song Ding ware porcelain. Top: Stephen Bushell s 1908 translation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908). Bottom: Guo Baochang and John C Ferguson, trans. Noted Porcelain of Successive Dynasties (Beijing: Zhizhai shushe, 1929) Figure 21. Image of the annotation and translation process using un-illustrated Xiang Yuanbian catalogue Lidai mingci tupu original. Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art Conclusion Figure 1. Floor plan of permanent ceramics galleries. National Palace Museum (Taipei) xi
13 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the energy and time of my two co-chairs, Professors Joseph Esherick and Paul Pickowicz. They have been keen critics and patient mentors. I can say with assurance that without their support, I would be unable to read my Chinese sources. I am grateful to them for supporting me throughout my personal journey and graduate education. They also made possible the cohort of Chinese history students at UCSD in the past and present, who have all stepped in to encourage and teach me along the way: Matthew Johnson, Jeremy Brown, Christian Hess, Sigrid Schmalzer, Sue Fernsebner, Cecily McCaffrey, Liu Lu, Dahpon Ho, Elya Zhang, Xiaowei Zheng, Miriam Gross, Jeremy Murray, Brent Haas, and Justin Jacobs. Professor Weijing Lu and Baomin Ye have been kind to help me with difficult translations and handwritten Chinese texts, even while I was overseas. Professor Sarah Schneewind was a careful reader and synthesizer at a time when there was no structure to the entire project; I am particularly grateful to her for her timely input. Suzanne Cahill has been an encourager of all things material and artistic, handing me relevant articles and books. Department of History Chair John Marino understood my intellectual interests. Outside of Chinese history, Professors David Luft and Stefan Tanaka have been equally as important to my growth as a student, writer, researcher, and person. They have been the sharpest of observers and critics, as well as sensitive mentors. They have unconditionally supported me in my insecurities. I thank them for sharing with me their time and insights. xii
14 Professor Kuiyi Shen came to UCSD just as I was writing my dissertation prospectus and I thank him for his mentorship, guidance, and encouragement from the project s inception. I wish he had come earlier in my graduate training his course lectures, references, and personal introductions to curators, collections, and museums have been invaluable to this project. His enthusiasm in art history has kept me in graduate school. Professor Norman Bryson and Jack Greenstein in Visual Arts also gave me critical feedback on early versions of chapters 2 and 3. Mentors at other institutions have provided crucial comments and support. I thank Professors Dorothy Ko of Barnard College, Marta Hanson of Johns Hopkins University, and Vimalin Rujivacharakul of the University of Delaware for reading chapters and outlines at crucial moments of my thinking. At conferences and over the internet, other scholars have given helpful advice and comments. I thank Teruyuki Kubo, Joe McDermott, Hans van de Ven, John Moffett, Qianshen Bai, Michael Dillon, Robert Finlay, Luo Suwen, Cynthia Brokaw, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Han Qi, Han Jianping, Lara Netting, Cheng Pei-kai, Wen-hsin Yeh and the members of the 2007 AAS Dissertation Workshop on Art and Politics. I owe much to my undergraduate advisor, Professor Frank Turner of Yale University, for encouraging me through the years. As someone who came to the subject of art history and porcelain rather late, I have needed to beseech the advice of many specialists in history of science, art history, and ceramics. I am grateful to Yu Peichin, Shih Chingfei, Peng Yingchen, and Lai Yuchih at the National Palace Museum. In England, I received much help from Stacey Pierson, former curator of the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art and Zhang Hongxing, Senior Curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Also indispensable to my xiii
15 progress: Wang Guangyao and Geng Baochang of the Palace Museum in Beijing; Chen Ruiling of Tsinghua University School of Art and Design; Qin Dashu, Quan Kuishan, and Freda Murck of Beijing University; Shan Guolin of the Shanghai Museum; Lu Lingfeng of the University of Science and Technology of China; Rob Mintz and Bill Johnston at the Walters Museum in Baltimore; and Chen Yuqian of the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute. Especially crucial to my learning, even today, has been my language teacher, Chou Changjen of the International Chinese Language Program in Taipei. A project about an object of such global scope necessitated funding from many different institutions and sources. I would like to thank the UCSD Department of History, the Needham Research Institute with funds provided by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the Blakemore-Freeman Fellowship. Writing, travel, and purchases of expensive digital images were also supported by the UCSD Chinese history program and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. I am amazed that I have such loving friends and family and I hope that I can be the same for them. I will start by buying them Precious pots and pans from Jingdezhen. Christopher Lee, professor at University of British Columbia, has read chapters at last minute requests. Jeremy and Aileen Kua provided housing during exigent times. Jeannette Ibarra deserves special mention for making San Diego a home during the times that I am here. My parents and my brother provided the most support of all and to them this dissertation is dedicated. xiv
16 VITA 2000 Bachelor of Arts, Yale University 2004 Master of Arts, University of California, San Diego 2008 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego FIELDS OF STUDY Modern Chinese History Modern East Asian Art History Professors Kuiyi Shen and Norman Bryson Studies in Pre-modern Japanese History Professors Takashi Fujitani and Stefan Tanaka Studies in Pre-modern Chinese History Professors Suzanne Cahill, Marta Hanson, and Weijing Lu Studies in European Intellectual History Professor David Luft xv
17 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION China s china: Jingdezhen Porcelain and the Production of Art in the Nineteenth Century by Ellen Huang Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, San Diego, 2008 Professor Joseph W. Esherick, Co-Chair Professor Paul G. Pickowicz, Co-Chair My dissertation examines the interaction between global political-economic transformations and changing concepts of Chinese art in the nineteenth century. Its focus is on the porcelain from the renowned “porcelain city,” Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province of southeast China. Jingdezhen has been the center of world porcelain production since the thirteenth century. Although Jingdezhen s porcelain industries experienced tremendous changes and upheaval during the nineteenth century including expanding overseas trade, decimation by the Taiping rebels in 1853, reinstatement of imperial patronage by the Qing Court during the Tongzhi Restoration scholars of science, art, and Jingdezhen history alike rarely investigate this period. Contrary to scholarly consensus, the xvi
18 nineteenth century witnessed a surge in the production of texts and visual images detailing the aesthetics, technology, and manufacturing of Jingdezhen porcelain. This study focuses on the systemic production of knowledge about a material object – Jingdezhen chinaware – by tracing the global trajectories of key documents and visual images on porcelain that circulated within and across boundaries of such places as China, France, and Japan. I will highlight the circulation of such texts and visual images at crucial historical junctures of the nineteenth century, concentrating on periods of industrialization, inter-state conflict, and changing trade patterns. Thus this project will attempt to articulate the global and political processes that negotiate and re-position an object s materiality specifically the materiality of Jingdezhen porcelain in relation to its visual and textual aspects. By historicizing the discourse and practices of a specific object of trade and art, especially one that was and remains closely associated with a particular place and culture, I examine how concepts of self and other find material embodiment through representative objects of culture and exchange. xvii
19 Introduction Some 300 miles southwest of metropolitan Shanghai lies Jingdezhen (Map 1). Surrounded by rocky granite, mountainous terrain and the two river valleys of Xinjiang and Raohe, the city is located in the minerally rich alluvial plains of Jiangxi province. Historically, Jingdezhen was considered to be part of the heart of the agriculturally productive region the lower Yangtze River valley. Jingdezhen lies on the Cheng River, just east of Poyang Lake, linking the city to Jiujiang. During the Qing dynasty ( ), Jiujiang was a busy Yangtze River customs station (Map 2). After the defeat of the Qing by British troops in 1861, it became a treaty port. Although it was one of the most important economic market towns of the region, Jingdezhen was never the seat of local government during the imperial period. The county (xian) magistrate sat at Fuliang, a walled town just north of Jingdezhen that was also located on the banks of the Cheng River, while the higher level of officials, the prefectural (fu) officials, were based at Raozhou at the point where the Cheng rushes into Poyang Lake (Map 3). 1 Since the eleventh century, the city of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province has been the world s largest and primary producer of porcelain. Its inland location shielded the city and environs from major battles, overland adversaries, and attackers from the eastern coast. At the same time, its proximity to major water transport and communication channels integrated the city to larger trading and economic networks. For 800 years, the hundreds of kilns at Jingdezhen have produced porcelains for domestic use as well as for export use all 1
20 2 around the world. Since the Yuan dynasty, the kilns were for the most part run by government officials who oversaw hundreds of craftsmen. Artisans and potters specialized in throwing, mold production, underglaze design painting, overglaze enamelling and calligraphy. These craftsmen were also helped by less skilled workers who prepared the clay and transported the finished pots to the Cheng River for shipping. By the early eighteenth century, porcelain produced in Jingdezhen had already attained such worldwide prestige that it comprised an important part of China s growing export economy. Between 1719 and 1833, foreign ships trading at Canton (Guangzhou), which was directly connected to Jiujiang via the Gan River and the Qing dynasty s primary trading port and only legally endorsed entrepot after a Qing court imperial decree in 1759, increased thirteen-fold over a period of approximately a hundred years. 2 The remains of a sunken Dutch East India Company cargo ship en route from Canton to Batavia (present-day Jakarta) recovered in 1984 contained at least 140,000 pieces of porcelain, the most of any type of good on board. 3 Jingdezhen exported several million pieces to European markets annually, a trade advantage that compelled the domestic transit taxes at the port of Jiujiang to be the highest in the empire, benefiting the dynasty and the Jiangxi Yangtze region in general. 4 Porcelain, along with tea and silk, played a role in shaping a global trade system in which the net trade balance favored China. 5 Beside economic aspects, Jingdezhen porcelain also carried cultural weight. In light of the myriad pieces of porcelain in maritime Southeast Asia, Europe, and coastal East Africa that feature combinations of patterns and ornamental designs of multiple geographic origins, historian Robert Finlay has identified porcelain as a primary force in the creation of a global culture in the early modern era. 6 Indeed, Chinese porcelain had become such a desired material that it was an object of fixation for princes,
21 3 kings, and chemists in places as varied as Saxony (in modern-day eastern Germany), Istanbul and Paris. 7 Jingdezhen did not only export porcelain wares. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, several fervent attempts to uncover the secrets of porcelain s composition and production had already occurred. This lead to the development of a verifiable economy of knowledge about Jingdezhen porcelain in the eighteenth century which expanded through the nineteenth. 8 Circulation of this knowledge was also global in scope. Ideas about porcelain traveled in the forms of textual documents and visual illustrations. An important episode of information exchange that highlights this obsession with unlocking the secrets of porcelain was the publication of two letters dated 1712 and Written by Pere Francois Xavier d Entrecolles, a French Jesuit missionary who lived variously in Beijing and in Jiangxi province between 1698 and 1741, the letters were based on his eyewitness observations of porcelain production techniques, culled from his many excursions to Jingdezhen. A famous early description of the unceasing and industrial kiln production activity ongoing at Jingdezhen came from d Entrecolles letters: tens of thousands of pestles shake the ground with their noise. The heavens are alight with the glare from the fires so that one cannot sleep at night. 9 The result of his spying was the first major Western-language description of porcelain manufacture to reach Europe, the publication and widespread dissemination of which further fanned the craze for knowledge about porcelain production. After he sent his letters as reports to his diocese in Europe, the letters reached readers and art lovers almost immediately. His observations of the production process at Jingdezhen were published in both English and French-language books in 1717, 1735, and In the nineteenth
22 4 century, these volumes continued to receive much attention in the growing scientific, industrial and artistic quest for knowledge about Jingdezhen porcelain. 10 For example, the British school administrator, historian of science, and amateur potter Simeon Shaw mentioned Father d Entrecolle s trip and findings in his influential chemical analysis of porcelain in Shaw established nineteenth century pottery institutes in England and was active in promoting the craft of porcelain. He also wrote a history of the famous Staffordshire pottery factories founded by Josiah Wedgewood in the second half of the eighteenth century in industrializing Manchester. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Stephen Bushell included a reprint of d Entrecolles reports as an appendix to his 1890s translation of a late eighteenth century Chinese language monograph on porcelain. 11 People living in Europe were not the only ones interested in porcelain production. Nor were missionaries from France the only writers who produced knowledge about porcelain manufacture. Indeed, while Pere d Entrecolles did not cite references in his letters, he supplemented his first-hand observations with information gleaned from Chinese-language sources and images, including a Yuan dynasty literati account of porcelain that was recorded in several Qing dynasty versions of Fuliang county gazetteers. 12 In fact, as this dissertation will show, Qing emperors were also eager to learn about the making of products integral to the territory they controlled, including porcelain, rice, and silk. 13 Moreover, imperial curiosity actually materialized in visual and textual form, contributing to, and in some cases encouraging, the networks of exchange in porcelain knowledge.
23 5 My dissertation examines the circulation of knowledge about porcelain in order to explore how china (porcelain) became a quintessential symbolic marker of the nation of China during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a time period when this network of knowledge exchange flourished. By the end of the nineteenth century, texts and images about porcelain from Jingdezhen had surged in numbers, circulating in and beyond Qing territorial boundaries. In order to advance my research, I trace the history of three major texts and one set of album paintings that have become the very basis on which collectors and specialists have come to understand Jingdezhen china. Knowledge about porcelain, the context in which it was produced, and the nature of that knowledge are the primary foci of my inquiry. The first chapter focuses on the first international exhibitions of Chinese art, in three different cities between 1935 and The impetus for the massive exhibition came from a group of writers, collectors, and Chinese art scholars based in London. The usual scholarly focus has generally zeroed in on the London showing of the objects, the majority of which were Jingdezhen porcelain objects. The London International Exhibition of Chinese Art, held from November 28, 1935 to March 7, 1936, was the first exhibition of Chinese art to showcase a large quantity of artifacts from the newly established Palace Museum in a venue outside of China. Initiated by English collectors, the event was co-sponsored by the Chinese government, then led by the Nationalist Party. There was also a preexhibition in Shanghai and a post-exhibition in Nanjing, where the objects sent by various Chinese institutions were shown to the public at home. The importance of these three separate showings of Chinese art to the development of knowledge about porcelain cannot be overemphasized. Together they provided the context in which Guo Baochang,
24 6 one of the most important specialists on porcelain in the late Qing dynasty and first half the twentieth century, worked. Through the forum of the exhibitions, Guo s essay, Brief Description of Porcelain (Ciqi gaishuo), was translated, printed in exhibition catalogues, sent to English collectors and educators, and used by twentieth century specialists in art history to write about Chinese ceramics. There was also the practical fact that Guo was responsible for the selection of porcelain objects sent from Beijing to be displayed in the various exhibition venues. While the discursive framework surrounding the discussions and representations of porcelain was certainly nation-centered, the event s publicity generated an unprecedented opportunity for the influence of Guo Baochang, whose views and intentions combined imperial, national, and personal objectives to put forth a narrative of porcelain history centered on falangcai enameled porcelain and the brilliant imperial porcelain commissioners (dutaoguan). Clearly, we know that the story ends with porcelain emerging as a national icon, but it begins with a book published in the early nineteenth century. The second chapter of the dissertation moves backward in time to the beginning of our story in order to consider the first specialized book on Jingdezhen ceramics, the Jingdezhen Tao lu. Writing of the book began in the 1790s but its first publication occurred in The final form consisted of an important first chapter (juan) that included the woodblock printed images portraying porcelain production, which also made the Jingdezhen Tao lu the first illustrated manual on Jingdezhen porcelain. The book s nineteenth century circulation history demonstrates that the history of its reception and of porcelain s canonization is unique. The book was translated at the height of the western industrial intrusion into Qing territory. Both instances of its translation occurred in the middle of
25 7 modern war and foreign attempts to gain power through territorial, scientific, and economic advantages in terms of production, trade, and goods: the Opium War of the 1850s, and the Sino-Japanese war of Yet, as the book s publication history shows, the subject matter of a book varies according to the different objectives of the key people and institutions involved. The original authors were themselves writing and illustrating for their own purposes; the 1815 author, Zheng Tingui, reconfigured the text and added images because he was responding to earlier texts and ideas about porcelain that originated in the inner court of the Qing central government. Thus, Jingdezhen Tao lu s history shows that porcelain was a site of negotiation and intellectual contestation, that a book is not a one-dimensional channel of truth, and that the resultant images of Jingdezhen sprung from the interaction between court initiatives and local activity. The third chapter continues along this theme of court and local interactions, but presents an extended discussion on the role of visual images in the understanding of porcelain. More importantly, it is an exploration of the nature of knowledge, representation, and understanding itself. The chapter analyzes the different types of visual representations of porcelain and demonstrates the advent of porcelain production images constructed as sequentially viewed painting sets made for the emperor. By the 1730s there may have been as many as three separate imperial court albums depicting the steps of porcelain manufacture in the form of ordered painting albums for the Qing court. It was, however, a crucial Qianlong edict that instigated their textual annotation by Tang Ying, a project completed in 1743 that directly influenced the writing of Jingdezhen Tao lu and later translations and pictures of imperial kilns. These porcelain manufacturing albums not only exemplified the Qianlong emperor s keen interest in the detail and
26 8 technique of production, they also showed how porcelain was an object portrayed as the sum of its parts. In this sense, Qianlong s visual representations of porcelain were a part of a larger mission to transmit an emperor-centric omniscience and ubiquity, also a phenomenon exemplified by court art collecting and vigorous cataloguing efforts. Similar aesthetic modes, reflected in export paintings and imperial albums, traveled the global stage at roughly the same time but for very different purposes. This chapter presents an outline of this simultaneous global visual culture of porcelain. The last chapter brings us to the end of the nineteenth century with an analysis of the views of a late-qing collector and official, Chen Liu. His text on porcelain, Tao Ya, was both an aesthetic and social commentary. Over two-hundred pages long and written in literary Chinese, Tao Ya was most influential for later studies focusing on the history of porcelain in the Qing era, especially the reigns of the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors. Without any systematic organization, the author s thoughts on porcelain glazes, their appearance, the nature of porcelain bodies, foreign tastes, international expositions, and instructions about identifying fakes form a hodgepodge of notes and come together to form his tome on ceramics. The chapter sifts through his morass of opinions and observations in order to shed light on his social commentary, which reveals an internationally informed porcelain appreciator. His views revealed an epistemological framework embedded in modern notions of time and focused on the present and future possibilities of his society and porcelain. While his subject matter made him look like an antiquarian, Chen was not a man who wanted to remain in the past. I show how the actual conditions in which he lived enabled him to view and judge porcelain, including the forced opening of imperial palace collections. Ultimately, the
27 9 chapter demonstrates how ideas about porcelain were historically grounded in momentous events of the late Qing global setting, how Chen erased entire genres of porcelain history, and how foreigners came to overlook Chinese voices that were speaking at exactly the same time the global canon was being constructed. The chapters that follow examine a series of texts and visual images as case studies. They were disparate in their moments of production, related in their later applications and appropriations, and in hindsight, linked to a much broader historical process. They are important signposts of the nineteenth century journey that ended with the canonization of porcelain. They reveal an object that seemed to be everywhere and everything to many people. 1 Fuliang county has changed its name many times. In the Han dynasty it had no separate existence but was part of the larger county of Poyang. It became a county in its own right in the Tang dynasty, as Xinping, but was later called Xinchang and eventually Fuliang. It probably refers to a bridge which crossed the Cheng river at some point in time. It retained its links with Raozhou (formerly Poyang) as a part of the Raozhou prefecture in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Zhongguo gujin diming da cidian [Dictionary of Chinese Place Names Old and New] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1933), Susan Naquin and Evelyn Rawski, Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 103, Table 2. 3 C.J.A. Jorg, Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade (Martinus Nijhoff: The Hague, 1982). Colin Sheaf and Richard Kilburn, The Hatcher Porcelain Cargoes: The Complete Record (London: Phaidon, Christies 1988), Naquin and Rawski, Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century (1987), 162. The woodblock illustration is wrongly attributed to an 1815 edition of the main text or book under discussion in this paper. 5 Naquin and Rawski, 104. Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000),
28 10 6 See Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Robert Finlay, The Pilgrim Art: The Culture of Porcelain in World History, Journal of World History 9.2 (1998): Janet Gleeson, The Arcanum (New York: Warner Books, 2000). 8 In Joseph Needham and Rose Kerr, eds., Ceramic Technology, Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), See the references to Gaspar da Cruz s short notes on porcelain and their place of origin, remarks by Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza, and short passages written by the German Jesuit, De Mandelslo in Quoted in Mark Elvin, Pattern of the Chinese Past (London: Methuen, 1973), Pere D Entrecolles excerpts were published in J.B. du Halde s Description Geographique de l empire de la chine (1735) in Chapter 2, and R. Brookes, The General History of China (1736) Chapter 2, The letters were published along with other letter reports written by Jesuits in the mission fields under the name Lettres edifiantes et curieuses (Paris, 1717) in volume 7, 253; a second edition appeared in A copy of Lettres are in the British Museum. For the precise reference, see N. J. G. Pounds, The Discovery of China Clay, The Economic History Review 1:1 (1948), Simeon Shaw, Chemistry of Porcelain, Glass, and Pottery (London: Vos Nostrand, 1900[1837]), 399. Stephen Bushell, Chinese Pottery and Porcelain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), See for example, the Ceramic Memoirs (Tao ji) as noted in the 1682 and 1742 editions of the Fuliang county gazetteer in Needham and Kerr, Ceramic Technology (2004), 24, fn.112 and Huang Zhimo 黄, Xunmin tang congshu 6 vols. (n.p.: Huang, ). 13 Imperially Commissioned Pictures of Tilling and Weaving, in Chinese Rare Books in American Collections ed., Soren Edgren (New York: China Institute, 1984),
29 11 Map 1. Jingdezhen kilns location Adapted from: Julie Emerson, et al., Porcelain Stories: From China To Europe (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 2000), 46.
30 Map 2. Jiangxi Province Jingdezhen, Lake Poyang, Cheng River, Jiujiang, and Nanchang indicated. 12
31 13 Map 3. Qing period (1820), northern Jiangxi: Jingdezhen, Fuliang, Raozhou prefect Adapted from: Zhongguo lishi ditu ji, Qing shidai, eds., Zhongguo shehui kexue yuan (Beijing: Zhongguo ditu chubanshe, 1987).
32 1. Guo Baochang, Porcelain Objects, and the First International Exhibitions of Chinese Art, The London International Exhibition of Chinese Art, held from November 28, 1935 to March 7, 1936, at London s Burlington House of the Royal Academy of Art, was a landmark event in the exhibition history of Chinese art. 1 As the largest exhibition of Chinese art ever to be organized – the total number of exhibited objects amounted to 3,080 objects – its worldwide significance lies in the fact that it was the first exhibition to showcase objects outside China from collections of the former imperial palaces, then already reconfigured as the Palace Museum (Gugong ) in Beijing. Of the three thousand objects lent to the exhibition, approximately a third of the artwork came from China s various art institutions. Of the 984 objects on loan from China, 735 objects originated from the Palace Museum s imperial collection. The majority of the artwork came from three sources: the Chinese government, the British Museum s Eumorfopoulos Collection, and Percival David s collection of Chinese art. It was also the first exhibition of Chinese art to have garnered international cooperation – the galleries included items from public institutions and private collections in the United States, Germany, India, Russia, France, Holland, Belgium, and, after some prodding and convincing, Japan. 2 During its three-month duration, the exhibition attracted a viewership of 420,048 people and earned over 47,000 English pounds. 3 Major print media publications in the English and Chinese languages, such as London s The Times and Tianjin s Da Gongbao (L Impartial), covered the event, even publishing special issues devoted to the exhibition. 4 Observers declared it a success for opening the 14
33 15 world s eyes to Chinese art. Madame Guo, wife of Guo Taiqi, Chinese foreign minister to England during the 1930s, declared: The International Exhibition of Chinese Art, which opened in London on November 27, 1935, formed one of the most remarkable collections of art treasures ever seen. It illustrated the culture of my country over a period of nearly 4,000 years. 5 John C. Ferguson, an American living in Beijing who was also at the time an advisor to the Chinese organizing committee of the exhibition, described the exhibition s success in terms of its ability to attract large crowds which filled the halls to overflowing. 6 Clearly, scholars, experts, and government officials active in the 1930s recognized immediately the importance of the London Exhibition. Recent scholarship has echoed those reviews by remarking upon the exhibition s significance in stimulating public and academic interest in Chinese art history. 7 Yet, despite this event s prominence in the scholarly literature, few scholars have studied the exhibition s discursive output. As such, few if any recent scholarly articles mention the varying perspectives on art and the exhibition from China-based commentators responding to the event. Instead, the current scholarship relies upon London-based, English-language primary sources alone to reconstruct the historical event. In doing so, these approaches obfuscate the exhibition s factual history and overlook the exhibition s first and final instances of public display – the Chinese government s selection of objects was shown first in Shanghai in a preexhibition between April 8, 1935 and May 5, 1935 and then, upon the objects safe return to China, exhibited again in a post-exhibition at the Nanjing Mingzhilou Exhibition Hall (Nanjing Mingzhilou kaoshi yuan ) for three weeks between June 1 and June 22, Given the sheer number of art objects on display on loan from
34 16 institutions from China, including the Palace Museum, Henan Museum, and Academia Sinica, the elision of Chinese perspectives and sources is even more unjustified (Figure 1). 8 Along with the London display, the preliminary exhibition (yu zhan), while unmentioned in most English-language accounts of the international exhibition, generated much attention in the Chinese press and had a daily attendance of nearly 3,000 people. 9 Both of the largest circulating newspapers in Shanghai, Xinwen bao and Shenbao, reported each day on the pre-exhibition, noting attendance numbers, visits by famous people, and viewers opinions. 10 The Shanghai pre-exhibition attracted visitors from such art societies as the Bai E Painting Society, Wan Mi Shan Fang Painting Society, Xinhua Professional Art Academy, and Hangzhou National Academy of Art. 11 Shenbao, a newspaper from Shanghai boasting some of the largest circulation numbers, reported that a number of famous painters, and archaeologists came from places outside of Shanghai to view the exhibit. 12 In all, attendance for the preliminary showing in Shanghai reached 40, The Ministry of Education and the Chinese Organizing Committee issued catalogues in both English and Chinese as viewers guides: the Chinese-language catalogue cost half a dollar and the English version sold for one dollar. The Ministry of Education, on the day of the opening ceremonies for the Shanghai pre-exhibit, even presented the two versions as gifts to the special guests in attendance. 14 These guests included officials and luminaries in government and cultural circles from in and outside China, including Cai Yuanpei, Dai Jitao, Wang Jingwei, Yu Youren, and the ambassadors from foreign countries stationed in China. The catalogues included photos of each artwork and a caption that identified its date of creation, informing viewers how to view, see, and understand the art objects
35 17 before them. One could even order the catalogue by mail. 15 For the Nanjing postexhibition showing, the Ministry of Education reprinted the four-volume catalogue through the Commercial Press. The sale price was set at five dollars. As a newspaper announcing the catalogues publication reported, Since not everyone could view the exhibit in Shanghai and London, and furthermore the Nanjing exhibit could only reach a certain number of eyes, this catalogue is now reissued and can reach a wider viewership. 16 Thus, in light of the large numbers of actual viewers and the broad dissemination of multiple editions of the exhibition catalogue, the scope of the exhibition could be said to encompass major urban centers both inside and outside of China. A copy of the four-volume catalogue sponsored by China s Ministry of Education, containing all the government objects sent to England, was presented as a gift to one of the English committee organizers, Oscar Raphael, by the Minister of Education, Wang Shijie, in 1936 (Figure 2). In light of the publicity and publications it generated, and as the first and largest of its kind, the exhibition played a vanguard role in shaping and defining China and art. In view of such an outpouring of printed sources, this chapter examines the discussion about the exhibition and concepts of Chinese art as generated by the exhibition. It highlights the groundswell of ideas about Chinese art by including views and sources written by non-western viewers and organizers in order to give a more balanced historical account of the exhibition. For the purposes of this dissertation, it establishes the context of divergent discussions during the 1930s on porcelain and art in China among Western collectors, Chinese researchers, and Nationalist Party officials through a focal
36 18 event in Shanghai and Nanjing. It was a venue in which porcelain was the most numerous and perhaps prominent of all object types displayed. A central figure in this story will be Guo Baochang. It includes an account of his artistic productions, cross-cultural relationships and his writings authored as the last Jingdezhen porcelain commissioner, or what Chinese language scholarship often refers to as dutaoguan. 17 Guo produced over 40,000 porcelain objects for use in Yuan Shikai s imperial palaces. 18 He was the person in charge of selecting the porcelain objects for the 1935 exhibition in London. I will analyze his account of porcelain history in an essay published widely through periodicals as well as through personal gifts to art collectors in the United States and England. He was on friendly terms with exhibition organizers and advisors from Great Britain and the United States, including the famous porcelain collector and exhibition chair, Sir Percival David, and longtime Beijing resident, researcher of Chinese art history, and Guomindang advisor, John Calvin Ferguson (Figure 3). 19 This section begins by tracing the process of organizing and exhibiting Chinese art, including the stated goals and organizing principles that set the institutional framework through which porcelain objects from the Palace Museum collection in Beijing could play an important role in configuring national art during the early twentieth century. Starting with the planning of the exhibition and tracking the objects movement from Shanghai to London, I analyze this event as an important instance of 1930s Republican-era efforts to build, through visual displays, a public awareness of national art history through the maneuvering of material objects. By tracing how the exhibit s objects were presented, represented, and understood in various public spaces, including print
37 19 media, museum catalogues, exhibition reports, and academic discussions on Chinese art, I hope to illuminate the social and political forces at play in the acts of displaying, viewing, and enjoying aesthetic objects. Ultimately, exhibiting China was not without contestation, demonstrating the instability of the concept Chinese art. The second half then considers the central role of Guo Baochang, the technical committee member and porcelain expert chosen by the exhibition s organizers from China. Guo was responsible for the porcelain objects sent to London, and in the final section of this chapter, I will examine the themes he laid out in his selection of porcelain and porcelain essay, Ciqi gaishuo (Brief Description of Porcelain). I. The International Exhibition: Planning from Beijing to Shanghai to London The idea for a comprehensive display of Chinese art originated in October 1932, with the efforts of five renowned English connoisseurs of Chinese art artifacts. 20 The fathers of the endeavor included R. L. Hobson, a noted researcher of ceramics; University of London Professor Walter Perceval Yetts, whose specialty was Chinese bronzes; Sir Percival David, a wealthy collector of porcelain; ceramics collector George Eumorfopoulos; and Oscar Raphael, a well-known jade collector. In the same vein as prior international exhibitions specializing in a particular nation s art, this exhibition aimed to mark an important stage in European understanding of Oriental, and especially Chinese, art. 21 The English organizers planned to first seek the Chinese government s cooperation in implementing the exhibit, particularly in the selection of art objects from collections in China, and then to entreat the cooperation and participation of various collectors and museums across the world. 22 In the words of Sir Percival David, who later
38 20 became director of the entire exhibition, the art exhibition would bring together the finest and most representative arts and crafts of China from the dawn of its history to the year No explanation for the choice of this particular time span was given. However, this specific temporal framing of Chinese art history does have the effect of erasing the era of violent plundering of art objects and neglecting the rather material issue of how the objects were obtained by Britain s collectors in the first place. 24 This temporal truncation also reinforced the notion that Chinese culture and art after 1800 fell in decline and did not merit attention, a misconception about nineteenth century Chinese art and society that has persisted to this day. 25 Meanwhile, the Chinese Nationalist Government did not find itself in an ideal governing situation in the 1930s. 26 Although it was the heyday of its rule, the central government faced severe challenges, such as factional politics, urban unemployment, revenue collection obstacles, and unrelenting territorial and economic pressure from the Japanese, as witnessed by worker strikes, riots, and the Manchurian Incident of 1931, to name only one incident among many. Economically, the currency, agriculture, and various industries suffered from the effects of worldwide depression underway in this decade. The Guomindang regime was a young national government, coming to power and exacting a purge of some of its political enemies as recently as In short, the challenges of building a nation with all its attendant concerns over public legitimacy remained a priority for the incipient national government during the first half of the 1930s. 27 Thus, when the opportunity to participate in an international exhibition of Chinese art presented itself to the government in October 1934, the Guomindang foreign minister based in London, Guo Taiqi, enthusiastically recommended that the
39 21 Chinese government take part. The Executive Branch of the Nationalist Government, in consultation with Palace Museum director Ma Heng, soon agreed to the proposition. Following the initial acceptance, the Executive Yuan assigned the task to the staff of two government units: the Ministry of Education and the Palace Museum. Eventually, a makeshift Chinese Organizing Committee (choubei weiyuanhui) assumed the overall administration of China s role in the exhibition. 28 Responsibility for the initial selection of objects from China s museum institutions fell upon the Technical Committee (zhuanmen weiyuanhui), a special group appointed by the Organizing Committee. Members of the Technical Committee included staff experts on artifacts and art at the Palace Museum. These noted scholars included researchers in such fields as porcelain and painting, including archaeologist Tang Lan, etymologist and bronze cataloguer Rong Geng, former Jingdezhen porcelain kiln supervisor under Yuan Shikai, Guo Baochang, and art historian and painting critic, Deng Yizhe. 29 Foreign minister Guo Taiqi also specifically initiated the idea of a preliminary exhibition in Shanghai. According to Wu Hufan 吴, a guohua painter based in Shanghai, Guo beseeched the Ministry of Education to organize a preliminary exhibit for the express purposes of publicizing the event and demonstrating to the public such great work (da gong), thus accomplishing two things in a single stroke (yi ju liangde). 30 Guo s comments indicate the exhibition s two-fold purpose. First, the exhibition would educate the public domestically and internationally – in both China and England – about the wonders of Chinese art. Secondly, the safe handling of artworks would increase public trust in the central government s stewardship over national treasures.
40 22 However, some dissenting opinions soon emerged in Beijing and Shanghai regarding the Chinese government s decision to send national treasures (guobao) from the Palace Museum to London for display. 31 Articles in Shanghai-based newspapers reveal anxiety on the part of the reading public over the government s attitude towards cultural property. Some opposed the entire exhibition on grounds that the government was using the event as a pretense to sell off treasures to foreign governments. In order to quell these fears, Minister of Education Wang Shijie (also known as Wang Xueting ), as acting chairman of the Chinese Organizing Committee, stipulated six principles by which the exhibition planning would proceed. First, the British government would provide all costs and funding for a British naval ship to transport the art objects from China. The exhibition items would go directly from China to England without any intermediary stops. Second, the exhibition would be publicized as jointly sponsored by both the Chinese and British governments so as to bring more honor to the event and by extension, the governments. Supervision over the shipping, packaging, and handling of the art objects en route to, from, and in London had to be officiated over by expert staff from China appointed by the organizing committee. Photographs of the illustrated catalogue as well as pre- and post-exhibitions in Shanghai and Nanjing respectively would help assure the Chinese public of the safe arrival and return of the actual objects. The final organizing principle stipulated that the centerpieces of the exhibition would consist of artifacts housed in the Palace Museum. 32 Evidently, for government officials like Wang Shijie, an important objective in participating in this exhibit was not simply to cause Westerners to appreciate the magnificent beauty of Chinese art (shi xifang ren renshi Zhongguo yishu zhi weimei). 33
41 23 The stipulations for the specific use of Chinese experts, photographs, and additional exhibition viewings adhere to Wang s purpose to bolster political legitimacy by increasing the Chinese public s trust in its national government. Zhuang Shangyan (also Zhuang Yan ), one of the two secretaries of the Special Chinese Commission who traveled with the art objects to London, described the purpose of the Nanjing showing as allowing the citizens to confirm the return of the real (shi ) objects. In this regard, the government would be able to demonstrate its trustworthiness (yi zhao xinshi ). 34 The Chinese Organizing Committee also had two main selection principles: only the best things (jingpin ) would be chosen for the exhibit, and any one of a kind (fan zhi you yijian zhi juepin ) would not be included in the selection. 35 A draft list of the artifacts would first be drawn up by the Palace Museum and then examined by a subcommittee of the main Chinese organizing committee. The final selection of items sent from China would be the result of consultations between this subcommittee and a special London committee sent to Shanghai in April By April 19, 1935, the list of selections had been finalized. On June 7, 1935, after the objects had been carefully packaged, they were loaded onto the English naval ship H.M.S. Suffolk. Zhuang Shangyan, the Palace Museum staff leader, and Tang Xifen, an official in the Ministry of Education, accompanied the art works on the ship headed to England s Portsmouth Dockyard (Figure 4). 37 The one thousand or so items were packed carefully into 93 cases. 38 In London they were joined in September by four Palace Museum staff researchers who were specifically assigned to oversee the unpacking and
42 24 correct handling of the objects for the duration of the exhibit: Na Zhiliang, whose expertise concerned jade; Fu Zhenlun, a Palace Museum archaeologist; Song Jilong, and Niu Deming. 39 In London, the exhibition displayed over 3,000 objects, with about a third of the artifacts contributed by the Chinese government. Of the nearly one thousand artifacts shipped to London from China, over 700 came from the Palace Museum, 100 from Rehe Palace (Chengde or Jehol), 100 from Academia Sinica, 14 from the Henan Museum, 50 from the Beijing National Library, and 4 from Anhui Library. Among these national treasures, there were 60 bronzes, 362 ceramic objects, 170 works of painting and calligraphy, 16 fans, 20 furniture pieces, and approximately 10 scholars implements. The Chinese government and Royal Arts Academy of London each received half of the proceeds earned from ticket sales and other revenues – about 9,000 British pounds each. 40 As mentioned, after the objects on loan from the Chinese government returned safely to Shanghai in 1936, they were shown again in the former Examination Hall in Nanjing, then capital of the fledgling republic. Proceeds from the London exhibit went to organizing China s second national art exhibition and constructing a national concert hall and exhibition center, both of which opened in Nanjing in The fact that there was a post-exhibition showing in Nanjing again decenters London as the locus of the event s significance. II. Two Views of Material Artifacts Objects of History: Representing the Nation
43 25 As described in an introductory article written by exhibition director Sir Percival David, Chinese art was guided by an internal attribute of the Chinese and by an inner consciousness of powers and presences mightier than ourselves. 42 In his article, David commented on various pieces of art such as a Shang-Yin bronze, a few scrolls of painting and calligraphy, and clay vessels from Gansu Province. Relying on ideas about a timeless cultural spirit, the article reinforced the role of the art objects as representations of the genius of China. Often this genius or spirit was referred to as spiritual significance, an invention, ideals of its age, or some technique, such as paper making. These artistic attributes were all understood as embodying some underlying Chinese spirit. R. L. Hobson, a well-published researcher of porcelain, demonstrated a similar understanding of art and aesthetics. For him, the artwork on display expresses or gives insight into the mind and character of one of the great races of the world. Hobson drew attention to the meaning behind these artworks as the import of the Exhibition as a whole. His assessment of the exhibition clearly shows a conceptual contrast undergirding his explication of the exhibition and displays of art objects. For him, the art objects were not simply objects of aesthetic pleasure, but the representation of something more meaningful: the genius of the Chinese race. 43 Such ideas about the nature of art objects, and the deeper meaning embedded within them regarding China, reflected Orientalist frameworks of knowledge that included the erasure of history, reliance on essentialist notions of culture, and a modern epistemological bifurcation between object and meanings represented therein. 44 While London gallery placements reflected a
44 26 chronological display, the historical development portrayed neglected the non-national aspects of that history. Objects of the Present: Objects as an Exchange of Tributes As journalistic re-feeds of English quotations via translations in the Chinese press indicate, observers in urban China were aware of British admiration for the Chinese and Chinese art. Articles in the Da Gongbao and Shanghai daily newspaper Xinwenbao, as early as December 1935, printed translated quotations from major British newspapers and periodicals. 45 Chinese officials involved in the operations of the exhibition were cognizant of British opinions but had their own views of the nature of art and displays. Their own comments, as communicated in public lectures and commentaries on the art exhibition, revealed alternative views of the exhibition s purpose and art. One example was a public dialogue between Laurence Binyon, a British Museum senior researcher with expertise in poetry and East Asian art, and the Chinese minister to England, Guo Taiqi. At a luncheon in honor of the exhibition on December 2, 1935, Binyon gave a speech that stressed the meaning of Chinese art in what could be described in hindsight as Hegelian aesthetic terms. Like Hobson and David, Binyon conceived of Chinese art as an expression of another philosophy of life, a genius that lacked what European art emphasized, which was self-aggrandizement and assertion of personality. Again, like the other British collectors and specialists on Chinese art, Binyon highlighted the cultural or deeper spiritual meanings as represented through art.
45 27 The terms pictured the entity of China as a unified, homogenous tradition, often with explicit racial overtones. 46 Guo Taiqi, in a toast given in response to Binyon s speech, discussed the meaning of the art exhibition from his point of view. First, he emphasized that the treasures were sent by the Chinese government with all the goodwill of the Chinese nation. Although some might read this as some form of self-promoting propaganda, what I wish to highlight is Guo s stress on goodwill and the government s purposeful actions. Moreover, his understanding of the exhibition s objects was inseparable from their presentist, exigent political significance. In his view, the very action of sending objects was what mattered. While he emphasized that the collection of objects sent over by the government was designed to illustrate China s cultural development for more than 30 centuries, Guo expressed his hope that viewers would see that Chinese artistic traditions were far from static, and that they would come out of the galleries with the understanding that the objects of art, in style, feeling, and sense of form, [were] remarkably modern. Finally, according to Guo, what drove Chinese art had an important, active role in the present social situation, for Chinese art was a mature and vigorous influence of the creative force that is animating China s present national reconstruction amid unprecedented difficulties. Guo made another point, too. In explaining the meaning of the Chinese government s participation in this art exchange, Guo, as well as his wife Madame Guo, spoke and wrote on several occasions that the art displayed in the exhibition should remind viewers that the Chinese were a pacific people. They were people who upheld the ideals of peace and virtue. While these opinions might also seem to be an
46 28 idealization of their own country – as any good modern ambassador would diplomatically assert in public – what is important is the way in which Guo and his wife conceptually connected these hopes for art s ability to convey peace with the social chaos and political upheaval that were then taking place in China. Thus, for the Chinese ambassador, the artworks were not only national symbols and representations of a cultural history. Art objects were not simply remnants of the past but agents in the present. Works of art were an activity and embodied a force, the significance of which lay in both the changing historical context and the political present. Similar remarks about the nature of Chinese art were made at the opening luncheon by Zheng Tianxi (Zheng Futing), the second of two Special Chinese Commissioners for the exhibition. Zheng noted that the objects had come to England with the goodwill of China, and that such art works were not produced with a bayonet, but founded upon peace, virtue, and affection. 47 III. Material Concerns: Beyond Cultural Symbolism Criticisms of London Exhibition Displays Just as the Chinese foreign minister Guo s comments endowed art with a political role in the present, Chinese artists and scholars also had presentist concerns when viewing the exhibition in Shanghai. Like the British organizers, Republican China s writers, exhibition planners, and art appreciators valued the exhibition s value as a didactic display of a national art and culture. After viewing the pre-exhibit held at the Bank of China building in Shanghai, Ye Gongchuo, a calligrapher, painter, railway official, and future creator of the simplified Chinese script for the People s Republic of China, expressed his hope that this exhibit increase our awareness [of our
47 29 art] and that people who come to watch this preliminary exhibition would develop a mass art (dazhong yishu). 48 Guomindang Administrative Councilor (xingzheng yuan) and guohua art critic Teng Gu encouraged Chinese citizens [to] go and take a look in order to advance their knowledge of [Chinese] history and art. 49 In his written report from London in the Dagongbao, Executive Yuan official Zheng Tianxi stated that a chief aim of the Nationalist government was to publicize (xuan yang) Chinese national art and culture. 50 Clearly, the exhibition s epistemological framework reflected what Timothy Mitchell has observed in modern exhibitions in general, whereby objects embody a deeper meaning. In this case, during an era of active state-led nation-building, these objects were symbols of China. Despite the shared nationalist framework that structured the understanding of the exhibition as consisting of national art objects, differences between the British and Chinese conceptions of Chinese art existed. 51 As the Royal Academy s commemorative catalogue demonstrates, English scholars organized the art objects temporally (Figure 5). The galleries of display in London s Burlington House were categorized first and foremost by dynastic order, with a gallery labeled Shang-Yin-Zhou, followed by a gallery called Wei-Tang dynasties, three galleries identified as Song, a room called Song-Yuan dynasty and another gallery with the heading Early Ming dynasty. Positioning the exhibition displays according to a temporal framework lent themselves easily to understanding Chinese culture as progressing along a linear timeline of development, a hallmark of constructed national identities. 52 By contrast, at the Shanghai preliminary showing, as at the Nanjing show, Chinese display strategies organized art works by
48 30 object category – bronzes, painting and calligraphy, ceramics, and miscellanea (qita ), which included tapestry, embroidery, jades, cloisonné, red lacquer, and ancient books. Temporal order was specified within such object-bound categories. By centering the presentation of Chinese national art by form object the exhibitions in Shanghai and Nanjing had a dual conceptual effect. Chinese presentation strategies promoted a timeless universality of cultural treasures and at the same time portrayed Chinese art proceeding along historical development. The British slighting of the material nature of displayed objects as expressed in display layout bothered experts from Beijing. In his article describing his experience as a keeper of objects sent to the exhibition in London, Fu Zhenlun criticized the British for refusing to display objects from newly excavated sites at Anyang, Henan. Fu noticed that the London display wrongly separated objects from the northwest among six different galleries. His critique might have stemmed from the importance he attributed to the physical location and archaeological origins of artifacts, rather than to their temporal dating. Fu also noted that the British did not include textiles, showed insignificant architectural objects of imprecise dating, hung paintings in the wrong manner, and arranged colophons upside down. To Fu, haphazard placement of art objects did not adhere to exhibition principles (zhanlan yuanze). 53 Thus, Fu s critiques of display modes, alongside Zheng and Minister Guo s emphasis on the movement of material objects illuminate a type of object-oriented thinking that surpassed a conception of objects limited to their status as cultural symbols. Instead, Chinese officials and organizers showed a preoccupation with the objects material and physical aspects – as
49 31 works available for touch, display, exchange, archaeologically discovered, or capable of being damaged. The Material Presence of Art History s Objects The exhibition ignited the enthusiasm of intellectual and artistic leaders in China for the development of a more rigorous and systematic discipline of Chinese art history. To them, art historical research was a practice based on the careful research into real objects. Not surprisingly, while intellectuals in China criticized certain British conceptions of art history such as specific dates and authentications, the same viewers and researchers were also envious of the advanced state of British art historical research. After all, Chinese art history, as a formal discipline, was itself a field of study that developed through a network of nineteenth-century translation and exchange. Even the twentieth-century term meishu did not denote fine arts until its introduction into China through the Japanese translation of the French term beaux arts, first used in Japan in the 1870s in conjunction with the Vienna Exhibition of During the nineteenth century, yishu referred more to skills or technique, and appeared mostly in the titles of courses that taught Western drawing to aid the acquisition of such modern scientific skills as geometry, mechanics, geography, and chemistry. 54 By the 1910s and 1920s, however, emphasis shifted from mere technique to the study of art, art history, and technique as expressions of culture. For Chinese art history specifically, the first Western-language monograph on Chinese art was Stephen Bushell s Chinese Art, written in the last decade of the Qing dynasty and published in London in Bushell s Chinese Art was so popular that a second edition was printed in A French translation appeared in Paris that same year. 56 In 1923, Shanghai s Commercial Press
50 32 published the first edition of the Chinese translation of Bushell s foundational book, Zhongguo meishu. 57 The Chinese translation of Chinese Art achieved the endorsement of Cai Yuanpei, whose role in art education reform and social criticism is well known. The book s appearance coincided with the post-may Fourth frenzied advocacy for new nationalist reforms in educational curricula. Dai Yue, a nationalist art historian active at the height of calls for educational reform (by noted educators such as Cai Yuanpei), was the translator. Bushell s book thus created a founding text on Chinese art and provided the basis of Chinese art historical studies in China. Ironically, Bushell s work would not have been possible without access to the material artifacts themselves, which he and other Englishmen obtained from the antique market that grew out of the increasing circulation of looted and sold objects from imperial palaces in and around Beijing at the end of the nineteenth and turn of the twentieth century. 58 Furthermore, Bushell himself based his seminal study of Chinese art on early nineteenth-century books such as Jingdezhen Tao lu, first published in 1815, which discussed ceramic production and was written by two Jingdezhen residents. Despite the Jingdezhen-based nature of Bushell s sources, the modern academic discipline of Chinese art history – a concept based upon the implication that each national culture had its own artistic tradition – came to China through European works. Therefore, it is not surprising that intellectuals in China both admired and criticized English scholarship. Noticing that the British labeled Gallery 1 Shang-Yin-Zhou rather than the usual term Yin-Shang-Zhou, Zhuang Shangyan declared that the British scholarship on Chinese art was superficial and thin. But even though he claimed that the British were quite immature in matters of identification and display, such as hanging paintings too
51 33 high or upside down, and neglecting epigraphic inscriptions on steles, Zhuang also praised their determination to conduct original research. 59 Concluding that such persistence in academic research was respectable, Zhuang suggested that the Chinese reform their attitudes toward studying their own art history and begin limiting the export of Chinese artifacts. If such action were not taken, Zhuang warned ominously, a day would come when Chinese scholars would have to go to foreign countries to study their own artifacts. Writers and artists such as Teng Gu, Ye Gongchuo, and Wu Hufan lauded the effect of museums and exhibitions such as the Shanghai pre-exhibition in furthering art historical scholarship in China. 60 After he viewed the Shanghai exhibition, Teng commented, our government and academic organizations should promote this kind of work more often. 61 Realizing their own country s methods of display lacked a systematic approach further fanned the flames of interest to build the discipline. 62 Wu Hufan urged: This type of activity should be encouraged by the government so that our country s art can bring its honor to the world s arts. 63 According to such artists and scholars, only with proper institutions such as museums and exhibitions devoted to expanding, safekeeping, categorizing, and displaying of material collections could Chinese scholars conduct adequate scientific research in art history. Furthermore, as Wu Hufan and Ye Gongchuo envisioned, art-historical knowledge and the establishment of proper cultural preservation organizations such as museums and exhibitions were integrally intertwined because the spirit of the nation is always connected to its historical cultural artifacts (wenwu ). 64
52 34 Themes of national pride and a desire to preserve and study one s own national tradition in this period are not surprising given the prevalence of nation-centered reform in twentieth-century China. What is significant is how art leaders in China emphasized the importance of the physical materiality of objects to the study of China s art history. A Chinese article introducing a seminal book on Chinese art published by the Burlington Magazine of the Royal Arts Academy in 1935 declared it enlightening for those wanting to understand Chinese art history because Westerners base their academic research on physical contact with the real things (shiwu ). 65 Comments by Palace Museum organizers and the Organizing Committee about the process of lending art works also revealed a similar logic hinged upon the centrality of physical and material aspects of objects. An example of this is evident in the way in which members of the Chinese organizing committee worked meticulously to implement measures that protected the materiality of these objects. For instance, in his report, Zhuang Shangyan went to great lengths to explain the use of multiple layers of velvet bags, cotton cases, wooden crates and finally steel cases to prevent any material damage from occurring during the acts of transporting, packing, displaying, and storing. 66 Even John C. Ferguson, an art collector, dealer, Executive Yuan consultant, and a one-time advisor to the Qing court, observed that Unusual care was taken in their shipment so as to insure their safety. 67 Realizing that the object s correct and proper transport could substantiate the responsibility of the new Republican government over all things related to the nation, Chinese museum scholars and researchers thus attached extreme importance to the objects fragility and substantive condition. In so doing, their concerns illuminated the Chinese organizers preoccupation with the materiality of the sent objects.
53 35 Modern Art History and a Discourse of Material Absences Besides emphasizing the artwork s physical properties, Chinese organizers and viewers were more sensitive to issues of material loss and physical absence that arose from historically specific circumstances. Rather than using aesthetic terms, reporters imbued objects with the value of rarity. Newspaper reports attributed the high attendance to people seeking to see rare collections of treasures (xishi zhencang.). In press articles and viewer s comments, these things were variously referred to as precious objects (zhen pin), or cultural artifacts (wenwu), and national treasures and collections (guobao cang). Xu Beihong, the famous modernist painter and art theorist, defined what he saw at the preliminary exhibit as national treasures because they were all historically rare things (lishi shang xi you zhi wu ). 68 Exalting objects of an art exhibition as rare is not uncommon in the language of marketing. Like the mentality of capital and microeconomics, the urgency of scarcity marks the work of art critics and also drives today s art market. The theme of scarcity did not always mark characterizations of art, as will be shown in the next chapter s analysis of a historical record written about Jingdezhen porcelain just over a hundred years earlier. Still, anxieties about rarity and loss had their origins in historical precedents. One article in the journal Peiping Chronicle in January of 1935 narrates a point of contention between Chinese artists and intellectuals about the loan of objects to Britain. As the report indicates, a group of Chinese cultural figures, including Liang Sicheng, the architectural preservationist, his wife Lin Huiyin, Chen Chung, Dean of Public Affairs of National Tsinghua University, Mr. Hsiung Fu-hsi, a Chinese playwright,
54 36 Mr. Chu Shi-ching, professor of Chinese at Tsinghua University, to name only a few, voiced opposition to the Chinese government s agreement to lend objects to the British without insurance. In a memorandum, they encouraged the government to reconsider the terms of object selection and loan. They opposed sending of the objects from the Palace Museum on the grounds that once an object of art is acquired by the British Museum, it will never be allowed to leave its portals. Moreover, the opposition arose from the British government s choice of art specialists to aid in the selection of objects in Shanghai. Particularly vexing was the inclusion of Paul Pelliot, a French sinologist, who was associated with Sir Aurel Stein in the excavations at Tun-hwang in Kansu over 20 years ago, when they carried away many valuable Buddhist classics to France and England. In a signed memorandum sent to the Republican government officials in charge, these cultural leaders also urged that the selection rights belong solely to the Chinese experts, for to abdicate such a right would be to betray weakness. Their choice of the word acquired to describe the action of a loan to the British Museum expressed the petitioners palpable worry about permanent loss of artifacts, a residual feeling born out of the past. Thus, concerns about the exhibition planning process demonstrated an anxiety born from a loss of art objects that had occurred in recent history. As a result, the professors and cultural leaders voiced an awareness of past infractions of pillaging and also a loss of voice over the definition of their own national tradition. 69 In light of their worries about the loss of art works to foreign governments in the past and the fear of the selling of artifacts in the present, such descriptors indicate a higher sensitivity to art works as material objects that could be looted, stolen, sold, and bought. To be sure, they also blamed their own country for the lack of responsibility over cultural
55 37 property; Zhuang Shangyan warned against not limiting the export of art objects. Still, the fact that Chinese exhibition officials paid such attention to the safe return of objects to China reveals an anxiety about cultural artifacts that had been displaced from their physical place of origin. The Nanjing post-exhibition displayed visual images in the form of photographs. The displayed photographs were taken of the Chinese objects lent to London from foreign collections across the world. The use of photography and visual images in Nanjing thus highlighted material absences, as the photographs depicted objects of art that were not physically located inside China. Xue Quanceng, a member of the legal education bureau in the Ministry of Education, published his records of viewing the postexhibition in Nanjing. In his memoir, he gave an overview of the exhibition – again categorized by material objects. Section 1 of his article covered bronzes, section 2 concerned porcelain, section 3 recapitulated painting and calligraphy (shuhua ), and section 4 discussed miscellaneous objects. He ended his memoir with a short section entitled, National Treasures That Have Drifted Overseas (Liuluo haiwai woguo guwu ). As he concluded with palpable regret over the loss of these artifacts to overseas locations, Xue noted the large number of artifacts and art objects that had been displayed in London and were lent by other non-chinese collections, including Sweden, Belgium, and the Soviet Union, to name just a few. He distinguished the objects physical absence in China by drawing a contrast with their visual presence through the display of photographs at the Nanjing post-exhibition: From foreign collections, there were over two thousand objects lent; over half were photographed and the photos are exhibited at the capital, totaling 1,760 photos, alongside real
56 38 objects these are all works of unsurpassable wonder. It is such a pity and regrettable that they have all drifted away (liuluo ) to overseas places. 70 IV. The Persistence of Materiality Both English organizers and Chinese scholars framed the exhibition in nationalist terms. Undoubtedly, the objects were, for Guomindang officials and English appreciators alike, a symbol of a nation s glorious past and tradition. The aims of the exhibition were, after all, to stage a comprehensive exhibition of Chinese art, as noted in the Royal Academy s catalogue, and it was on these grounds that it was declared a success. The discussions generated by the Chinese observers, however, questioned whether the exhibition actually represented the whole of Chinese art. Moreover, by showing the multiplicity of views on exhibiting Chinese art, these varying opinions questioned the very possibility of achieving an actual representation of Chinese art. In fact, even Fu Zhenlun, the historian based at the Palace Museum, reported that there were some precious works not shown, and some vulgar objects shown as a result, what was displayed did not adequately represent our nation s various categories of exquisite art and thus was not adequate to represent the completeness of Chinese art. 71 Fu continued his strident critique by describing the inexact nature of the London displays of Chinese artworks, enumerating how the English scholars did not specify objects dating, categories, provenance history, and geographical origin. 72 Clearly, Fu held strong opinions about display strategies and the way in which displays defined Chinese art, whether correctly or incorrectly. Just as current scholarship has ignored these voices, so too, did observers and the contemporary British organizers in the 1930s. In his article,
57 39 Reflections on the Exhibition, the well-connected art collector John Ferguson noted the London organizers pretentiousness regarding their art historical knowledge. His views depart from other Western art scholars and organizers. Ferguson noticed the undignified way in which the London Committee ignored the Chinese Committee s objectdescriptions of lent artworks from China, instead making Scores of such corrections. Ferguson described a contrast: few corrections had been made in the labels of objects loaned by others, the Chinese Government seems to have been singled out In contrast to these frequent changes in the labels supplied by the Chinese Committee I have not found a single similar correction in the labels of articles from the David or Eumorfopoulos collections. 73 Thus, Ferguson, a close friend of Guo Baochang, the porcelain expert in charge of the selection of porcelain sent from China to London, echoed Fu Zhenlun and Zhuang Shangyan s criticisms. His article clarified in detail the nature of the London organizers condescension toward Chinese attribution of objects. One of Ferguson s complaints was that the British opted to use vague labels such as? Sung for object descriptions instead of using dates submitted by the Chinese experts. Ferguson aptly called such pretentiousness as Western scholars attempting to teach China how to classify its own artistic productions. The disparagement of Chinese views stands in ironic contrast to the self-congratulatory declarations by Sir Percival David, the exhibition director, who stated that people can, after seeing the art exhibited at the Burlington House, cease applying to Chinese pictorial art the canons of criticism that were applied to European painting. 74 What David meant, of course, was that the exhibition had revealed so much about Chinese art that Westerners should be able to
58 40 study it on China s own terms. To do so, however, would have necessitated less cultural arrogance and more sensitivity to human voices and opinions from China. Even more telling is the comparison of the porcelain sections of different versions of the commemorative catalogues: the catalogues published by the Chinese Organizing Committee included a prefatory piece on porcelain history by the early twentieth-century porcelain commissioner at Jingdezhen, Guo Baochang. Guo s introductory essay, A Brief Description of Porcelain (Ciqi gaishuo ), completed on February 6, 1935, was translated into English, and both versions were reprinted in various editions of the Chinese Organizing Committee s catalogue. Despite its availability in the English language, the essay did not find an audience in Western-language scholarship and collectors circles. Not one of the three editions of the London Exhibition catalogues compiled by the Royal Academy of Arts included the essay. In fact, Guo himself sent an inscribed copy printed by his personal printing press, Zhizhai shushe (Figure 6), to George Eumorfopoulos and Percival David, the two main British collectors and exhibition organizers (Figures 7, 8). Further reflecting Guo s status as an authority in porcelain-related knowledge, a reprint of the essay occupied the entire last page of Da Gongbao newspaper s special issue on the London Exhibition on April 6, The sheer physical size of the reprint in some ways enhanced the great regard that some people at the time might have held of the Ciqi gaishuo essay (the actual size of the newspaper sheet was almost twenty inches in height). Ye Gongchuo s praise of the selection of porcelain objects as complete, which was credited to Guo s presence on the special committee in both Beijing and Shanghai meetings, clearly fell on deaf English ears. 76 Even in Ferguson s article, Ferguson enumerated a litany of objects for which the
59 41 English Committee assumed their superior knowledge over the Chinese research, most of which were porcelain objects. Granted, given Ferguson s close relationship with Guo Baochang, with whom he edited art anthologies and inventories at the Palace Museum in the first half of the 1920s, Ferguson s ire may have resulted from some personal umbrage felt on behalf of a friend. Emotional affronts aside, Ferguson s first-hand experience with Guo must have given him some idea of the extent of Guo s expertise on porcelain. That the most salient instance of arrogance occurred with the selection of porcelain objects reveals much about the nature of the divergent opinions. Archaeological excavations in Jiangxi province (in which the porcelain production capital Jingdezhen was located), which were considered in juxtaposition with late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Qing Dynasty porcelain manuals such as Tao Shuo and Jingdezhen Tao lu, had introduced new physical artifacts with which Chinese intellectuals could conduct systematic art historical research. 77 In tandem with the difficulty of the Chinese-language texts, despite the existence of European-language translations, proximity to such archaeological materials gave China-based scholars a newfound opportunity to understand and define their own national culture as expressed by Chinese art. The attention given to the objects materiality and physicality by Chinese organizers thus reveals not only differing views of Chinese art but also the ability of material artifacts to challenge interpretation and representation. The instability of meaning inherent in material products and varying methods of display demonstrate that the power of representation did not go unmediated. Perhaps the aim to organize a comprehensive exhibition was not achieved after all.
60 42 Taking into account the perspectives and reactions of Chinese viewers and members of the Chinese Special Committee demonstrates that Western views, while perhaps dominant, did not dominate. The opinions and priorities of Chinese organizers offer a critique not only of Western Orientalist notions of China, but also of modernist notions of art and society as dominated by visuality. Reflecting on the role of visual sense in modern society, Walter Benjamin emphasized the way the city and its new institutions, including the exhibition, the panorama, and the museum, created a sort of commodification on display in which capitalism now put a greater premium on display than on use or exchange value. 78 Rather than visual concerns, Chinese organizers and viewers seized upon the materiality of objects to counter British definitions of art and concepts of China. Certainly, they subjected art exhibition objects to a nationalist framework. However, their awareness of cultural objects as material things to be possessed, used, researched, given, and handled only stimulated their desire for scientific methods of art historical research. Even different methods of display – the English arranged objects uniformly along a progressive temporal framework while Palace Museum researchers preferred object-based categories or geography-centered galleries – demonstrate a view of art history held by Chinese organizers structured by the physical and materialist nature of artworks. Visual images did dominate in the case of the Nanjing post-exhibition, where photographs of artifacts exhibited in London lent by foreign institutions were displayed. There, the visual works represented, as indicated by the regrettable feelings of loss expressed by Xue Quanceng, the physical absence of those artifacts from their place of origin.
61 43 While most of the scholarly work on exhibitions, cultural representation, and political relations has emphasized the way in which a nation or colonizer constructs a certain representation of identity, I argue for a closer attention to alternate conceptions and dialoguing discourses. Even the nationalistic-infused encomiums, articulated by Guo Taiqi, the Guomindang official based in England, emphasized the exchange of art objects and the roles of art materials in allaying matters of exigent international relations. In doing so, this chapter demonstrates the importance of a closer reading of non-western sources and illuminates how twentieth-century views of art and aesthetics in China offer a critique of national historical discourse by viewing art as part not simply of a timeless national essence but of the active present. V. The Invisible Hand of Guo Baochang While Chinese voices seem to not have been adequately acknowledged or respectfully heeded for the planning and presentation of the exhibition in London, one expert from China whose primary language was Chinese did make a mark on the art market, porcelain culture, and exhibition. That person was the aforementioned Guo Baochang ( or 1942). 79 As mentioned, he was the technical expert selected by the Ministry of Education and Palace Museum head responsible for the porcelain objects sent to London. Porcelain comprised the most numerous of all artifacts sent to England from China out of 700 were porcelain pieces selected from the collection of the former emperors palaces. Over half of these 362 were Ming and Qing dynasty Jingdezhen wares, with styles and forms ranging from blue-and-white ware, monochrome glazes, snuff bottles, to Kangxi-era cloisonné (falang ). 80 While his
62 44 seminal essay and his selection of porcelain objects might not have received immediate acknowledgment, by the 1940s, the exhibition s porcelain exhibit had already influenced museum researchers and ceramic-studies experts. As W.B. Honey, Keeper of the Department of Ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1938 until 1950, noted in a foreword, the great Chinese Exhibition of went a long way toward supplying the answer [to the question of what was true Chinese art], while confirming the view that the popular famille verte and the rest were largely export wares. A new discrimination was thenceforward called for, distinguishing from the latter the imperial and other wares in true Chinese taste. 81 The exhibition shed new light on porcelain and specifically on the types of porcelain produced during the Qing dynasty. Despite being only a sample of Jingdezhen s output, porcelains formerly displayed in the court was deemed true Chinese taste, a general if vague term used by Western observers. The responsibility for the creation of this porcelain exhibition and its historical context belonged in the hands of Guo Baochang. He not only had a role in selecting objects for the exhibit but he also played a part in developing public understanding of porcelain history. One of the exhibition s aims, after all, was didactic. In England, lectures even accompanied the exhibition (Figure 9). Guo s history is difficult to track down and this part of the chapter attempts to create an account of his life and influence on Jingdezhen porcelain knowledge from the scattered writings and multitudinous international relationships he developed with collectors and politicians. As will be shown, he was intimately linked to the production of Jingdezhen porcelain wares in the early twentieth century and to the production of knowledge about porcelain. While he was personally in touch with seminal collectors and English-speaking scholars of Chinese art,
63 45 his name rarely appears in any English-language record. He is survived by his works of art and writings. Guo s Brief Description of Porcelain, written in February 1935, was a narration transcribed by Wang Weizhou (alternative name: Xiwu ) from Hangzhou. It was then translated by Ministry of Education official Zhang Yuchuan and printed in both editions of the four-volume illustrated catalogue to the art objects sent from China to England for the exhibition (Figure 10). 82 None of the three editions of the Royal Academy Catalogues in London included Guo s essay, but the Chinese Organizing Committee s versions did. 83 As mentioned, the Chinese Organizing Committee catalogues comprised four sections, and porcelain occupied section three. Of the four sections, only the porcelain section included a general informational essay. Both the versions published in Shanghai in 1935 and then in 1936 included Guo s Brief Description of Porcelain (Ciqi gaishuo) in the Chinese and English languages; the other sections bronzes, calligraphy and painting, miscellanea, did not include any such introductory essay. The salience of Guo s essay in Chinese-language publications probably reflects Guo s prominence in porcelain-collecting circles in early twentiethcentury China. By the 1930s, Guo s role was not insignificant and he was already well regarded for his expertise in porcelain ware, production techniques, and Jingdezhen history. Guo himself came from a rather ordinary background. Born in 1879 in rural Hebei province, Dingxing county, Guo (hao: Guo Shiwu ) moved to Beijing in 1896 at the age of seventeen. He became an apprentice at Dejucheng a curio pawn shop at Xihuamen, an area located just outside the west gate of the Imperial
64 46 Palace (today s Forbidden City). 84 There, he not only gained exposure to an array of ceramic objects, paintings, and calligraphy scrolls, he also learned the art of photography when cataloguing inventory. Later, he started his own photography studio, called Shuxin, the main business of which was to take pictures of precious antiques. He supposedly became such an adept photographer that he became the main photographer for Yuan Shikai s second son, Yuan Kewen. 85 Through his dealings and interactions in the antiques market circles, which at the time included officials at the Qing court, of which Duanfang is the most well-known example, Guo acquired favor in Yuan Shikai s eyes and by 1901 worked as a secretary for Yuan Shikai s administration. 86 At the time, Yuan Shikai was governor-general of Zhili province (present-day Hebei). In 1915, Yuan Shikai, in his failed attempt to restore the dynasty and a constitutional monarchy, re-established the Qing imperial kilns. Following in the footsteps of previous Qing emperors, Yuan ordered 40,000 pieces of porcelain, the production of which would be supervised by a position he re-established in late 1915 the Supervision of Ceramic Affairs (taowu jiandu shu ) that was based in Jingdezhen. 87 To oversee the task, he appointed Guo Baochang, who had since 1912 been serving in rather high-ranking position in Yuan s presidential administration as the Director of General Affairs (Shuwu sicheng ) for Yuan s Presidential Palace (zongtong fu ). 88 Upon being assigned the task of producing coronation porcelain for Yuan Shikai, Guo Baochang then faced an important decision regarding the type of porcelain appropriate for a dynastic restoration. With a group of selected Jingdezhen potters, Guo
65 47 traveled to the historical site of the Linru kilns in southern Zhili province, located in present-day Henan, in order to study the techniques behind the pale, sky-blue colored porcelains known as Ru wares ( ). Just as Guo and his potters were to begin the production of imitation Ru wares at the Jingdezhen kiln center, an advisor in the Yuan Shikai administration, Yang Du, suggested that they instead reproduce the Guyue xuan (Pavilion of the Old Moon) porcelains for the coronation porcelain. 89 The reason for such a choice was Yang s historical conception of Ru porcelain as originating from a weak dynasty. Since Ru wares date to a production period during the waning years of the Northern Song Dynasty that ultimately fell to the conquest of the Mongols, to choose Ru porcelains would connote a meaning of a weak dynasty to the Yuan Shikai reign. 90 As a result, Yang and Guo opted to reproduce the wares of the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors eras, widely regarded as the country s glorious years. They determined the proper porcelains to be Guyue xuan porcelains, decorated with raised painted enamels, a type of porcelain decoration belonging to a new art form that first appeared with the creation of a special enamel workshop in the fourteenth year of Kangxi s court (1693). The appearance of enameled decoration on porcelain followed the influence of European enamel painting on metal that had been transmitted to the court in the 1680s by missionaries. The difference between the European enamels and the ones produced for the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors was the media on which enamel was decoratively applied. Among some of the media were glass and porcelain bodies from Jingdezhen. 91 As imperial workshop archive records indicate, the name of the workshop was falang, or cloisonné. 92 Thus, of the 40,000 pieces produced in
66 , one hundred were the raised painted enameled porcelain, and they were manufactured specifically for the purpose of the coronation ceremony rituals, including gifts to officials. In order to produce these, Guo even went to Beijing sometime in 1915 in order to obtain samples of enameled porcelain from the former Imperial Palace. Actually, falang porcelain objects were not always considered purely Jingdezhenproduced, as indicated by their categorization as foreign transmitted wares (waiyi yao ) in Jingdezhen Tao lu of After all, the painting of the enamels onto the porcelain body occurred at the workshops located in the palaces in Beijing, not at the workshops and factories at Jingdezhen. Nevertheless, the enameled porcelain produced by Guo Baochang were produced and decorated completely at Jingdezhen by a group of Jingdezhen-based porcelain painters and potters who gained fame in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries as the Eight Friends of Pearl Mountain (Zhushan ba you ). 94 The entire project cost 140,000 yuan. As is well-known, Yuan Shikai s emperorship lasted only eighty-three days and faced heated opposition. After his own self-demotion, Yuan died in humiliation and as a national traitor on June 6, 1916, leaving Guo Baochang without a job since the end of a reign signaled the demise of any need for imperial kilns. During his short stay of not more than six months at Jingdezhen as the resident kiln official, Guo produced porcelain objects and learned much about the production process at Jingdezhen and its history. Guo even dug into old documents and records about Jingdezhen porcelain production that were written during the early and mid-eighteenth century. Guo transcribed by hand Tang
67 49 Ying s records of Jingdezhen porcelain management and manufacture, a manuscript now in the Liaoning library. 95 His time spent as an imperial porcelain supervisor must have been influential in Guo Baochang s life, not only for exposure and training in porcelain production but also for his confidence in his own abilities to authenticate, and perhaps even fabricate, porcelain. Porcelain styles were, after all, reproduced. After his job in the Yuan Shikai administration ended, he moved back to Beijing, whereupon he resumed his activities in the art and antiques markets. During this time, he specialized in dealing and brokering for foreigners. His grandson recalled Guo saying that he was willing to make money from selling porcelain objects to foreigners but he could not bear to rip-off Chinese people (keng Zhongguo ren ). 96 In 1925, Guo was appointed to the Palace Museum staff to serve as a member of the research staff on porcelain housed in its collections. That same year was also the inaugural year of the opening of the Palace Museum, which was, only a few decades earlier, the housing complex of the emperor s family. John Ferguson, an advisor to the Republican Government and at this point in time a permanent resident in Beijing, also assisted the Palace Museum staff in cataloguing an inventory of Chinese art. 97 The 1920s and 1930s then saw a flourishing of collaborative relationship between them: Guo and Ferguson worked jointly on many art deals, whereby profits made on sales of paintings and porcelain to American collectors was said to be equally divided between Guo Baochang and John Ferguson. 98 Together, they annotated a famous catalogue describing the porcelain objects in the collection of a Ming literati, Xiang Yuanbian who lived between 1525 and Guo s private lithographic printing press published 600
68 50 copies of the book, a collectors item in its own right: it was silk bound with gilt lettering and included eighty-three pages of descriptive text in Chinese and English and eightythree color plates. 99 English collector Stephen Bushell had translated the Xiang Yuanbian text into English and annotated the Chinese text in an earlier 1880s version published in London; Guo and Ferguson s version differed from the original and Bushell s in that it included a short biography of the Ming collector and colored lithographic portrait of Xiang Yuanbian (Figure 11 and Figure 12). Later, when writing his comprehensive Survey of Chinese Art, which was published in Shanghai by the Commercial Press in 1939, Ferguson referenced Guo s personal collection of art and cataloguing abilities. Clearly, their joint efforts in porcelain and art authentication and publishing had convinced Ferguson of Guo s abilities such that he vouched for and trusted Guo s judgment in the authentication and valuation of art. Given Guo s personal history, some of the prevalent themes in his Brief Description of Porcelain (Ciqi gaishuo) should be mentioned. His essay began with the origins of porcelain and the difference between porcelain and pottery, or ci and tao. This was an important issue Guo stressed in a study of a ceramic lute found in the collections of the Palace Museum in As Guo defined in 1929 and later echoed in 1935, We must remember that the production of pottery preceded that of porcelain. The difference between pottery and porcelain objects is found in the material of which they are made and not in the glaze. The body of pottery vessels is clay; the body of the porcelain is decomposed stone found only in certain localities. 100 In his porcelain essay, Guo again stressed that porcelain production can only happen in certain areas (chan ci you yiding quyu). 101 When Guo wrote these essays, the ceramic wares in vogue in
69 51 collectors circles outside of China were Song Dynasty wares, which were seen as the ideal beauty of form. 102 Influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, whereby the values of purity of color and form reigned, Song Dynasty porcelains stood in direct contrast with the colorfully ornate and lavishly decorated ceramics of the Ming and Qing dynasty porcelains. Bernard Rackam drew the distinction by referring specifically to the Guyuexuan wares exactly the ones produced under Guo Baochang s direction in Jingdezhen as exhibiting a tendency to over-decoration and sometimes inharmonious colouring. 103 Perhaps in contrast to the Western collectors penchant for simplicity over decoration, Guo drew attention to the material – the interiority – of the porcelain bodies rather than the glaze appearances. He explained the compositional raw materials in order to differentiate between porcelain that was produced in kilns around Jingdezhen from porcelain objects originating from other kiln sites, including Song-ware bodies, often described as coarse (cu ). He clearly felt that the Jingdezhen kilns were the best and should the porcelain industry be revived, none other than Jingdezhen should be the center of the efforts (chongzhen ciye, feicimoshu ye, ). 104 Later, he outlined the development of glazes, replicating contemporary understandings of the development from monochrome glazes to multi-colored glaze decoration techniques, again identifying the pinnacle of glaze production with Jingdezhen: Jingdezhen kilns, since the Song dynasty, have produced every type of ware that came before. 105 After giving an overview of glaze crackles and patterns, Guo then went on to describe the kilns at Jingdezhen in a section of its own. As with an earlier writing on Jingdezhen completed just before the fall of the Qing dynasty, the reigns of Kangxi,
70 52 Yongzheng, and Qianlong were named by Guo as the apex of porcelain. 106 Again, as general ceramic history works have pointed out, the reigns of these three emperors were the highpoints of porcelain technology in China, during which the ceramics made at Jingdezhen achieved a material composition of utmost quality and unsurpassed variation of glaze colors. 107 Guo wrote that they were exquisite in all respects and that the porcelains of those three eras surpassed all that came before (chaoyue qian gu). 108 What is particularly important to an understanding of Guo s conceptualization is that Guo attributed the quality of the porcelain produced in this era to the efforts of the Superintendents of the porcelain factories who achieved fame (dutao you ming zhe). Of the famous superintendents such as Zang Yingxuan, Lang Tingji, and Nian Xiyao, he listed Tang Ying of the Qianlong period as the one whose work brought about the zenith of the Jingdezhen kilns production. This is not surprising, since Tang Ying was the official kiln commissioner who had left the most voluminous written records of all imperial supervisors who served in office. How Tang Ying s writings and reputation developed is outside the scope of this dissertation though Tang Ying s impact will be discussed in the next chapters. What is notable is how Guo Baochang treated Tang Ying with heartfelt respect and identification in his writings; Guo even finished a yearly chronicle of Tang Ying s life and career in office following Tang s first involvement with the Jingdezhen kilns. 109 About Tang Ying s entire career working for the Imperial Household and court, Guo summarized wistfully: his entire life was intimately linked with ceramic affairs Tang Ying once wrote in his collections of writings, notes, and poems [a set of 19 vols. entitled Taoren xinyu] that his fundamental life mission to work in ceramics was a result of the imperial grace. Li Fu recorded,
71 53 Tang Ying once said that when he became Jiujiang tax official, he regretted not being able to focus completely on ceramics, which is what production required. This statement enables us to know who Tang Ying was. Tang Ying was never able to write a systematic treatise on ceramics. Thus, the secrets of the wares from his time period have been lost forever. What a true pity. 110 Guo Baochang linked a lifetime of service to the essential meaning of the ceramic official s life. In Guo s reasoning, the production of pottery was linked directly to people s efforts. He did not mention the handicraft or abilities of skillful artisans who worked to manufacture the porcelain bodies, the saggers, the glazes, and ornamental designs. In fact, while Guo himself had lived in Jingdezhen and observed production processes up-close, artisans and potters were rarely mentioned. Rather, what stand out in Guo s writings are the twin axes of porcelain objects and porcelain administrators sent from the emperor. In Guo s retrospective on Tang Ying, exquisite porcelain pieces and Tang Ying s written works were the valuable facts that merited Guo s attention and art collection. Guo also mentioned that his personal collection of art included some of Tang Ying s porcelain objects and calligraphy. The same themes are evident in the Brief Description of Porcelain essay on porcelain history written for the 1935 exhibitions. Guo s focus on imperial officials agency stand in contrast to conceptions of porcelain and ceramic art that were also in vogue at the time, such as Bernard Leach s works on Oriental pottery, or Stephen Bushell s works on Chinese porcelain, which either focused on individual artisan s accomplishments or the ceramic objects natural development. Guo put forth an outline of porcelain history and development that ignored historical realities. In fact, there is no scholarly consensus as to what a porcelain commissioner is. In the Chinese-language sources, they are variously referred to as
72 54 superintendent (duli guan) or in active terms such as resident vice-superintendents (zhuchang xieli). 111 In Qing government communications, officials overseeing kiln management were spoken of in such predicate terms as, assist in manufacture (xiezao), or supervise production (jianzao). 112 The entire notion of the dutao guan or imperial kiln commissioner is a result of later studies. The administrative structure governing Jingdezhen porcelain kilns during the Qing dynasty was not even systematic. Before 1723, the start of the Yongzheng emperor s reign, administration of the porcelain production at Jingdezhen belonged to central Qing government officials who did not necessarily reside in Jingdezhen. 113 Sometimes, the official assigned to the duties of managing and supervising porcelain manufacture was actually the Jiangxi governor general (xunfu). In other instances, they were officials who worked in the Ministry of Works, Forestry, and Parks. During Kangxi s time, Zang Yingxuan was sent from the Imperial Household Storage Office (Guangchusi zhushi ) to supervise production. In Kangxi s forty-fourth year (1705), Lang Tingji was appointed Jiangxi governor and responsible for Jingdezhen kiln production. Beginning with the Yongzheng reign ( ), Nian Xiyao, as the Grand Minister of the Imperial Household, assumed the duties of the Huaian customs barrier. Tang Ying was assigned three years later to live in Jingdezhen as an official reporting to Nian Xiyao. He went as an official from the Imperial Household as well. Still, throughout Tang s life, he did not stay in Jingdezhen. Eight years later in1736, Tang Ying began a series of posts as customs official at Huaian, Jiujiang, and later at Aohai. As the customs official, Tang Ying became so busy he requested a helper to assist with his duties, and one was sent in 1741 from the Imperial Household to serve under Tang Ying in the work of porcelain
73 55 production. After 1786, when the last Imperial Household official working at Jingdezhen committed suicide, responsibility for Jingdezhen kilns was transferred to the jurisdiction of either the General Administration Circuit Inspector of Prefects Guangxin, Raozhou, Jiujiang, and Nanchang or to the Jiujiang customs office (GuangRaoJiuNan dao Jiujiang guan jianduguan yaowu ) until the end of the dynasty in Moreover, real duties of day-to-day management of the potters, artisans, and laborers actually lay in the hands of the official who lived in Jingdezhen not the higher ranking supervisor who lived further away. The most effective of these resident officials was Lao Ge, a Manchurian Imperial Household Foreman (Neiwufu cuizong yaochang xiezao ) who reported to Tang Ying and then remained in Jingdezhen between 1741 and 1769 a total term of twenty-eight years. 114 Despite these shifting realities and diversity of ranks in charge of porcelain commissions, Guo still claimed for Tang Ying the credit of the official with the highest esteem. After Tang Ying, never again was an official sent to live and produce at the kilns [in Jingdezhen], declared Guo. 115 He singled out three other Qing officials assigned the task of porcelain production: the aforementioned Zang Yingxuan, who served in the 1680s, Lang Tingji, and Nian Xiyao of the Yongzheng period. During each of their terms working on porcelain, they lived in different places and all three managed the production of wares for the emperor. Guo Baochang worked in a similar capacity for Emperor Yuan Shikai. By writing a history of porcelain that imputed such importance to these officials, Guo wrote in such a way as to re-affirm his own significance. Here, writing about porcelain was actually writing a biography. Porcelain was not personified; porcelain in fact created personhood.
74 56 Constructing a link between personhood and porcelain collection in Guo s configuration of porcelain history was another instance whereby Guo recuperated Qing imperial practice. In the library of the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, there is a forty-volume catalogue itemizing 441 ceramic objects in total, which included snuff bottles, seven Qianlong period glass snuff bottles, twelve Yongzheng cloisonné porcelain ware (falangcai), and sixteen Qianlong polychrome (wucai) wares. Titled after the name of Guo s studio, the Zhizhai cicheng was a meticulously produced inventory of Guo s own porcelain collection. The arduously printed keepsake of his large porcelain collection consists of seven over-sized, cloth-matted boxes, each containing over-sized, string-bound volumes. As the enormity and lavishness of the catalogue attests, Guo was an avid collector and treasured his personal collection. Each porcelain object included a description of the object s height, mouth circumference, base circumference, and weight, in the Chinese language, of course. Within each volume, each ceramic piece corresponds to its photographs, likely a result of Guo s earlier photographic career. The objects were photographed not only from the front but also the bottom angle, with each photograph labeled correspondingly. They were black and white photographs, clearly developed, and measured slightly over 8 x 11 inches. Each volume was made of blue, stiff paper and had gold leaf decoration. All of the ceramic pieces were labeled in the same format: dynasty, reign name, ware (yao). The first volume included a carefully handwritten copy of Guo s essay Ciqi gaishuo on yellow paper decorated with gold leaf (Figure 13). Finally, the second volume focused solely on a single ceramic piece, a Chai ware. Pictures of his porcelain collection indicated that pieces were often stored on small display stands of wood or lacquer (Figure 14). However, the highlighted Chai piece was placed on a
75 57 peculiar type of stand that was labeled duobao che, which meant literally, a car of many treasures (Figure 15). As Figure 15 shows, it was indeed a stand shaped like a car, on top of which stood the precious Chai porcelain object. This was Guo Baochang s playful twist on a practice of delight (and knowledge) by Qing emperor Qianlong: the duobao ge (cabinet of many treasures), the historical significance of which will be discussed in the dissertation s third chapter. The point here is not so much that a collection reflects the individual collector s taste and thus personhood. Rather, it is to show how Guo s catalogue was an echo of, and a throwback to, the imperial relationship with porcelain, which was of course a byproduct of his career at Jingdezhen. Zhizhai cicheng was published in 1935 and perhaps Guo gave it to Percival David, knowing the influence of Percival David on defining porcelain and thus, hoping to raise the value of certain porcelain types, including the Guyuexuan he made for Yuan Shikai, for sale on the art market. 116 The last section of Guo s Brief Description of Porcelain focused on a description of the enameled cloisonné decorated porcelain called falangcai, variously referred to as Guyuexuan wares. As mentioned, these made their first appearance in the Kangxi period and achieved their technical apogee under Tang Ying. Yet there is little reason to assume they defined an era of porcelain production, being slighted in other ceramic manuals of the nineteenth century. 117 In fact, the material composition of these enamel materials and process of decoration were similar to the export wares, Jingdezhen porcelain bodies that were transported to be decorated in Canton in the nineteenth century. 118 The enameled porcelain wares praised by Guo Baochang were decorated and completed at the court and reproduced as the porcelains of
76 58 choice for the Yuan Shikai emperorship. Before the exhibition, Westerners did not appreciate these wares. Most likely, Guo Baochang benefited from such a public appraisal of Guyuexuan wares. He could thus elevate the value of the wares produced under his direction and now available for sale in the surging art market. In fact, in the 1920s and 1930s, besides the actual Guyuexuan porcelain produced for Yuan Shikai in 1915, the number of fake Guyuexuan wares made in imitation of the Qianlong period objects that Tang Ying directed increased exponentially. 119 Thus, not only did Guo have a hand in these reproductions but he most likely made a profit from them while at the same time boosting his self-image as a porcelain expert. After all, what else was Guo supposed to do with objects produced for a fallen and now deceased emperor? 1 This is sometimes referred to in the written sources as the Chinese Exhibition, London Exhibition, Exhibition of Chinese Art in London, etc. This chapter will refer to the London part of the exhibition as, The London Exhibition. 2 See articles from The Times newspaper on May 23, September 4, and September 14, Fu Zhenlun, Qishinian suojian suowen [Seventy Years of Observations] (Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue, 1997), See Meishu shenghuo [Arts and Life], April 19, 1935; Da Gongbao [L Impartial], Yishu zhou le, December 14, 1935; Da Gongbao, Yishu zhou kan, January 4, 1936; Da Gongbao, Lundun Zhongguo yishuzhanlan yuzhan deji [Special Issue on the Preliminary Exhibition of the London Exhibition of Chinese Art], Part I, April 6, 1936; Da Gongbao Lundun Zhongguo yishuzhanlan yuzhan deji [Special Issue on the Preliminary Exhibition of the London Exhibition of Chinese Art], Part II, April 13, Mme. Guo Taiqi, Introduction, in Chinese Art: An Introductory Handbook to Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Textiles, Bronzes & Minor Arts, ed., Roger Fry (London: Batsford Ltd., 1935). Madame Guo s introduction was first printed in The Queen newspaper, October 9 th, 1935.
77 59 6 John C. Ferguson, Chinese Art, The China Yearbook, ed., H.G.W. Woodhead (Shanghai: North China Daily News & Herald, 1938), 407. See also Jeannette Shambaugh Elliot, with David Shambaugh, The Odyssey of China s Imperial Art Treasures (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 83. For biographical information on Ferguson s role in China since the late Qing in the political arena, journalistic circles, and art connoisseurship in Republican Beijing, see Warren Cohen, East Asian Art and American Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 65-67; and Thomas Lawton, A Time of Transition: Two Collectors of Chinese Art (Kansas City: Spencer Museum of Art, 1991), See the Foreword and also Wen Fong s chapter in Possessing the Past: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, eds., Wen C. Fong and James Watt (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996), vii, 2. See also other articles in Possessing the Past: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei exhibition catalogue which describe the Exhibition in such similar and grandiose ways. Jason Steuber, The Exhibition of Chinese Art at the Burlington House, London, , The Burlington Magazine 148:1241 (2006): ; Jiang Jiehong, Diyici yuanzheng 1935 nian Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlanhui zai Lundun 1935 [The first International Exhibition of Chinese Art in London, 1935] Zhanlan yu shoucang wenti [Issues in Exhibition and Collecting] nv,ni (nd): I thank Professor Kuiyi Shen for providing me a copy of this article. 8 Recent archaeological digs in Hebei were also sent, as recorded in Fu Zhenlun, Zhongguo yishu Lundun guoji zhanlan hui chenlie zhi Hebei guwu, [Hebei artifacts exhibited at the London International Exhibition of Chinese Art] Hebei bowuguan huakan 139 (June, 1937): 6. 9 Xinwenbao April 15, See Chinese Organizing Committee, Catalogue of Exhibits at The Preliminary Exhibition in Shanghai April 18-May 1, 1935 (Nanjing: Chinese Organizing Committee, 1935). This is an English language catalogue. 10 See reportage in Xinwen bao and Shenbao, April 9, 1935-April 16, See Xinwen bao, April 10, See Shenbao, April 24-25, 1935; and Xinwenbao, April 13, Painters and archaeologists who attended included: Zhang Daqian, Pan Tianshou, Lin Yutang, Xu Beihong, Xie Gongzhan, and Wang Shengyuan. 13 Xue Quanceng, Lundun Yizhanhui Zhongguo zhanpin guomu ji, [Record of looking at the Chinese selected objects for the London Exhibition] Zhongguo xinlun 2:6 (July, 1936): 116.
78 60 14 Shenbao, April 8, Xinwenbao, April 9, Da Gongbao, July 30, The characters in the article were:. 17 Tie Yuan and Liu Liying, Qingdai dutaoguan in Jiangxi cangci quanji: Qing dai : 淸 [The complete collection of porcelain of Jiangxi province: porcelain of the Qing dynasty] (Beijing: Chaohua, 2005); Liu Lanhua and Zhang Bo, Qingdai taoci [Qing dynasty porcelain] (Harbin: Beifang wenwu zazhi, 1988). 18 See Xiang Zhuo, Jingdezhen taoye jishi [Records of the Porcelain Industry in Jindezhen] (1920) in Nanjing shi geye gaikuang diaocha Nanjing city survey of industries (Nanjing: Shoudu gejie tichang guohuo weiyuanhui diaochazu, 1935). Jingdezhen taoye jishi is also reprinted in Xiong Liao and Xiong Wei, comps., Zhongguo taoci guji jicheng 国 [Annotated collection of historical documents on ancient Chinese ceramics] (Shanghai: Shanghai wenhua chubanshe, 2006), See Xiong and Xiong, comps. (2006), 731 for the reference to Guo Baochang responsibilities for producing Yuan Shikai porcelain. 19 Thomas Lawton, A Time of Transition: Two Collectors of Chinese Art (1991) gives an overview of Ferguson s career in researching and collecting Chinese art. 20 Before the Exhibition of Chinese Art, the Royal Academy had already hosted exhibits highlighting specifically Italian, French, German, and other national art traditions. Zhi you bei qinzhan de tudi meiyou bei qinzhan de wenhua Zhongguo zai qianyun zhong de zhanlan,, 没 国宝 迁运 览 [Conquered territory but unconquered culture] Zijin cheng 132:5 (2005): n.p. Eumorfopoulos collection of ceramics was the basis of the British Museum s Chinese ceramics collection that was established first in the 1890 s when the effort to build a collection Chinese art at the museum began. 21 Chinese Art: Exhibition in London Next Winter, The Times, January 17, In Na Zhiliang, Dian shou gugong guobao qishi nian [Protecting national treasures for seventy years] (Beijing: Zijincheng, 2004). 23 Percival David, A Preliminary Survey, The Burlington Magazine, lxvii: 393 (December, 1935), 239.
79 61 24 Craig Clunas, China In Britain: The Imperial Collections, in Grasping the World: The Idea of a Museum, eds., Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago, (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004). 25 The caveat here of course is that any person today who has access to the constant flurry of articles and attention covering the Chinese art scene in such major newspapers as the New York Times or online blogs such as is able to observe that the views held towards contemporary art scene in China are more than optimistic. 26 The Chinese Nationalist Government came to hold centralized power in Generally scholars agree that the government s efficacy of rule and sovereignty ended around 1937 with the bombing of Shanghai by the Japanese. The party in power is often referred to as the Kuomintang (KMT) and I use the hanyu pinyin system of romanization: Guomindang (GMD). 27 See Lloyd Eastman, The Abortive Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974) for this dour view of the Nanjing Decade. For Ma Heng and his career, see Ma Wenchong, Gugong guobao de shouhu zhe, [Protector the Palace Museum s national treasures] Zongheng (1997): Ma Heng ( ) was also known as Ma Shuping. 28 The organizing committee included Minister of Education Wang Shijie, Palace Museum president Ma Heng, Minister of Finance T.V. Soong, and other state officials and experts of art. 29 Zhi you bei qinzhan de tudi meiyou bei qinzhan de wenhua Zhongguo zai qianyun zhong de zhanlan, (2005). For biographical information on Tang Lan, see Tang Lan xiansheng quanji lunji [Collected writings of Tang Lan] (Beijing: Gugong bowu yuan chuban, 1995); also for Tang Lan s cataloguing of bronzes chosen for the exhibitions, see Canjia Lundun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan hui tong qi shuoming, [Annotated index of bronze objects for the London International Exhibition of Chinese Art] Shixue luncong 2 (November 1935): Wu Hufan, Da Gongbao, April 13, On Wu Hufan s traditionalism and view of the past as distinctly separate from the present, see Joseph Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958), Zhuang Shangyan, Fu Ying canjia Lundun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan huiji [Record of going to England to attend the International London Exhibition of Chinese Art], Beiping gugong bowuyuan nian kan (1936).
80 62 32 Zhuang Shangyan Fu Ying canjia Lundun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan huiji (1936). 33 Chinese Organzing Committee, Canjia Lundun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhan lan hui chu pin tushuo [Illustrated Catalogue of objects selected for the London International Exhibition of Chinese Art] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1936), iii. 34 Zhuang Shangyan, Fu Ying canjia Lundun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan huiji, section The English did not understand this latter principle. See Zhuang Shangyan, Fu Ying canjia Lundun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan huiji. 36 Zhuang Shangyan, ibid., section 3. Zhuang s memoirs lists the names of the special English committee that traveled to Shanghai to finalize the list. 37 Departure of Treasures for England, The Times, June 8, Departure of Treasures for England, The Times, June 8, Zhi you bei qinzhan de tudi meiyou bei qinzhan de wenhua Zhongguo zai qianyun zhong de zhanlan, This article, the author of which I have not yet ascertained, contains a detailed summary of the event. It also includes pictures of these Palace Museum staff workers, the exhibition spaces, and a letter of thanks written by Guo Baochang, Jingdezhen imperial commissioner for porcelain production under Yuan Shikai. 40 Margaret Kao, China s Response to the West in Art: , unpublished Ph.d. dissertation, Stanford University, 1972, 146; Zhuang Shangyan Fu Ying canjia Lundun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan huiji, section Margaret Kao, China s Response to the West in Art: (1972), Percival David, A Preliminary Survey, R. L. Hobson, The Chinese Exhibition at the Burlington House, Apollo: A Journal for the Arts 22 (December, 1935): For a precise concise statement of Orientalist structures of knowledge, see Timothy Mitchell, Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order, in Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum (2004), 442.
81 63 45 See also Xinwenbao, April 10, 1935, and Da Gongbao, December 14, 1935; August 13, 19, and 20, The Glasgow Herald and the London Observer were both quoted and reprinted in the Chinese translation. 46 See The Times, December 3, 1935 for the public speeches made by Guo Taiqi and Laurence Binyon. 47 Mme. Guo Taiqi, Introduction, in Chinese Art: An Introductory Handbook to Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Textiles, Bronzes & Minor Arts (1935), xvi; for Guo Taiqi s comments and the use of the word force, see The Times, December 3, See Zheng Tianxi s remarks at the opening luncheon in London reported in article in The Times, November 12, Ye Gongchuo, Da Gongbao, April 6, Teng Gu, Xinwenbao, April 16, Zheng Tianxi s official name was Zheng Futing. See Howard Boorman et al., Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 275. Zheng Tianxi, Canjia Lundun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan hui baogao, [Report on attending the London International Exhibition of Chinese Art] Da Gongbao, December 14, The exhibition generated a flurry of special lectures at the Burlington House which were published as related survey books on Chinese art and civilization, including Zheng Futing s (also spelled F.T. Cheng), Civilization and Art of China: Lectures (London: n.p., 1936). 51 As Timothy Mitchell has argued, an exhibition s distinction between objects representational value and the reality embodied therein was part of a historical shift in modern epistemological modes. 52 For a discussion of linear teleology and its relationship to the writing of nationcentered history, see Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Benedict Anderson Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991). 53 Fu Zhenlun, Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan canguan ji [Record of viewing the International Exhibtion of Chinese Art], Beiping gugong bowuyuan nian kan (1936): See Margaret Kao, China s Response to the West in Art (1972), Stephen W. Bushell, Chinese Art, 2 vols. (London: Wyman, ).
82 64 56 Stephen W. Bushell, L art chinois, trans., H.D Ardenne de Tizac (Paris: Librairie Renouard, H. Laurens, 1910). 57 Dai Yue, trans. Zhongguo meishu [Chinese Art] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshu guan, nd edition [1923, 1 st edition]). 58 See James Hevia, English Lessons (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003) for a critical analysis of the connections between Bushell, the establishment of the discipline of art history in England, and the phenomenon of looting. Hevia points out that the objects were sold by the Qing government to raise funds in order to pay the indemnities exacted by the foreign governments in Beijing for recompense the loss resulting from the Boxer uprising. 59 Zhuang Shangyan, Fu Ying canjia Lundun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan huiji (1936), Wu Hufan, Lin Yutang in Da Gongbao, April 16, 1935; also their articles in Xinwen bao, April 24, Teng Gu, Xinwenbao, April 25, 1935:,. 62 Wu Hufan, Lin Yutang in Da Gongbao, April, 16, Wu Hufan, Da Gongbao, April, 16, 1935: The characters are Ye Gongchuo, Da Gongbao April 6, Da Gongbao, August 13, Zhuang Shangyan, Fu Ying canjia Lundun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan huiji, 147. See also Zheng Tianxi s report on his role as protector of these artifacts: Zheng Tianxi, Canjia Lundun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan hui baogao (1936). 67 John C. Ferguson, Reflections on the London Exhibition of Chinese Art, T ien Hsia Monthly 2:5 (May, 1936): Xu Beihong, Da Gongbao, April 13, Chinese here oppose plans for exhibit, Peiping chronicle, January 22, Xue Quanceng Lundun Yizhanhui Zhongguo zhanpin guomu ji, Fu Zhenlun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan canguan ji, 167.
83 65 72 Fu Zhenlun, Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan canguan ji, John Ferguson, Reflections on the London Exhibition of Chinese Art (1936): The Times, January 15, Da Gongbao Special Issue on the Preliminary Exhibition of the London Exhibition of Chinese Art. 76 Ye Gongchuo s article was reprinted in Shenbao, April 9, 1935, and first published in the issue in Da Gongbao, April 6, 1935; Mme. Guo Taiqi, Introduction, in Chinese Art (1935). 77 See Qin Dashu, Lun yaoxi gainian de xingcheng, yiyi, ji qi juxian xing,,, [About the kiln system concept development, its meanings, and its limitations] Wenwu 62:5 (2007): One of the most important discoveries was the archaeological site of Northern Song city of Jule gu in present-day southwest Hebei province, Pingxiang county. See also the spate of Jingdezhen specific studies that were published around the time of the exhibition and the discussions of porcelain and Chinese art were taking place: Jiang Siqing, Jingdezhen ciye shi [History of the Porcelain Industry in Jingdezhen] (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1936); Li Haoting, Jingdezhen taoci gaikuang [Survey of Jingdezhen Ceramics] (Shanghai: Zhengzhong shuju, 1937); Xiang Zhuo, Jingdezhen taoye jishi (1920). The point that recent excavated finds in Jiangxi influenced the reconsideration of dating and authentication of specific found objects is the point made by Ferguson in his article. Thus, Ferguson criticized the confusion and arrogance of the London Committee s labeling and identification of sent porcelains from China. See John C. Ferguson, Reflections on the Exhibition, 438. The? was part of the London Committee s actual display labels, as noted by John Ferguson. 78 Susan Buck-Morss, Dialectics of Seeing (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1989), 81. See Tony Bennett, Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge,1995). 79 Guo Baochang has been written about in very few scholarly works, and his name appears in quite a few informal sources, including memoirs, art history ceramics studies, which are all based on his own writings or contemporary to his lifetime and career. The various accounts of his life are not in agreement over his dates of death. My account of his life, career, and significance in this chapter is reconstructed primarily through: Mark Chou, A Discourse on Hung Hsien Porcelain (San Francisco: F.L. Chou, 1987); Dong Lianzhi, Xinfaxian Tang Ying Taozheng shiyugao zixu, [Newly discovered Tang Ying preface to his Taozheng shiyugao] Liaoning daxue
84 66 xue bao 125, 1 (1994): 78; Guo Baochang, ed., Qing gaozong yuzhi yongci shi lu [Poems by Emperor Qianlong Inscribed on Porcelains] (Peking: Zhizhai shushe, 1917, 1929). Guo Baochang, Zhizhai cicheng [Catalogue of Porcelain in the Zhizhai Collection] (Peking: Zhizhai shu she, 1935). John C. Ferguson, “A Ceramic Lute of the Sung Dynasty by Guo Shiwu,” China Journal 11 (1929); Guo Baochang, Gugong bianqin ji, [A lute in the Palace Museum] Gugong zhoukan 1 (1929); Yu Ying, “Hua Shuo Hongxian Ci,” [Speaking of Hongxian Porcelain], Minguo chunqiu, no. 4 (1994); ‘Zhizhai’ cang pin shen jia gao” [The value of Zhizhai collection pieces is high], Cnlife365, March 28, 2005, < accessed April 22, 2007; Ma Chang, Yidai cijia Guo Baochang, [A generation s porcelain expert Guo Baochang] Hainei yu haiwai 内 5 (2006): 58-59; Guo Baochang and John Calvin Ferguson, trans. and annot., Noted Porcelain of Successive Dynasties (Beijing: Zhizhai shushe, 1931); Guo Baochang, Tang Jun gong xiansheng taowu jinian biao, [Chronicle of Tang Ying s career] reprinted in Beijing tushuguan cang zhen ben nianpu congkan, ed., Beijing tushuguan (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe, 1999). 80 Chinese Organizing Committee, The London International Exhibition of Chinese Art: Catalogue of Exhibits at The Preliminary Exhibition in Shanghai, April 8-May 1, 1935 (Nanjing: Chinese Organizing Committee, 1935), Part III. This is a rare edition of an initial catalogue publication and is at the Needham Research Institute library in Cambridge, England. 81 W.B Honey, Foreword, in Later Chinese Porcelain: The Ch ing Dynasty, First American edition, Soame Jenyns (New York: Yoseloff, 1965). The book was written in the 1940s in England. See Jenyns, Later Chinese Porcelain: The Ch ing Dynasty, 77 for another reference to Guo Baochang. 82 Chang Yu-chuan, The Legal Practitioner in China, The Chinese Social and Political Science Review 22:2 (1938) gives one an idea of who the translator was. 83 Chinese Organizing Committee, Canjia Lundun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan chupin tushuo, (1936). Catalogue of the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1935 [first, second edition]; 1936 [third ed.]); The Chinese Exhibition: A Commemorative Catalogue of the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, Royal Academy of Arts, November 1935-March 1936 (London: Faber and Faber, 1936). 84 I thank Professor Dorothy Ko for clarifying the name of the pawn shop.
85 67 85 Yu Ying, “Hua Shuo Hongxian Ci” (1994); Cao Rulin believed that Guo Baochang simply began as a servant in the Yuan household. It does not make sense given that Guo did evince some skill at photographic printing in the production of a forty volume oversized catalogue on hard paper of his own art collection. The set is stored in the rare books library at the Percival David Foundation. Mark Chou, A Discourse on Hung Hsien Porcelain, 9 and Thomas Lawton (1991). 87 Xiang Zhuo, Jingdezhen Taoye jishi (1920). See also Jingdezhen taoci shigao [Draft History of Jingdezhen] ed., Jiangxi Light Industry Department, Ceramics Institute (Beijing: Sanlian shudian chuban, 1959), Ma Chang, Yidai cijia Guo Baochang, 58. Guo Baochang was the grandfather of Ma Chang, the author of the article. 89 Mark Chou, A Discourse on Hung Hsien Porcelain, Ru porcelains were in production for only a brief twenty-year span between the years 1086 and 1106 just before the northern territory was conquered by the Mongol forces, forcing the kilns to shut down production. Presently, less than seventy known pieces are extant in collections worldwide: National Palace Museum, Da Guan: Bei Song Ruyao tezhan : Grand View: Special Exhibition of Ju Ware from the Northern Sung Dynasty (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2006). 91 Shih Chingfei, A Unique Collection of Painted Enamels at the Qing Court, unpublished conference paper at the National Palace Museum (Taipei), For example, see archives of Yangxindian zaobanchu qingdang, Kangxi 32 nd year. 93 Jingdezhen Tao lu, juan 7. The version I have used most often in the dissertation s reference notes is Lan Pu and Zheng Tinggui, Jingdezhen taolu [Records on Jingdezhen Porcelain] (1815), ed., Mian Lian (Jinan: Shandong huabao, 2004). The book has been republished and gone through many reprints in the twentieth century. Hereafter, my citations to Jingdezhen Tao lu refer to the Mian Lian edition unless otherwise indicated. 94 Urban Council, Brush and Clay: Chinese Porcelain of the Early 20 th Century (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1990). 95 Dong Lianzhi, Xinfaxian Tang Ying taozheng shiyugao zixu (1994): Ma Chang, Yidai cijia Guo Baochang, 59.
86 68 97 John C. Ferguson, trans., “A Ceramic Lute of the Sung Dynasty (1929). 98 Correspondence between John C. Ferguson and son Charles. June 11, John Calvin Ferguson family papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Archives, Smithsonian Institution; Correspondence between John C. Ferguson and son Charles, June 9, 1935, John Calvin Ferguson family papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Archives, Smithsonian Institution 99 Guo Baochang and John Calvin Ferguson, Noted Porcelain of Successive Dynasties (1931). 100 Guo Baochang, Gugong bianqinji. 101 Guo Baochang Ciqi gaishuo, in Canjia Lundun Zhongguo yishu guoji zhanlan chupin tushuo (Nanjing: 1935; Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1936, 1937). 102 Bernard Rackam, A Survey of Ceramics in the Exhibition of Chinese Art at Burlington House, Apollo 23 (January 1936): Bernard Rackam, A Survey of Ceramics in the Exhibition of Chinese Art at Burlington House, Guo Baochang, Ciqi gaishuo, Guo Baochang, Ciqi gaishuo, Chen Liu s Tao Ya [Ceramic Elegances], written between 1906 and 1910, is the text I am referring to here. An analysis of it comprises the fourth and final chapter of the dissertation. 107 See general overview works in art history such as: Catalog of the special exhibition of K’ang-Hsi, Yung-Cheng and Ch’ien-Lung porcelain ware from the Ch’ing dynasty in the National Palace Museum (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 1986) or, S.J. Vainker, Chinese Pottery and Porcelain: From Prehistory to the Present (London: British Museum Press, 1991). 108 Guo Baochang, Ciqi gaishuo, Guo Baochang, Tang Jun gong xiansheng taowu jinian biao. 110 Guo Baochang, Tang Jun gong xiansheng taowu jinian biao. The Chinese characters are:
87 Jingdezhen Tao lu, juan See the Cai Hebi, Jianduguan, xiezao yu Qianlong yuyao xingshuai de guanxi, [Relationship between the rise and fall of Qianlong imperial kilns and kiln supervisor and deputy assistants] Gugong xueshu jikan 21:2 (2003): 39-55; The memorials quoted in Cai s article show a wide array of terms with which these officials sent from the court were referred. 113 Liu Lanhua and Zhang Bo, Qingdai taoci (1988), Liu and Zhang assign the category of dutaoguan to all types of officials who had a role in management. The essay, Qingdai yuyaochang de dutaoguan, in Tie Yuan and Liu Liying, Jiangxi cangci quanji: Qing dai (2005), also uses this term dutaoguan to encompass a system of administration that actually included various officials of different position names. 114 This section was drawn from the citations of Qing government memorials quoted in Cai Hebi, Jianduguan, xiezao yu Qianlong yuyao xingshuai de guanxi (2003): Guo Baochang, Tang Jun gong xiansheng taowu jinian biao, Guo Baochang, Zhizhai cicheng (1935). I thank Stacy Pierson and Elizabeth Jackson for opening the rare book library of the now in-transition Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, which had been shut down for a move to the British Museum in fall Exactly how the Zhizhai cicheng ultimately became part of the library in London is unknown. My analysis was conducted over several visits as the library was only able to be opened to my use for two hours at a time and my guess regarding its provenance is a result of conversations with Stacy Pierson and Elizabeth Jackson. 117 See fn. 93 in this same chapter. 118 This production process is similar to the wares that were exported in increasing number to Southeast Asia during the nineteenth century. See the third chapter of the dissertation. 119 Yu Ying, “Hua Shuo Hongxian Ci, 57.
88 70 Figure 1. Cover and Academia Sinica Supplement, to the Chinese Organizing Committee s catalogue of objects sent to London, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art Figure 2. Actual letter accompanying catalogue given by Wang Shijie to Oscar Raphael. Fitzwilliam Museum Reference Library, Cambridge, UK
89 71 Figure 3. Guo Baochang (right) standing in the garden of John C. Ferguson s (left) home in Beijing, April, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Archives.
90 72 Figure 4. Route map from Zhuang Yan, Shantang qingyu (Taipei: Gugong bowu yuan, 1980), 153. Figure 5. Map of Gallery Layout Catalogue and Illustrated Supplement to the International Exhibition of Chinese Art ( ) (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1935), xxii.
91 Figure 6. Guo Baochang s privately printed Ciqi gai shuo. Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art. 73
92 74 Figure 7. Guo Baochang inscription in gift of Ciqi gaishuo to George Eumorfopoulos, April, Figure 8. Guo Baochang s hand-written inscription on first page of Ciqi gaishuo given to Percival David, April, 1935.
93 75 Figure 9. List of lectures from the Royal Academy of Arts. Catalogue of the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1935). Figure 10. Cover of translation to Guo Baochang s Ciqi gaishuo.
94 76 Figure 11. Top: Cover of Guo Baochang and Ferguson s Noted Porcelain of Successive Dynasties. Bottom: added portrait of the supposed author and illustrator of the catalogue, Ming dynasty collector Xiang Yuanbian.
95 77 Figure 12. Top: Copy of two albums of the Xiang catalogue: one with notes and one without notes by Guo and Ferguson. Bottom: example of the notes in preparation for annotation. Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art
96 78 Figure 13. Picture of Guo Baochang s forty-volume personal porcelain collection catalogue. Top: Cover of volumes 4-8. Bottom: Ciqi gaishuo in Guo s handwritten calligraphy. Guo Baochang, Zhizhai cicheng (Peking: Zhizhai shushe, 1935). Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art.
97 79 Figure 14. Decorative stand on which Guo placed ceramic pieces. Figure 15. The duobao che (car of many treasures). Guo Baochang, Zhizhai cicheng (Peking: Zhizhai shushe, 1935). Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art.
98 2. Texts on Jingdezhen: The Record of Jingdezhen Ceramics and the Development of a Canon This chapter describes the provenance of major sources of information concerning ceramic history and production leading up to the first individual monograph to focus on Jingdezhen porcelain written in any language, the Jingdezhen Tao lu (Record of Jingdezhen Ceramics). The overall chapter concerns the publication, significance, and historical context of this key text. First written in the last year of the Qianlong period by a Jingdezhen literatus, the book was later edited, augmented, and finally published in While this text forms the basis of many twentieth-century studies on ceramic technology and art conducted by scholars both in and outside of China, few studies concentrate on the history of this text in terms of its nature both as a material artifact and as an inter-textual document. A key focus of this chapter s narrative is to stress the Jingdezhen Tao lu s relationship with other texts on ceramics; the chapter is an attempt to go beyond a positivist reading of the text. Instead, it aims to engage in an inter-textual analysis that views the ideas and concepts in the book as having developed in relationship to their printing contexts. In the Chinese language, it was the first attempt to produce a comprehensive book on porcelain production and aesthetics focused on Jingdezhen that was eventually published in a non-official context. The 1815 edition was also the first document published specifically about Jingdezhen porcelain that was accompanied by visual images. Unlike twentieth-century exhibition catalogues and art journals, Jingdezhen Tao lu and its accompanying illustrations represent a mode of understanding porcelain s development before porcelain was tied categorically and definitively to national identity 80
99 81 and culture. First, the chapter begins by giving an overview of the types of written literature concerning Jingdezhen. Then, it considers the Jingdezhen Tao lu s publication history after it first appeared in Finally, this chapter includes a close analysis of the document s content, including both the text and images through a comparison between the two major monographs produced on porcelain in the late eighteenth and turn of the nineteenth centuries. It attempts to infer the historical significance of the Jingdezhen Tao lu by adducing its place in the historiography of Jingdezhen porcelain and tracing its circulation history. I analyze this text s significance in the context of three turn-of-thenineteenth century developments: a decline in imperial patronage, a change in the court s administration over Jingdezhen, and a shift towards Canton-centered export markets. My analysis will shed light on the nature of material objects and visual artifacts in the context of a local elite s intellectual activity and the Qing empire at the cusp of a nineteenthcentury epistemological process identified by Joseph Levenson as the movement from culturalism to nationalism. 1 I. The Emergence of Jingdezhen Studies: a Historiography of Chinese Language Texts An account of Tao lu’s meaning in the early nineteenth century turns our attention first to a general history of texts on Jingdezhen porcelain before the first printing of Jingdezhen Tao lu. This section considers the significance of Jingdezhen Tao lu by way of a comparison with and pre-1815 textual sources on ceramics in order to shed light on how texts about porcelain were produced and disseminated before the nineteenth century. Between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, Tao lu was by no means the only document written about Jingdezhen, porcelain manufacturing, and kiln ware styles in the Chinese language. Before the first publication of Tao lu in 1815, Jingdezhen had already produced a plethora of scattered writings, more than any ceramic-producing site in imperial
100 82 China. Tao lu was in some sense an assemblage of all the previous writings on various ceramic wares, kilns, collection, and production practices. 2 By bringing together a myriad of previous disparate sources in one individual book, Tao lu’s comprehensiveness qualifies it as the first specialized book to present an account of Jingdezhen porcelain administration, techniques, and styles since the invention of ceramics in China around 8000 B.C.E. up through the late eighteenth century. The book includes numerous references from previous scattered remarks about porcelain as recorded in county and provincial gazetteers of Fuliang and Jiangxi, treatises concerned with agriculture and crafts, and connoisseurship literature. Among the books cited were such connoisseurship manuals as the Tang Dynasty ( ) classic on tea called Chajing (Classic on Tea) by Lu Yu 陆 ( ), the late- Ming text on art and archaeological objects called Gegu yaolun (Essential Criteria of Antiquities), Wen Zhenheng’s ( ) Zhangwu zhi (Treatise on Superfluous Things), a Qing dynasty text Wenfang sikao, and technical treatises such as Tiangong kaiwu of Zheng Tinggui by no means hid his reliance on the previous texts as section ten included the sources upon which he drew to explain such factoids as differences between two shades of celadon or origins of the word tao (ceramics). By bringing together the smattering of written descriptions on ceramics, Jingdezhen Tao lu can be said to have folded all these titles and works under a general topic heading called “Jingdezhen ceramics.” Hence the title specifically consisted of the name Jingdezhen. Because of its thorough citations and references to ancient lesser known texts, Jingdezhen Tao lu brought to light an entire tradition of texts on ceramic objects in the Chinese language. Due to its subsequent circulation and broad appeal, Jingdezhen Tao lu was not only canonized, but also made possible the canon on porcelain because of its research.
101 83 Before the publication of Jingdezhen Tao lu, information about Jingdezhen production had disseminated mainly through local gazetteers. Much of the writings that mentioned Jingdezhen included both observations on imperial court and local governance policies of the porcelain industry and facts regarding the production process and porcelain composition. Thus, it is difficult to categorize gazetteers as being strictly connoisseurship literatures, technical treatises, or local society records. For instance, the Yuan dynasty record about Jingdezhen production activity, Tao ji (Ceramic Memoirs) by Jiang Qi, was accessible to researchers writing during the Qianlong ( ) and post-qianlong era only because of its inclusion in Kangxi ( ) and Qianlong ( ) editions of the Fuliang country gazetteer. 4 Pere d Entrecolles, the French Jesuit priest who made several discovery trips to Jingdezhen in the early 1700s studied the Fuliang county gazetteer while spying in Jingdezhen and thus was able to refer to Jiang s text when sending letters on porcelain production. 5 In his notes about the imperial administration of Jingdezhen kilns, another early eighteenth-century writer, Wu Yunjia of Hangzhou, recorded porcelain s material composition, geographical location of clays, and unique instances in the history of Jingdezhen porcelain production in a short gazetteer called Fuliang taozhengzhi (Record on Pottery Management at Fuliang). 6 It too was a text transmitted by its inclusion in the Fuliang county gazetteers and covered primarily the history of porcelain during the Ming dynasty and the first few years of the Qing. 7 Some of his anecdotes were rather fantastical, including a story about Ming dynasty kilns producing high-grade porcelain only after a person jumped into the fire. Wu s history of Jingdezhen porcelain
102 84 management was in fact his abridged version of Tao Shu (Ceramic Book). 8 Tao Shu was itself a special section in successive editions of the provincial gazetteer recompiled in 1597, the Jiangxi sheng dazhi (Great Gazetteer of Jiangxi Province). 9 Wu Yunjia s Fuliang taozhengzhi attracted the attention of the imperial library compilation Siku quanshu (Four Treasuries) editors, who categorized the text under the History section (shi bu) and Political Administration subcategories (Zheng shu lei). 10 It was not included in the seven various copies of the librarys books reproduced across the country, but Wu s text did receive notice in the index s list of titles (cunmu). 11 The full text of Wu s Fuliang taozhengzhi did not appear in print until 1851 in an anthology of collected rare and old books edited and compiled by Huang Zhimo titled Xunmintang cong shu. 12 Scattered references to porcelain also appeared in literati jottings, a genre of writing known as biji. The Southern Song dynasty historian and writer Hong Mai s Rong zhai suibi (Random Jottings of the Rongzhai Studio) and the late Ming literatus Li Rihua s ( ) Zitao xuan zazhui (Random Jottings of the Purple Peach Studio) both mentioned ceramics from Fuliang and Jingdezhen as well as ceramics from other production sites. 13 Such jottings included seemingly objective statements describing the hierarchies of various ware styles, with Jingdezhen often only one of the many featured. By the eighteenth century, however, jottings of this sort that were most directly related to Jingdezhen porcelain had also found their way into the historical record via recompilations of provincial or county-level local gazetteers. Additionally, these biji references to porcelain had transformed into a genre of specialized individual texts about
103 85 a variety of collected objects in their own right, forming a social phenomenon that Craig Clunas has called a discourse on objects. 14 Between the second half of the sixteenth century and the first few years of the seventeenth century, texts about antique things found widespread circulation and increased frequency of publication, a phenomenon symptomatic of and instrumental to social distinctions based on a system of preferences and taste. 15 Notable examples include Gegu yao lun, which of course was a text also reproduced in the Siku quanshu. A Qing dynasty successor of such biji on things was the Wenfang sikao (Research on the Scholars Studio) a text held in low regard by the writers of the Jingdezhen Tao lu. Wenfang sikao was an illustrated manuscript about a scholar s desk and writing implements and was itself a compilation of various texts. 16 Besides ceramic wares, the text recorded observations about the origins and qualities of different inkstones and bronzes. In so far as ceramics were concerned, the compiler and author, Tang Bingjun, who was a specialist in medicine and ginseng root, had somehow obtained another essay on ceramics. Tang Bingjun then included the other essay on ceramics in his Wenfang sikao. 17 It was Liang Tongshu s text, Guyao qikao, which gave an overview of all types of kiln styles (wares), praising qing (celadon) as the best. The most valuable of ceramic types are celadon wares, (Taoqi qing wei gui ) as he commented. 18 But these were not texts specifically on ceramics or on Jingdezhen. Rather they were about various collectibles of different wares and kiln types. Each section of the text was entitled, x kiln-ware (x yao). Liang described the style and patterns of bronzes and ceramics in a piece called Gutong ciqi kao, of which the section entitled Guyao qikao comprised the part devoted to ceramics.
104 86 From the perspective of treatises on technical skills and material production, one predecessor to the Tao lu deserves special mention: the most important general work written on technology during the Ming dynasty, the Tiangong kaiwu (Heaven s Craft and the Creation of Things) written by Song Yingxing. Tiangong kaiwu first appeared in Encyclopedic in breadth, it contains details about the manufacture of ceramics and other major industrial and agricultural techniques such as metallurgy, paper-making, and the growing of grains. Most likely, the information about porcelain manufacture was obtained first hand since Song was born in Fengxian in northern Jiangxi, just thirty miles west of Nanchang, and spent some of his official career as an education officer for the Fenyi district, which is only about a hundred miles southwest of Poyang lake. Poyang lake was the center of market flow as the Jiujiang customs station was located on its northeast corner and was the transaction point through which all porcelain from Jingdezhen passed to the imperial court or domestic market. Given that Tiangong kaiwu was written while Song Yingxing was at Fenyi, a geographically proximate county to the site of porcelain exchange, Song likely gained up-to-date information about the making of porcelain and ceramics. Like the first and fourth chapters of the Tao lu, Tiangong kaiwu s contents emphasized the material processes of manufacturing and composition. Whereas the Tao lu focused specifically on porcelain and fine wares made at Jingdezhen, Tiangong kaiwu s section on ceramics gave an overview of a range of ceramic objects including clay, building materials for vernacular architecture, domestic storage vessels, and only lastly porcelain. Unlike Tao lu, Tiangong kaiwu was not a specialized study of high-fired fine porcelain from Jingdezhen but a general guide to various techniques necessary for the production of everyday functional material objects, only one of which was ceramics. Its survival as a text can be traced to its reprint in
105 87 the Siku quanshu, as no remaining copies can be found today of the text from the time of its first printing in the late Ming period. In fact, the text s survival outside an imperial publishing context owes itself to a manuscript copy found in Japan in the 1880s, when the late Qing antiquarian researcher Luo Zhenyu rediscovered the text and brought it back to China. 19 Before the publication of Tao lu in the early nineteenth century, there were therefore three major publishing contexts for texts on Jingdezhen during the Qing dynasty: gazetteers, including provincial gazetteer Jiangxi tongzhi (1683, 1732) and county gazetteer Fuliang xianzhi (1682, 1783); the imperial publishing project linked to the imperial library, the Siku quanshu, completed in the late 1770s; and literati jottings of taste dispersed among anthologies and personal writings. One of the most important compilations of old writings was the ten-volume set, Longwei mishu, which was printed in 1794 by a Qing dynasty compiler Ma Junliang. The Longwei mishu included a printing of the 1774 monograph on porcelain history and wares, Tao Shuo, which was written by Zhu Yan, a literati who was an official secretary to Grand Palace Coordinator Wu (Da zhong cheng Wu ) of Jiangxi province. 20 This was the edition that the authors of Jingdezhen Tao lu read. 21 Taken together, besides the literati jottings about their personal aesthetic preferences, the corpus of texts written or published during the Qing dynasty on porcelain history reflected the authorship of provincial and county administrators. II. Life and Career of a Book: Jingdezhen Tao lu
106 88 Since its first appearance in print in 1815, the text and illustrations of the Jingdezhen Tao lu have had a circuitous publication journey. The preface of the original edition, coupled with biographical data about its two authors gleaned from prefectural and county gazetteers shed light on the circumstances behind its first publication in printed form. The text of the book was a joint effort. the first page of each section (juan) indicated the original author as being a teacher named Lan Pu (zi: Binnan 浜 ). Each section s first page also included the name of the editor and compiler (bu ji ) Zheng Tinggui (zi: Wengu ), who was Lan s student (men ren ). Both of the authors, Lan Pu and Zheng Tinggui, were described as Fuliang district residents, and thus Jingdezhen natives. By the time of its original publication in 1815, the teacher Lan Pu had already passed away some twenty years earlier, presumably in He left behind a handwritten manuscript, the text of the Jingdezhen Tao lu. 23 As the student Zheng Tinggui noted, [my teacher] left behind an unfinished manuscript (juan zhi ) upon his death, and subsequently this manuscript has been buried and decaying away in his cabinets. 24 As most scholars agree, Lan Pu likely began writing his portions of the text at some point after Because Lan s only son, and thus heir, had also passed away, the draft of the manuscript remained in the home of Lan s widow, whereupon his student Zheng Tinggui gained access to the draft. In 1811, the sixteenth year of the Jiaqing emperor s reign, Zheng Tinggui presented Lan s draft to Liu Bing (hao: Liu Kezhai ), then the county magistrate (zhixian ). Zheng Tinggui was the tutor for Liu Bing s second eldest son. Liu Bing was a native of Wanping, Shuntian Prefecture, in Zhili province, and he earned the rank of an imperial scholar, passing the jinshi exam in Since no book devoted to ceramics had yet to
107 89 cover adequately the details of porcelain production in Jingdezhen, Liu asked Zheng to revise and expand the original draft manuscript. Liu then committed the funds to print the version of Jingdezhen Tao lu revised by Zheng Tinggui. 27 In 1815, the twentieth year of the Jiaqing reign period, the first edition of Jingdezhen Tao lu was published by the Zheng family printing press, named Yijing tang. This 1815 Yijing tang edition is extremely rare and extant copies of the first edition exist in only few libraries worldwide, among them the Shanghai Museum library. 28 Zheng s editing encompassed much more than a straightforward compilation of the draft manuscript. His work actually included reorganizing, compiling, and inserting textual explanations to supplement his teacher s draft notes. The ensuing product was the book s printed form, consisting of ten sections (juan) altogether. The most important of Zheng s 1815 additions was section (juan) one, comprised of fourteen woodblock illustrations and their corresponding textual explanations of porcelain manufacture, the significance of which will be discussed later in this chapter. As the postscript seems to indicate, the first and last sections (juan 1 and juan 10) were penned by Zheng and the remaining eight chapters by Lan Pu. 29 Relying on the narrative articulated in the original preface written by Liu Bing and on the postscript by Zheng Tinggui, such a division of labor (whereby only juan 1 and juan 10 are attributed to Zheng) might seem true. Yet a close reading of the text reveals that the issue of the text s authorship was more complicated than was presented in the book s postscript. Comments and introductions in several of the individual chapters were written during the early Jiaqing ( ) period. Since Lan Pu died in 1795, he did not live to be a subject of the Jiaqing emperor. Therefore, comments that refer specifically to the early Jiaqing period suggest that more of Tao lu s content can be attributed to Zheng s own efforts
108 90 and authorship during the first few years of the Jiaqing period than previously thought. For instance, chapter two (juan 2) begins with a commemorative summary of the development of the imperial kiln system during the Qing dynasty. In a subsection called Commemoration of the Venerable Dynasty Imperial Kiln Depot, the text records, since the conferral of the [Jiaqing] emperor, the imperial throne has prioritized frugality and the court demand for ceramic wares are not abundant 30 (jin shang yuji yilai, shao cong jiejian, mei nian taoqi xuyong wu duo). Before he discussed contemporary court porcelain activity, the author first gave a bare bones outline of the ceramic administration from the start of the Qing dynasty to the present, whereby the main actors were the emperor and the imperial officials overseeing porcelain production. Clearly, since a statement about the Jiaqing emperor as emperor could only be written after the end of the Qianlong reign, chapter two s historical overview of the development of the kilns at Jingdezhen must have been written by Zheng. References to the Jiaqing period are also scattered throughout: in chapter five (juan 5), there is a description of Qianlong wares using the reign name term Qianlong in order to identify ceramic objects made under the imperial official Tang Ying. 31 But to describe them as Qianlong-era pieces indicates that at the time of the text s writing, the current emperor had to have been an emperor other than Qianlong. Thus, to call Zheng the editor and compiler of Tao lu would overlook his role and ideas in authoring and crafting Tao lu s narrative at the turn of the nineteenth century. The misleading attribution of the separate chapters of the text to Lan Pu, who lived only until the end of the Qianlong period, might also obscure our understanding of the text s specific aims and content.
109 91 In its published form in 1815, Tao lu comprised ten chapters, presenting detailed information on porcelain production, literary references, and Jingdezhen guilds under the following ten headings: juan 1. Illustrated Annotations (Tu shuo) juan 2. Commemoration of the Imperial Porcelain Center of the Venerable [Qing] Dynasty (Guochao yuyaochang gongji) juan 3. Index of Ceramic Affairs (Taowu tiaomu) juan 4. Overview of Ceramic Making (Taowu fanglue) juan 5. Kiln Ware Styles of Jingdezhen throughout the Various Dynasties (Jingdezhen lidai yaokao) juan 6. Old Kiln Wares Styles Reproduced in the Town (Zhen fang guyao kao) juan 7. Old Kiln Ware Styles (Gu yaokao) juan 8. Compiled Comments on Ceramics Part One 32 (Taoshuo zabian shang) juan 9. Compiled Comments on Ceramics Part Two (Taoshuo zabian xia) juan 10. Additional Discussion on Ceramics (Taolu yulun) Chapter One, accompanied by maps and images, deals with the history of Jingdezhen and the imperial kiln. It gives a revised account of the manufacturing process that is in part taken from Tang Ying’s Taoye tushuo ( Explanations of the Illustrations of Porcelain Manufacture) and illustrated by woodcut images. Chapter Two describes the imperial kiln production center, its establishment and staff, and the development and origins of various styles of wares made in Jingdezhen at the time of the text s authorship. Chapter Three enumerates in great detail the division of types of work, workers, styles, glaze colors, pigment compositions necessary to the production of ceramics at Jingdezhen. In the fourth chapter there is more detail about the location of raw materials and the actual dynamics of business and guilds in Jingdezhen. Chapters Five, Six, and Seven give an account of pottery and porcelain made in Jingdezhen throughout the town’s history, and include descriptions of ancient kilns and reproductions of famous antique wares in fashion at the time of writing. Chapters Eight and Nine together contain a total of 129
110 92 literary references to porcelain and to Jingdezhen. The work concludes with fifty three additional remarks by Zheng Tinggui about literary allusions, history of terminology, style descriptions, and different color descriptions extant in Jingdezhen. As is well known, manuals of taste appeared in increasing numbers in the latesixteenth century of the Ming dynasty, including such written works as Wen Zhenheng s Treatise on Superfluous Things (Zhangwu zhi ) or Cao Zhao s Gegu yaolun. These manuals have been otherwise known as handbooks to elegant living. Compared to these handbooks, Jingdezhen Tao lu enjoyed even more widespread transmission both in and outside of its community of origin during the first century after its initial publication. 33 In the light of the late Ming books on taste, the Tao lu was a part of a tradition of texts hitherto understood as technical guides, such as the Southern Song manual Yingzaofashi of 1103 AD (Building Standards), or the mid-seventeenth century Tiangong kaiwu (1637). However, the Tao lu was not merely a technical how-to manual with the purpose of transmitting technical instruction. In other words, the Records was not a potters manual written for the sake of training artisans. Neither was it meant to be an instruction textbook compiled for the sake of transmitting practical technique to those ever so curious foreigners. After all, in its mission to solidify the brand of Jingdezhen in the production of high quality porcelain, as will be shown in this chapter, why would the authors wish to divulge such precious secrets? Despite its utilization both as a technical manual and art-authenticating guide in the subsequent century after its first publication, its original intention was to record and laud the present-day circumstances of Jingdezhen. Tao lu was first published after the massive imperial library and book cataloguing project under
111 93 the emperor Qianlong, and therefore was not included in the seven imperial library collections scattered along coastal Qing territory. However, not being included in the imperial library project cannot be an accurate gauge of its far-flung influence in the nineteenth century. 34 Copies of the 1815 edition survived: they can be found today in rare book libraries in Shanghai and Beijing s Tsinghua University Library. The existence of a second edition in the Shanghai Museum also confirms its survival throughout the nineteenth century. After the Taiping rebellion destroyed the Jingdezhen imperial kilns, Zheng Tinggui s family reprinted the second edition through though own personal press. 35 A comparison of the printed illustrations indicates that the woodblocks for the images were also newly re-carved. The second preface included a preface written by the jiyong county magistrate in-waiting in Zhili province, Wang Tingjian, a Poyang native. His hyperbolic and overwhelmingly literary preface details the importance of the book and his high regard for book s detailing of the manufacturing process at Jingdezhen. Recognizing the value of Jingdezhen Tao lu for its account of artisanal knowledge and writing in light of the havoc wreaked by the Taiping armies, Wang belied a great anxiety over the risk of permanently losing the porcelain information contained in the book were he not to print another edition. Given the value of book, it merited a second edition, which was published in At this point in time, a Zhang Shaoyan of Dantu in Zhejiang had proofread the book, as the cover indicates (Figure 1). A third edition reprinted by Shuye Tang, a private publisher in Beijing, was published in Copies of this edition are the most numerous of all editions and are still extant in various
112 94 libraries. Thus, by the end of the first century after the book s original publication, the book had already circulated beyond Jingdezhen. Moreover, there were three separate woodblock print editions and two sets of woodblock illustrations, attesting to the Tao lu s significance and ongoing relevance. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, Jingdezhen Tao lu reprints increased in salience. Just as the numbers of ceramics from the former imperial palaces increased in the flourishing twentieth-century art market, so too did the relevance of the book. Tao lu became a fixture in the creation of a modern discipline of Chinese art history and satisfied the curiosity of porcelain collectors worldwide. Almost every major book on Chinese ceramics since the end of the nineteenth century to the present relied on the Jingdezhen Tao lu to reconstruct the history of porcelain-ware styles and Jingdezhen technological process. It was and still is an important reference for writers of ceramic technology, connoisseurship studies, and Jingdezhen historical scholarship. By the early twentieth century, its inclusion in the first edition of the major compendium on fine arts, Meishu congshu, secured Tao lu s place among the works constituting the canon of national art history. 36 The project to compile the compendium, Meishu congshu, began just before the fall of the Qing dynasty in The first edition was completed in Edited by the national-essence school thinker, Deng Shi ( ), the series was published under the auspices of the national-essence publishing house, Shenzhou guoguang she, which was founded by the same scholar. The compendium s compilers also included the famous guohua painter, Huang Binhong, whose name as one of the two major compilers lent credence to the entire congshu series. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century,
113 95 Meishu congshu underwent revision and expansion, producing four separate editions. By the 1940s, the compendium included over 120 sections, consisting of old texts on calligraphy, painting, sculpture, crafts, and architecture. The two major treatises in Chinese on ceramics were both printed in the series first edition, including Jingdezhen Tao lu and another late-qianlong period monograph, Tao Shuo. Printed with type-set technology – on thin paper with each page folded and thread-bound in the format of woodblock printed books – in March of 1914, the Jingdezhen Tao lu version in Meishu congshu did not include any illustrations nor did it include the 1870 Tongzhi edition preface. None of the prefaces in the compendium gives any information as to how Deng Shi first came across the Jingdezhen Tao lu. Nor do they contain any statements that divulged the reasons behind the editors choice to use a particular edition, or why they decided to exclude visual images. The inclusion of Tao lu in the first edition did effectively locate porcelain as part of the overall concept of fine arts. Fine arts, referred to in Chinese as meishu, was itself a changing category during the early twentieth century, and the compendium played a major role in advancing the view of fine arts as inclusive of ceramics, along with sculpture, architecture, painting, and jade, to name only a few of the objects covered in the compendium. 37 The lack of illustrations in the Meishu congshu version of Tao lu sheds light on how the compilers manipulated the presentation of texts and visual images in order to reinforce their didactic endeavors. Without the visual illustrations, the version published in the Meishu congshu was less a visual artifact or collector catalogue. One could also say that the lack of its images deprived the book of the part that gave it the most technical feel: the technical illustrations. Rather, the textual layout strengthened the interpretation of the book as a generic part of a larger body of knowledge: the Chinese art historical canon. Since the
114 96 Jingdezhen Tao lu of 1815 was the first illustrated monograph on porcelain written in the Chinese language, stripping it of its visual images divested it of one of its unique features and rendered it not much different from the other ceramic texts included in the Meishu congshu published during the first decade after the fall of the Qing dynasty: Tao Shuo (1774) and Gu tong ciqi kao (1776), published in the late Qianlong era. Homogenization of these texts served to generalize the nature of knowledge contained in each individual work and create an overarching field of ceramic knowledge. Concurrent with the development of this national art-historical canon was of course the fall of the empire and its transition to a new political entity structured around the ideology of the nation. Without the reprinting of the original illustrations in chapter one, the Meishu congshu emphasized Jingdezhen Tao lu s status as a book about one of many components of national art and culture. After all, the objectives of Deng Shi s printing company, the Guoguang she, sought to preserve a (fictitious) national essence through periodical publications like the Guo cui xuebao ( National Essence Journal), and knowledge-producing study associations such as the National Essence School. Against this backdrop of a nation-centered compendium, the appearance of Jingdezhen Tao lu in print during the early Republican period played a major role in redefining porcelain as meishu (fine art) and ultimately as one object among many in the canon of national art history. The illustrations did appear in another twentieth-century Chinese-language edition. They were reprinted in a 1925 version of the Tao lu published in Shanghai by the Zhaoji bookstore. The format of the book was smaller in size, printed by lithographic method, and a comparison of the images reveals that the woodcuts for the illustrations were
115 97 re-carved (Figure 2). 38 The early twentieth-century commercial calligrapher and publishing reformer, Tang Tuo ( ), transcribed the text by hand for the lithographic printing, along with gracing the book s cover with his calligraphy. For whatever reasons however, the Zhaoji bookstore version did not include the second preface written by Wang in 1871, which suggests that both twentieth-century editions of the Jingdezhen Tao lu the Zhaoji 1925 version and the Meishu congshu version were based on the 1815 printing, even if the others were available. Finally, the Zhaoji version reflected the early twentiethcentury printing industry in its smaller size and lithographic printing technology. The earlier half of the twentieth century did see a boom in printing presses and the publishing industries in urban China. The smaller size made the book more portable, and the lithographic technology insured a longer preservation of the Tao lu s content, since lithographic proofs were easier to reproduce than the easily damaged woodblock negatives. Before the book made its way into the canon of art history during the early years of the new republic, collectors in the nineteenth century were already using it as a guide to understand and identify porcelain. Nothing in the prefaces of 1815 and 1871 or in the original text of 1815 indicates that the book s purpose was to provide a comprehensive guide to porcelain authentication. Still, collectors of Jingdezhen porcelain by the mid- Daoguang period ( ) did employ this manual on Jingdezhen porcelain production and overview of wares to inform collecting behaviour and identifying pieces. A case a point is the observations recorded by one mid-nineteenth-century collector, who also wrote his own ceramic guide, Sometimes, I meet with friends who regularly carry everywhere Jingdezhen Ci lu [or: Jingdezhen Tao lu] and use it as a guide to view (guan )
116 98 and buy (gou ) [porcelain]. 39 This collector went by the pen name, Ban Chizi. He did not contextualize the book or state his reasons for penning a four-part manuscript on ceramics in the discourse of nation or history. For Ban Chizi, the Jingdezhen Tao lu was knowledge, but it was knowledge simply about ceramics: the book served mainly as a reference guide for connoisseurship. After locating his own text in the same category of Tao lu and noting that they shared the same purposes, Ban Chizi revealed that he recorded the objects of each province s kilns, styles, and glazes for convenience of porcelain identification by those who discuss and buy old porcelain. 40 III. International Circulation and Foreign Appropriation of Jingdezhen Tao lu To circumscribe the story of Tao lu s transmission and publication history within the borders of the nineteenth-century Qing state would overlook the perambulatory nature of canon formation. The idea of Chinese art as a verifiable field of study, within which porcelain constituted a primary object, involved a cross-cultural and supra-national history. In fact, the process of Tao lu s canonization into national art history encompassed a journey of global scope. In this sense, concepts of Chinese art and porcelain aesthetics that came to the fore in the early twentieth century cannot be attributed to an isolated phenomenon of national development in which an idea or essence expressed itself in the form of a concrete, national polity. 41 As scores of students studying in Japan during the period of the Xinzheng reforms ( ) brought tides of intellectual change back to their home country, so too did their activities, learning, and institutions of education, publishing, and translation affect conceptual transformations. For instance, the new aesthetic and social category of fine arts referred to as bijutsu developed only in the 1890s as a result of institution-building
117 99 efforts of the Meiji state ( ). Before the advent of bijutsu, the conventional term for arts was geijutsu, a concept which invoked other broader ideas such as military expertise, Buddhist iconography, and calligraphy. Geijutsu had itself spread to Japan as a byproduct of the influence of Confucian trends during the Edo period ( ). In the late-nineteenth century, the concept geijutsu provided the platform on which twentieth century ideas about art developed. 42 The transmitted concept from Europe encompassed the diametrically opposed but mutually constitutive branches of fine arts and craft arts, was transplanted from Europe. The circular trajectory of bijutsu and geijutsu paralleled the same route along which porcelain texts and information also flowed. English-language studies on ceramics began with the establishment of Britain s museums in the nineteenth-century. 43 A central figure in the history of these twin developments of the latter half of the nineteenth century was respected the English doctor, Dr. Stephen Wootton Bushell ( ). Bushell was the HMS Physician to the British legation in Beijing. Fluent in Chinese and familiar with sinological methods, he was an avid collector of ceramics, as well as other objects such as jade and bronzes. Only five years after his arrival in Beijing, Bushell had already achieved an authoritative reputation in researching Chinese art. He was chosen as a personal porcelain buyer for the British Museum s keeper of antiquities, Augustus Wollaston Franks. In the 1870s Franks recommended Bushell for the task of purchasing artifacts for the South Kensington museum s collection. 44 By the mid-1880s, Bushell had purchased over two hundred pieces of porcelain from China, laying the foundation for the South Kensington Museums collection of Chinese art. His responsibilities included writing the handbook guide to these collections. Until Bushell began to publish various translations of
118 100 Chinese-language ceramics studies, no Western language work on porcelain had adopted both a sinological framework and direct object-based knowledge to write a history of Chinese art. Bushell s works include his translation of Tao Shuo, rendered in the Oxford University Publication as Description of Chinese Pottery and Porcelain (1910) and his comprehensive handbook in 1898 to the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum — its comprehensiveness captured by the two-volumes title, Chinese Art (1904 and 1905). The story of the rise of British Museums, the importance of artifacts from China in those museums, and Bushell s ceramic scholarship was more than a cultural exchange; it implicated power struggles in the related realms of politics and knowledge. In his own words, Bushell gained access to several private and public houses.which usually are so closed to foreigners Bushell even noted that access to objects were the result of the opening of the royal houses of the dynasty, which of course was a historical event rife with international political implications, such as the Boxer indemnities, looting, and latenineteenth century wars that rendered the objects for sale for increasing imperial revenue. 45 The disparate titles making up Bushell s voluminous publishing record on ceramics obscure the actual inter-textual relationship among his writings. The most famous of his books, Oriental Ceramic Art, first published in 1896 and generating reprints as early as 1899, was the first all-encompassing history of Oriental porcelain ever published. 46 The research for Oriental Ceramic Art not only provided the basis on which Bushell wrote in the newly re-named Victoria and Albert Museum handbook, Chinese Art. In fact, the ceramic sections in the latter were reproduced from the former word-forword, reinforcing the prominence and centrality of Oriental Ceramic Art in shaping the
119 101 modern idea of Chinese art. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Bushell s study, Oriental Ceramic Art, among his other writings, became a major source for scholars in Republican China, Europe, and the United States who were developing twentieth-century studies on ceramics and the various disciplines of Chinese art history. Bushell s Oriental Ceramic Art was already part of a gamut of scholarly publications sponsored and distributed through such institutions as the Royal Academy of Arts in London and art historical departments based at Beijing University. 47 In ten oversized volumes comprising twenty-seven chapters, it covered ceramics from China, Japan, and Korea, including their history, manufacture, designs, uses, and symbolic meanings in decoration through successive dynasties (Figure 3). The most significant research feature of the book that differentiated it from previous publications was the enormous array of primary text translated from local gazetteers, official histories, and imperial decrees. It included a luxurious inventory of the American collector William Walters personal holdings of porcelain and was accompanied by 116 extravagantly produced full-page color plates and more than four hundred smaller-sized, black-and-white photographs (Figure 4 and 5). 48 The preface, written by William Laffan, also praised Bushell for his significant experience dealing with Chinese-language texts and with objects as well. Laffan, owner of the New York based newspaper the Sun and member of various subcommittees at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, contrasted Bushell s Oriental Ceramic Art with an earlier Western language translation of Jingdezhen Tao lu by drawing a distinction between Chinese texts and porcelain objects: The difficulty was with the Chinese text the Julien [the French sinologist] was an excellent sinologist, but was not familiar with the objects
120 102 [porcelain] and thus, it was a problematic text. Instead, Bushell s Oriental Ceramic Art book reflects the information of an expert who has long experience in it. 49 Laffan goes on to extol the book by denigrating all existing Chinese texts on porcelain, despite the book s obvious reliance on them, most notably the Tao lu. 50 Here, the order of authority establishes a certain hierarchy of truth, whereby it seemed that objects themselves were the source of truth and knowledge. By contrast, texts, and specifically, texts authored by the Chinese, were ironically inadequate, inferior, and even worthless insofar as providing actual knowledge about porcelain. In this sense, discussions of porcelain objects were not impartial mirrors into innocent cross-cultural curiosity and learning. They did not only reflect innocuous cross-cultural attitudes. Rather, they produced them. Porcelain provided the arena in which the dynamics of knowledge and power played out. The denigration of Chinese texts about porcelain was myopic: overseas collectors in Britain and America viewed their research as superior in accuracy, while ignoring and refusing to credit the relevancy and contribution of the Chinese texts to the body of knowledge about porcelain they so sought to collect. In some sense, it was an object-centered discourse that ignored the reality of human effort and multiplicity of voices that went into porcelain s meaning, production, and transmission. In order to discuss the authenticity of certain pieces of porcelain, Dr. Stephen Bushell s seminal book, Oriental Ceramic Art (1896), quoted extensively from Jingdezhen Tao lu on numerous occasions. 51 Interestingly, while Bushell drew enormously from Tao lu to write Oriental Ceramic Art (and its derivative, South Kensington Museum s handbook, Chinese Art), the format of the layout on each page of his Oriental Ceramic Art masked the Tao lu origins of its knowledge on ceramics. In Oriental Ceramic Art, Bushell s footnotes
121 103 never cite the Jingdezhen Tao lu. In fact, the only footnotes that are cited are Western language studies such as the works by Sevres Director Brongniart and French chemist Georges Vogt. Again, not only explicit condescending statements but the way in which scholarly writing presented it sources structured who were allowed to speak and on whose behalf. Even if English writers did not accredit the Tao lu, the book s influence comes to light by tracing its circuitous trajectory of translation and reception. In the 1920 s, various Shanghai-based artists and art educators, such as Dai Yue and other art research institute scholars referred extensively to Bushell s work. 52 Thus, through the development of the modern discipline of Chinese art history, major portions of Tao lu from Bushell s English translated version were re-interpreted and even retranslated back into Chinese. Besides the aforementioned Zhaoji shuzhuang republication of Jingdezhen Tao lu, Dai Yue translated Bushell s handbook, Chinese Art, into Chinese in the 1920 s, the first edition of which was published by the Commercial Press in Cai Yuanpei, father of republican China s art education movement and intellectual advocate of reforming the nation through art historical scholarship, annotated Dai Yue s Zhongguo meishu (1928). The author of Tao Ya (Ceramics Elegances), which was often valued as a successor to Tao lu in terms of Chinese-language literature on Jingdezhen porcelain, took as his scholarly point of departure his disagreements with Tao lu s narrative of porcelain history and Bushell s work. 54 Tao Ya is discussed at length in the dissertation s fourth chapter. The Western language translation of Tao lu that was the focus of Laffan s criticism was the mid-nineteenth century version rendered by the aforementioned sinologist Stanislas Julien. His text was Bushell s predecessor not only temporally but also substantively.
122 104 Julien s book was the first Western language study on Chinese porcelain to introduce Chinese writings on ceramics to Europe. The book Histoire et Fabrication de la Porcelaine chinoise was introduced into France via a French translation. The translator, Julien, was a professor who taught at the Collège de France. 55 His work, published in 1856 in Paris, was not actually a straightforward translation. The translation included a compilation of other Chinese texts about Jingdezhen. For instance, Julien drew from the Fuliang County Gazetteer to produce the text. 56 Moreover, Julien only included the first seven chapters from the Jingdezhen Tao lu; he completely excised the last three chapters (juan ) from the French translation. The neglected juan from Jingdezhen Tao lu consisted of a haphazard selection of the literary references and local anecdotes drawn from texts from antiquity, Fuliang gazetteers, and literati biji. A cursory glance at the included and excluded sections indicate that Julien s abridged version aimed to provide information on the technology of glazes, enamels, and color composition for ceramic developers and chemists in France in the late-nineteenth century. As the French preface reveals, Julien intended for his book to be a technical manual that would provide a scholarly resource for chemists improving porcelain techniques at the Se vres Imperial Porcelain Factory located just outside Paris. Tao lu s transmission into France accompanied contemporaneous shipments of such raw materials as clay and stone sent by Chinese Catholic priests to Se vres by way of Canton. 57 In addition to the translating only the first seven chapters of Tao lu, the French version included re-formatted visual pictures of the production process, re-illustrated using lithographic printing technology. Just like the Jingdezhen Tao lu, Julien s French version also included fourteen images of making porcelain. There are differences in the layout
123 105 between the original woodblock prints and the French pictures, which portrayed scenes vertically. Unlike the Jingdezhen Tao lu, there are no lengthy textual explanations of each picture in the French book, only one line captions. The fourteen images constitute their own chapter, as they were appended in a section entitled Planches at the end of the book. Just as Julien re-oriented the title in order to showcase porcelain as a Chinese object, so too did he re-fashion the French version s visual images in a way that sinified porcelain. Instead of translating the title as Records of Jingdezhen Ceramics, Julien located in the realm of China rather than Jingdezhen when he entitled the French version as Histoire et Fabrication de la Porcelaine chinois. Whereas Zheng Tinggui included two maps in the 1815 Jingdezhen Tao lu — one of Jingdezhen and the other of the imperial kiln center — Julien s version included only one map. The map was the last image of the book. It was, as Figure 6 demonstrates, a map of the various porcelain production centers in La Chine (China) (Figure 6). Ostensibly, the map of Jingdezhen was missing. Juxtaposing the images of Jingdezhen Tao lu with those of Julien s Histoire et Fabrication de la Porcelaine chinoise also demonstrates a compression of the scenes in the French illustrations (Figure 7). 58 One effect of the space compression is that the French pictures portray a more up-close view of the people making porcelain. In other words, Julien s version consisted of shrunken images that magnified the labor and manufacturing actions. By comparison, Julien s book displayed a practical and didactic purpose: to explain and understand technique necessary to make porcelain. The French layout betrayed its purpose as potter s instructional guide- much more so than its blueprint images of the original book Jingdezhen Tao lu. These not insignificant layout and content alterations reveal the fissures in interpretation over the writing, printing, and production of an
124 106 illustrated book. Moreover, these divergent forms show how knowledge and understanding of porcelain was not a unitary and given concept, but rather a changing one, borne out of specific contexts of goals and ambitions. In 1907, a Japanese translation was published in Kyoto. At this point, existing documents have not yet clarified the nature of the interaction between Kyoto-based producers and collectors of porcelain and porcelain appreciators living within Qing territorial boundaries. A Japanese ceramicist named Fujie Eiko translated and perhaps redrew the original woodblock prints in producing the Japanese version. 59 Tao lu, or Keitokuchin tô roku as it is in Japanese, was released by a private publisher, Hosokawa Kaiekido, with the cover pages written in old-style calligraphy contributed by an artist writing at the Tokyo Museum (Figure 8). 60 There is also a preface at the beginning of the Japanese version that bore the striking calligraphy of Temmioka Tessai, the Kyoto-born nanga (Southern Style) and bunjinga literati style painter (Figure 9). In the preface, Tessai praised the book for increasing the wealth not of potters and of the nation. While giving an overview of how the translated edition came about in Japan, Tessai mentioned a famous potter of the Meiji period, a time during which Kyoto ceramics were undergoing revival in production and change. That potter was Miura Chikusen, who helped with translating the Japanese text by adding footnotes and annotations. Miura Chikusen was a well known potter in Kyoto, who lived from 1853 till In 1883 he established his own kiln in Kyoto and his work was known for its adoption of colors and glazes. 61 Compared with the original Chinese book s prefaces, the Tessai preface highlighted the utility of the book in terms of
125 107 individual potters technical skills and ceramic creation. Unlike Tessai s Japanese preface, the Chinese language prefaces and postscripts made no mention of individual potter s names or technical skill. The fact that both the Japanese and French translations were published in a time of increasing state-to-state clashes, especially the defeat of the Qing by Meiji and French forces, illuminates clearly the strange links between state formation, imperialism, scientific knowledge and artistic practice of porcelain at the dawn of the twentieth century. The foregoing summary of Tao lu s publishing history traced the instances in which the text appeared. 62 In other words, the narrative focused on the multiple places and times in which Jingdezhen Tao lu appeared and the attitudes embedded within its translations and appropriations. From the time of its first printing, to its mid-nineteenth century appearance in collecting circles and through its international, albeit roundabout, peregrination, the Tao lu s path to canonization reveals much about how texts and knowledge were produced in the nineteenth century. It also illuminates how canon formation took on an international and inter-textual nature as well as the diversity of purposes for writing (and picturing) Jingdezhen porcelain s historical narrative. IV. A Comparison of Individual Texts: Tao Shuo and Tao Lu As mentioned, the late Qianlong period saw the rise of two full-length monographs about porcelain, the first being the one anthologized in 1794 in a compendium of old and rare books called Longwei mishu. The earlier text was the Tao Shuo, a predecessor of Jingdezhen Tao lu in that it was a specialized full-length manuscript on porcelain. 63 Written by Zhu Yan (zi: Zhu Tongchuan ) and
126 108 completed in 1774, Zhu Yan s Tao Shuo contained a short study of Qing porcelain, but concentrated mostly on the ceramics of the Ming and earlier dynasties. In the 1890s, Stephen W. Bushell completed a translation of the Tao Shuo, which was published in 1910 under the title of Description of Chinese Pottery and Porcelain. According to one of the monograph s three prefaces, Zhu Yan was a native of Zhejiang province and in 1769 began service as a personal secretary to Jiangxi province Grand Palace Coordinator Wu (Da zhong cheng Wu ). 64 During this time, he travelled and inspected the porcelain situation at Jingdezhen, direct observations that were integrated into his scholarly monograph. Thus, both Tao lu and Tao Shuo were based on first-hand observations of production techniques at Jingdezhen. One key difference is that the Tao Shuo does not concentrate specifically on Jingdezhen or on production processes. Other than being published almost forty years apart, contrasts between the only two Chinese-language books devoted to porcelain reveal the unique context and aims of the Jingdezhen Tao lu in Jingdezhen Tao lu s original preface, written by the local county magistrate, Liu Bing, praises Tao Shuo s coverage of porcelain history but criticizes it on the basis of its vague discussion of the Qing period and inadequate portrayal of the contemporary situation of porcelain-making process at Jingdezhen. Regarding Tao Shuo, Liu Bing recognized its importance in that it was the advent of specialized books on ceramic vessels. 65 But in so far as the present conditions of Jingdezhen were concerned, Liu Bing surmised, the writing of Tao Shuo was not quite sufficient since most likely its research did not involve any direct interviews. 66 Liu Bing believed that in order to know the minutia and complexities involved in producing ceramic vessels, one could not just rely on second-hand research. 67 However, what impressed Liu Bing about the Tao lu was the fact that the latter
127 109 book was comprised of first-hand witnesses and testimonies of two native Jingdezhen literati. 68 Zheng Tinggui, as Liu stressed, was born and bred in Jingdezhen, lived his whole life [in Jingdezhen] and could at any time record his observations on contemporary pottery affairs. 69 The preface exhibits two important themes. First, the preface writer interpreted Tao lu s value in terms of its comprehensive coverage of porcelain production under the present [Qing] dynasty. Second, Liu believed the expert insight into porcelain manufacturing provided by Tao lu stemmed from its nature as a text penned by local writers who had spent their whole lives in Jingdezhen, not some provincial official secretary who was not from the county. Following this, Liu Bing then lauded the book for promulgating the benefits of the imperial state s patronage of Jingdezhen industry: Since the state (guojia) began provisions for potters the people were secure (min an), and the objects increased in number (wufu), the workers were diligent, and the vessels improved in quality. The people of Jingdezhen became increasingly wealthy, and Jingdezhen ceramics became increasingly brilliant But there are those who don t know the reasons for such prosperity (you buzhi suoyou ran yi). 70 Indeed, as the first book to give an account of Jingdezhen porcelain up through the late- Qianlong period, Tao lu s textual, and as we shall later see, visual content privileged a conceptualization of porcelain that combined the importance of local action with imperial agency. Its enthusiastic narration of local production methods and materials at Jingdezhen simultaneously exalted the locality and also the imperial court: in the text, Jingdezhen s uniqueness stemmed from its close relationship with porcelain produced for the court and imperial use. Such a propagandistic agenda is not surprising Liu Bing was after all, a county magistrate and both Lan Pu and Zheng Tinggui were born and bred in Jingdezhen. However, self-glorifying purposes notwithstanding, Jingdezhen Tao lu s agenda put forth
128 110 concepts that were unique for Zhu Yan s Tao Shuo was less written to eulogize Jingdezhen s local environs and people, and much more about ware styles and objects. Even more telling was the fact that Tao Shuo organized ceramics around dynasty reign names and their corresponding objects. 71 Moreover, by nature of its translation history, Jingdezhen Tao lu left a lasting impression on ceramic researchers about imperial kilns. As Margaret Medley has pointed out, the very concept of imperial kilns in western-language studies on ceramics can be traced to the publication of Jingdezhen Tao lu in Western European languages. 72 It was because of the French translation that the existence of imperial kilns came to be known. By pivoting the magnificence of porcelain on an axis of Jingdezhen-court relations, the book was an instrument of self-promotion: It was an argument for maintaining continued court presence and patronage of Jingdezhen porcelain. Tao lu s rationale hinged upon promoting the quality of Jingdezhen porcelain upon the locality and imperium simultaneously. Compared to the earlier Tao Shuo penned by an imperial official, the Jingdezhen Tao lu and Zheng Tinggui s other writings such as his poems accented more strongly the Jingdezhen – specific nature of porcelain composition, history, and production. Only Tao lu inflected such local meanings onto porcelain. The initiation and completion of the Jingdezhen Tao lu occurred in a period in Jingdezhen history during which important changes in the court s administration of Jingdezhen porcelain production took place. The thrust of Tao lu can be viewed in this context of changing relations between the court and Jingdezhen. Editorial comments throughout the book reveal that Zheng Tinggui was sensitive to the recent changes in court administration over Jingdezhen. 73 In the second section of the book, Zheng
129 111 recorded that in Qianlong s 51 st year [1786], the position of resident deputy supervisor was terminated. 74 Zheng also noted a change in the imperial court s relationship to Jingdezhen when he remarked in his poems, Taoyang zhuzhici (Bamboo Grove Poems from Taoyang [Jingdezhen]) that Jingdezhen supervision fell under Raozhou prefecture and that the position of a resident imperial kiln supervisor no longer existed in the early Jiaqing period. 75 First published in the Fuliang County Gazetteer in 1823 during the Jiaqing reign, the Bamboo Grove Poems were a collection of thirty poems accompanied by the author Zheng Tinggui s annotations that were dedicated to Jingdezhen. The poems again appeared in the 1832 Daoguang version. They were edited by Gong Shi, a Nanchang native and Fuliang county official. 76 In the Taolu, Zheng wrote that the Jiaqing administration decreed to value frugalness (zhaoshang jiejian ), implying his anxiety over the court s decreasing investment in Jingdezhen. 77 Writing sometime after 1815, the first year of the Jiaqing reign, Zheng reiterated this point in his second poem of the Bamboo Grove Poems from Taoyang. 78 Since the poems were written specifically about Jingdezhen customs, of which porcelain objects were the primary material icons, the poems reflect Zheng s ambition to write and thus herald the reputation of Jingdezhen the locale — even more so than the text of the Jingdezhen Tao lu itself. In 1786, the Imperial Household department ceased the appointment of Imperial Household officials (neiwu ren yuan ) and their deputy assistants (zhu chang xie li ), who had previously resided in Jingdezhen and Jiujiang in order to oversee the production of porcelain. Moreover, as Zheng Tinggui noted, the court turned
130 112 the management of kilns over to the jurisdiction of local officials at Raozhou prefecture. 79 Thus, one reason behind drawing, figuratively and literally as I discuss below, intimate ties between Jingdezhen and the imperial court in a text on Jingdezhen porcelain history could have been the nostalgia for the bygone years of direct Imperial Household supervision over the kilns at Jingdezhen. Hence the constant reiteration of accolades in the poems by Zheng Tinggui bestowed upon the last Imperial Household kiln supervisor and deputy, Tang Ying, who oversaw kiln production and designed porcelain between 1728 and his death in Despite the increase of Jingdezhen export porcelain bodies sent to be decorated in Canton and the continuing production of exquisite porcelain in Jingdezhen, the fear over the possible loss of favor as an imperial object and place may also have stimulated the spirit behind Zheng s particular narration of porcelain technology. 81 Nostalgia for a prior Jingdezhen infused the introduction to his collection of poems when he lamented that Recently customs and historical remains have mostly changed, been replaced, buried or lost, so I decided to compose these thirty poems of the Bamboo Grove from Taoyang in order to preserve them (Jinshi fengtu guji duo yiti yanshi, yinjiu suozhizhe zuo Taoyang zhuzhici sanshishou cunzhi, << >>. 82 Here, we have a clear statement wherein loss, remembrance, and material preservation combine to generate an unambiguous entity: Jingdezhen. 83 In another commentary to a poem he composed, Zheng pointed out that because the imperial kilns manufactured porcelain mostly for the purpose of presenting tribute to the emperor, thus the Inner Court s Imperial Household issued models. Because of this, the porcelain from Jingdezhen obtained worldwide renown, and today the numbers of brokers coming to the town are unceasing (yuchang
131 113 zhi ciqi, daban beiyi hui gong, gu da nei ban yang shaozao 贡,, ). 84 By advancing a view of Jingdezhen porcelain as an imperial object with exceptional qualities particular to the Jingdezhen locale, Zheng produced a treatise about porcelain production that put forth, or even created, meanings of porcelain deeply connected not only to the concept of imperial kilns but also the brand specificity of Jingdezhen. 85 In this sense, for some porcelain appreciators, and especially for Zheng Tinggui in 1815, chinaware was not at all China. V. Marriages of Image and Text: From Tang Ying and the Imperial Household to Zheng Tinggui and the Local In order to clarify more fully the circumstances that gave way to the emergence of the book Jingdezhen Tao lu in 1815, it is necessary to reverse the chronology and move backward in time to consider the crucial role Tang Ying played in the production of knowledge about Jingdezhen. Tang Ying ( ) worked for over twenty years as an official in the Kangxi emperor s administration inner court department of Yangxindian, which was a part of the Neiwufu (Imperial Household Department) that produced personal amenities and accoutrements for the imperial family s daily life. Tang was descended from a Chinese bannerman family whose patriarch had been a bondservant captain. 86 Already working at the court at the age of 16, he rose to prominence as the painting supervisor in In 1728, he became an assistant to Nian Xiyao, then the Imperial Household official in charge of the Jingdezhen kiln productions for the Yongzheng reign s imperial court use. 87
132 114 Besides being sent to Jingdezhen in 1728 to reside and help oversee kiln production on a day-to-day basis, Tang Ying himself was a prolific writer who recorded the management of kilns and production processes at Jingdezhen. In this sense, the Qianlong period ( ) witnessed another watershed moment in Jingdezhen history. In addition to hosting the presence of a porcelain commissioner sent from the court to manage porcelain affairs, Jingdezhen became the inspiration for a word-image paired painting album through an imperial order for textual annotations to match a painting set depicting porcelain production. The man ordered by the emperor to annotate these paintings was Tang Ying. Of all his writings, the imperially commissioned annotations became his most significant. It was referred to as the Taoye tushuo (Explanations of Illustrations on Ceramic Production), which were not only reprinted in the 1880 edition of Jiangxi tongzhi (General Gazetteer of Jiangxi Province) under the name of Taoye tu bianci, but also word-for-word in Zhu Yan s Tao Shuo (On Ceramics). Tang Ying’s Taoye tushuo was not only reproduced in the Jiangxi provincial gazetteer, but also in Wenfang sikao (1778), the Fuliang xianzhi (Fuliang County Gazetteer) (1783), and as mentioned above, in Tao Shuo (1774). Because it was included in the Tao Shuo, it was also translated into English and published as a separate chapter in Stephen Bushell s monumental Oriental Ceramic Art (1896) and Description of Chinese Pottery and Porcelain (1910). The textual explanations were written in 1743, the eighth year of Qianlong at the behest of the emperor himself. Given its widespread reproduction in the latter half of the eighteenth century after the death of Tang Ying in 1756 and the end of his role at Jingdezhen, Tang Ying s Taoye tushuo can be said to have provided the basis on
133 115 which Zheng Tinggui s edited texts became published as the 1815 version of Jingdezhen Tao lu. To analyze the purpose of the Jingdezhen Tao lu necessitates a consideration of its authorship and illustration history. As has been shown in this chapter thus far, one of the main intellectual objectives behind the Jingdezhen Tao lu was Zheng Tinggui’s ambition to posit a Jingdezhen-centric narrative to imperial porcelain production and history. The emergence of the book’s text and visual images originated from Zheng’s reconfiguration of Tang Ying’s words that had first been paired with paintings. In other words, it was a negotiation between image and word. In the case of Jingdezhen Tao lu, it was a product of intertextual and inter-iconographical relations. In 1743, following an order of the Qianlong emperor, Tang Ying traveled to Beijing and there, he annotated a set of twenty paintings illustrating the manufacture of porcelain. 88 The paintings were commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor and painted by Sun Hu, Zhou Kun, and Ding Guanpeng, three painters of the Qing court painting academy. 89 The memorial by Tang Ying indicates that he received the set of twenty illustrations from the Imperial Household Workshops (Yangxindian zaobanchu) on July 13, The emperor’s edict, conveyed two weeks earlier, instructed that Tang Ying write annotations regarding the technique and affairs of pottery production. The edict also dictated that Tang Ying should order each of the paintings and explanations before presenting the paintings as a visual album to the Qianlong Emperor. 90 In the latter half of the eighteenth through to the nineteenth centuries, knowledge about porcelain traveled via texts and visual images. As noted before, Jingdezhen Tao lu was the first book devoted to Jingdezhen porcelain manufacture and history to be published with visual illustrations. Jingdezhen Tao lu s woodblock prints were not the first visual depictions of porcelain production. The claim to vanguard status belonged to the late-ming
134 116 technology treatise Tiangong kaiwu. 91 In its chapter on ceramic techniques, Tiangong kaiwu contained thirteen simple sketches printed by woodblocks. Each image portrayed people in the process of making different types of ceramic objects, including tiles and bricks, loading the kiln, and molding clay. 92 All together, Tiangong kaiwu included thirteen images in a chapter called “Molding Ceramics” (Tao Shan ), the layout and numbering of which showed no specific attention to an order of a production process but focused more on general ceramic technology (Figures 10). Unlike the individual stand-alone images of seventeenth-century Tiangong kaiwu, the images of the eighteenth-century Taoye tu and nineteenth-century Jingdezhen Tao lu were viewed and created with a specific sequential order and chronology. While albums or sets of paintings commissioned by the emperor were not unique to the subject matter of porcelain production nor were they produced only during the Qianlong reign, this set of porcelain production paintings, by the name of Taoye tu, was probably the first visual depiction of the process at Jingdezhen. The format of the painted sequences borrowed from the format of the imperially commissioned series collected in the seventeenthcentury 1696 Qing album Yuzhi Gengzhi tu, or Imperially Commissioned Illustrations of Tilling and Weaving, which were themselves based on the two complementary series of pictures and poems that catalogued phases of the occupations assigned by Confucian ideology to men and women first composed by Lou Shou 璹 ( ) for the Southern Song court around A defining characteristic of these illustrations is precisely their narrative illustration format and nature as a set. As the imperial edicts show, the imperially commissioned sets were first and foremost
135 117 paintings made for the emperor s visual perusal and his understanding of an ordered process. With regard to visual images of porcelain production, Tang Ying s explanations formed a defining moment in the formation of knowledge about porcelain. As the twenty paintings constituting the set called Taoye tu were products of the direct imperial request, the paintings themselves remained in storage in the Imperial Household and therefore hidden from the view of people outside the court. 94 However, Tang Ying s textual explanations, Taoye tushuo, circulated beyond the confines of the inner court after being compiled and printed in the Jiangxi tongzhi (Provincial Gazetteer of Jiangxi). The Jiangxi tongzhi was catalogued in the history section in the Siku quanshu ( ) under the title Taoye tu bianci. 95 In 1774, the explanations found their way into the writings of Zhu Yan s monograph on ceramics history, Tao Shuo. Apparently, Tang Ying s annotations not only circulated among provincial and court-level officials but also fell into the hands of the English doctor Stephen Bushell, who translated Zhu Yan s Tao Shuo. Completed in 1891 but published in 1910 in London, Bushell s translation, entitled Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, rendered Tang Ying s explanations into English for an audience of museum specialists, private collectors, and twentieth-century scholars of Chinese art. Further demonstrating the far-ranging influence of the Tang Ying text is the fact that Zheng Tinggui relied on Tang Ying s explanations to write the first chapter of Jingdezhen Tao lu. Tao lu s first chapter includes fourteen annotated woodblock prints depicting porcelain s manufacturing process. Zheng Tinggui based his comments for the woodblock prints on Tang Ying s explanations, as Zheng himself pointed out. 96 Because
136 118 the original paintings were not accessible, Chapter One s visual images were woodblock illustrations drawn by a certain Zheng Xiu from Yunshan Village. Most likely, Zheng Xiu the sketch artist drew the images based on the information on porcelain manufacturing presented in Tang Ying s Taoye tushuo that Zheng Tinggui abridged. Whereas Tang Ying wrote the textual explanations after the completion of the paintings, Zheng Xiu s woodblock illustrations were images based on Zheng Tinggui s extractions from Tang Ying s famous annotations. Thus, the Tao lu s compilation was a process by which the images succeeded the text rather than preceded the text. Zheng Tinggui s explanations were meant to supplement the visuals, without which the texts meaning might have seemed incomplete for readers. Indeed, one might see this as a case where the images give meaning to the text. Nevertheless, the flow of knowledge indicates a process whereby, in the absence of original court paintings, a series of textual explanations in turn spawned new images of porcelain production. These woodblock illustrations were reprinted in later editions of the book and served as the basis for the reillustrations in Stanislas Julien s 1856 French version and the late Meiji period ( ) Japanese translation published in The illustrations of Tao lu s first chapter are different from the drawings in Tiangong kaiwu in that their content matter specifically concerns the porcelain-making process and presents the process in a narrative step-by-step sequence like the Taoye tu set. Since it drew heavily from Tang Ying s step-by-step explanations in Taoye tushuo, the Tao lu s first chapter presented its visual illustrations in a sequential order, much like such sets of paintings with courtly origins as the Gengzhi tu and the Qianlongcommissioned album of twenty leaves, Taoye tu. Despite drawing heavily from Tang
137 119 Ying s textual explanations of the manufacturing process, Zheng Tinggui s comments and the visual content in the fourteen woodblock prints of Jingdezhen Tao lu convey porcelain as a Jingdezhen-specific product. Compared to the Qianlong court paintings, Tao lu s woodblock prints display an emphasis on the geographical location of the porcelain production process: the Jingdezhen locale. The Jingdezhen emphasis manifests itself in the differences between the sequence and content of the first few images. The Qianlong-commissioned set, Taoye tu, begins immediately with the technical process: the first leaves of the album portray stone collection and then clay fabrication. The Taoye tu album ends with an illustration of the production of court ritual vessels. In Zheng s Tao lu woodblock sequence, the first two illustrations are respectively a print of a Jingdezhen city map and an image of the spatial layout of the imperial kiln (Figure 11). By revising and adding a map of Jingdezhen to the original set of visual images and the imperial kiln depot (yuyao chang ), Zheng s woodblock set enables audiences to see the geographical location and its significance as a producer of imperial objects first before viewers see steps of the porcelain production process. Zheng s ordering of visual prints brings to the fore Jingdezhen as the site of porcelain manufacturing. The placement of an image of the imperial kiln depot as the second illustration in this opening set of prints also reinforces the idea that Jingdezhen porcelain and Jingdezhen s significance stemmed from its relationship to the court and various imperial usages: tribute, ritual, or decorative. Zheng makes no pretense to originality and acknowledges forthrightly his debt to Tang Ying s explanations at the end of the chapter. His addition of the imperial kiln depot illustration at the beginning of his book consequently impresses upon readers and viewers that porcelain from Jingdezhen derived
138 120 its meaning from being produced objects for the court (yu ). Tao lu s woodblock illustrations thus show how a local writer employed textual and visual representations to negotiate meanings of Jingdezhen porcelain. To Zheng, porcelain was a local product produced in an imperial context. 1 Joseph Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: The Problem of Intellectual Continuity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958). 2 This scholarly practice is reflected in the general mode of writing and research during the Qing period. See Benjamin Elman, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). In his work, Elman maps the shift that took place among literati between the late-ming dynasty to the dawn of the nineteenth century. He characterizes the change as moving from philosophy to philology, or a shift in emphases on principles (yili ) to a method of research based on external (textual or otherwise) proof and verification impartial observation. The key link to Jingdezhen Tao lu is that Zheng and Lan s research method was similarly as philological. They were comprehensive in collating previous literary references to Jingdezhen. In chapters (juan) 8, 9, and 10, – the chapters not included in the French translation Zheng and Lan assiduously cited their textual sources, reflecting a concern for proof and verification. Whether this was a process similar to Europe s enlightenment that Elman praises or a conservative discourse of lineage studied by Kaiwing Chow, is not important. Jingdezhen Tao lu s citations make it a good reference for those interested in the array of literary texts that mentioned ceramics. For another view of intellectual production see also Craig Clunas study on Ming dynasty consumption practices: Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (London: Basil Blackwell, 1991). 3 Wenfang sikao s author and compiler was Tang Bingjun, a Qing dynasty doctor who lived during the early Qianlong years. Among some of his writings are a treatise on ginseng and a biji record explaining scholars studio implements, which was called Wenfang sikao. For a study on Zhangwu zhi, see Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (1991); For a translation of Tiangong kaiwu, see Song Yingxing, Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century: T’ien-kung k ai wu, trans., E-tu Zen Sun and Shiou-chuan Sun (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966). For a background to Gegu yaolun, see the preface in the English translation, Cao Zhao, Chinese Connoisseurship: The Ko Ku Yao Lun, the Essential Criteria of Antiquities, trans., Percival David (New York: Praeger, 1971). 4 Jiang Qi s status as a writer of the Southern Song or Yuan period is a scholarly debate. For reference to Fuliang xianzhi, Kangxi edition (1682) and Qianlong edition (1783), see Xiong Liao and Xiong Wei, comps., Zhongguo taoci guji jicheng 国
139 121 [Annotated collection of historical documents on ancient Chinese ceramics] (Shanghai: Shanghai wenhua chubanshe, 2006), 179, and for Jiang Qi s years of writing, see Xiong and Xiong, comps. (2006),179, fn. 2. See also Joseph Needham and Rose Kerr, Ceramic Technology, Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), For references to various publications that included these letters, see N. J. G. Pounds, The Discovery of China Clay, The Economic History Review 1:1 (1948), Pounds discusses the origins of the two letters dated 1712 and 1722 written by a Pere Francis D Entrecolles, a French Catholic missionary who lived in Jiangxi province. During his residence in Jiangxi and Beijing between 1698 and 1741, D Entrecolles made several espionage trips to Jingdezhen. He wrote about these trips in letters. After he sent his letters as reports to his diocese in Europe, the letters reached readers almost immediately as they were published in books in both English and French in 1717, 1735, and In the nineteenth century, these volumes continued to receive much attention in the growing scientific and artistic industry for knowledge about Jingdezhen porcelain. Pere D entrecolles letters or extractions of which, were published in J.B. Du Halde, Description Geographique de l empire de la chine (Paris: P.G. Lemercier, La Haye, 1735) II, They were reprinted in the same book but second version, in J.B. Du Halde Description Geographique de l empire de la chine (Paris: La Haye, 1736). There was an English version that also contained the letters published in 1736: J.B. Du Halde, The General History of China, trans., Richard Brooks (London: J. Watts, 1736), The letters were published along with other letter reports written by Jesuits in the mission fields under the name Lettres edifiantes et curieuses (Paris: n.p., 1717) XII, 253; a second edition appeared in Fuliang taozhengzhi has been reprinted in Feng Xianming, comp., Zhongguo gutaociwenxian jishi [Annotated Collection of Historical Documents on Ancient Chinese Ceramics] (Hong Kong: Yishujia chuban she, 2000), See bibliographic entry for Fuliang taozhengzhi in Needham and Kerr, Ceramic Technology (2004), Needham and Kerr, Ceramic Technology, 22, fn Needham and Kerr point out that the Jiangxi tongzhi of 1881 is described as being the most detailed in extracting passages from pre-yuan dynasty passages and the abridged edition is identified as the Fuliang taozhengzhi. 9 Jiangxi tongzhi, Yongzheng edition (1732) and Guangxu edition (1881). They are both located in the National Taiwan University Library in Taipei, Taiwan. The Jiangxi tongzhi, Guangxu edition (1881) ceramic sections are published in Xiong and Xiong, comps. (2006), For the Jiangxi sheng dazhi of 1556 and 1597 see: Xiong and Xiong, comps. (2006),32 and 37.
140 See the entries in the Siku quanshu index: Fuliang taozheng zhi, Sikuquanshu cunmu, juan 84, Electronic Version of the Siku quanshu. National Taiwan University Library, Taipei, TW. Accessed on: February 14, 2007 << See also the brief notes compiled for the Wu Yunjia s text in the annotated catalog of works included in the library (cunshu) and the catalogue (cunmu) in the Siku quanshu zongmu completed in 1798: Fulian taozheng zhi, Shi bu, zheng shu lei, huangchao tongzhi, juan 99, Electronic Version of the Siku quanshu. National Taiwan University Library, Taipei, TW. Accessed on: February 14, 2007 << 11 The editors of the Siku quanshu, the great imperial library project that began in the late Qianlong era, compiled an annotated catalog of all 3,461 books included in the library (cunshu) and together with brief notes for the works listed by title (cunmu). Begun in 1773, it was completed in 1798 and the two portions together was called Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu, which can be separated into two parts: the annotated catalogue for included books, Siku quanshu cunshu and the annotated index of titles not included in the library, Siku quanshu cunmu. The Wu Yunjia text was categorized in the cunmu (index for books not included in the library). For a concise explanation of the differences between the portions of the Siku quanshu, I relied on Edymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A Manual (Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 2000), A longer full-length study is Kent Guy, The Emperor s Four Treasuries: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch ien-lung Era (Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 1987). 12 Huang Zhimo, Xunmin tang congshu (np: Huang, ), composed of a total of six volumes, is now a rare book item found in some library collections throughout the world. I have examined the series at the Harvard Yenching library, University of California at Berkeley East Asian Studies library, and National Taiwan University library in Taipei. The compiler and publisher was Huang Zhimo, a nineteenth-century Qing scholar. Around 1848, he also compiled and anthologized a collection of women s poetry from the Qing Dynasty, also seen at the East Asian Studies library at Berkeley. The dates of Huang Zhimo s life are not found in biographical reference books. 13 See for instance Hong Mai, Fuliang tao, from Rong zhai suibi, in Xiong and Xiong, comps. (2006), 164. Hong Mai was a Poyang, Jiangxi native, as indicated by Xiong and Xiong, 164, fn See also Li Rihua, Hao Shijiu, from Zitao xuan za zhui reproduced in Xiong and Xiong, Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things (1991), Introduction, The discursive phenomenon of texts on things and their hierarchical distinctions among literati writers in the Ming dynasty are the focus of Craig Clunas book Superfluous Things.
141 Tang Bingjun, Wenfang sikao tushuo [Research on the Scholars Studio] (Beijing: Shumu wenxian chuban she, 1996 [1778]). 17 Excerpts from Wenfang sikao are also reprinted in Xiong and Xiong comps., In order to know which parts of Wenfang sikao were authored by Tang and which were compilations, I examined and compared the Wenfang sikao tushuo (Beijing: Shumu wenxian chuban she, 1996 [1778]) Beijing edition with the excerpted parts in the Xiong version (2006). 18 Liang Tongshu, Guyao qikao [Research on Old Wares] is compiled in Xiong and Xiong (2006), Liang Tongshu lived between 1723 and He was a Qing dynasty calligrapher, passing the juren degree in In the same year he was a special appointee to the imperial degree and serving in the Hanlin Academy during the Qianlong period reign. His most famous handscroll (571 x 33.4 cm) was the Sulao quanwen juan ( ), which is now in the National Palace Museum (Taipei). For the overview of Liang Tongshu s most famous works of art and his writing on kiln wares, see Xiong and Xiong, comps. (2006), 263, fn.1. The Xiong and Xiong version reprints Wenfang sikao as completely separate from Guyao qikao but notes that Guyao qikao was extracted from Liang Tongshu s essay, Gutong ciqi kao. See Xiong and Xiong (2006), 279. For more biographical information about Liang Tongshu, see Li Keyou and Wu Shuicun 吴, eds., Guci jianding zhinan [Guide to Expertising] (Beijing: Yanshan chubanshe, 1993), For a brief summary of the history of Tiangong kaiwu, see the translators preface in Song Yingxing, Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century: T’ien-kung k ai wu (1966), Translator s introduction. I have read the ceramic sections in the version reprinted in Xiong and Xiong, Cambridge University Library has an entire set of the ten juan, eighty-ce compendium. Ma Junliang wrote a preface for each of the volumes (juan); his prefaces indicate that he was trying to collect and publish writings not included in court sponsored encyclopedic sets. I have translated one here after examining them: At first, this collectanea gathered books from Han Wei period. And there were texts written during the Tang Song periods and beyond that were books of great literary merit. Each generation there have been people who known of these books. And in recent times, the knowledge of the existence of these books is even more widespread. These writings cannot be collected and anthologized. This is the fifth section, in compiler s preface Ma Junliang, Longwei mishu (Shimen: Dayou shanfang, ). 21 See the literary Jingdezhen Tao lu, juan 10, 275. Lan Pu and Zheng Tinggui, Jingdezhen taolu [Record on Jingdezhen Porcelain] (1815), ed., Mian Lian (Jinan: Shandong huabao, 2004). The book has been republished and gone through many reprints in the twentieth century. Hereafter, my citations to Jingdezhen
142 124 Tao lu refer to the Mian Lian edition unless otherwise indicated and follow this format: Jingdezhen Tao lu, juan # (if relevant), page #. 22 See Zheng Tinggui s postscript to Jingdezhen Tao lu, 277, where he writes:. The postscript (shuhou ) was dated Jingdezhen Tao lu, The characters written by Zheng Tinggui were:. See Jingdezhen Tao lu, Jingdezhen Tao lu, 277, paragraph 1. Again, current Chinese language scholarship on this book, its authors, and its contents is scant. I have relied on the analysis and discussion of the Jingdezhen Tao lu presented in the preface of the Mian Lian edition. See Lu Jiaming, Zhuan lun: Jingdezhen Tao lu chu tan, : [Special discussion on the Jingdezhen Tao lu] in Jingdezhen Tao lu, ed., Mian Lian (Jinan: Shandong huabao, 2004), See Qingshilu, Jiaqing 7 th year, 5 th month, juan 918. Qingshilu, Hanji quanwen ziliao ku Academia Sinica. National Taiwan University Library, Taipei, TW. Accessed on February 2, 2007 << 27 Jingdezhen Tao lu, I thank Professor Kuiyi Shen and senior curator of painting department Shan Guolin for enabling my access to the Shanghai Museum library and the research conducted on the editions of books. 29 Jingdezhen Tao lu, Jingdezhen Tao lu, juan 2, 61:,,. 31 Jingdezhen Tao lu, juan 5, In Chinese characters, the chapter name is:. 33 Clunas, Superfluous Things; Percival David, trans., Chinese Connoisseurship: The Ko Ku Yao Lun, the Essential Criteria of Antiquities (1971). In Luxury Knowledge: The Xiushilu records of lacquering of 1625, Techniques & Culture 29 (Jan-June 1997): 27-40, Clunas makes the point that how-to guides that purported to transmit knowledge were ultimately failures because they did not survive in China, such as the Tiangong kaiwu. But they were reprinted and collected in the Qing imperial library project, Siku
143 125 quanshu. At the request of imperial order, the project included constructing three library locations in southern cities of Hangzhou, Zhenjian and Yangzhou that housed the handscribed copies of the Siku quanshu books. The four in the south were open to the public. See also Wilkinson, Chinese History (2000), Work for the imperial library under Qianlong began under direction of chief editor Ji Yun in 1773 and ended in Clunas has argued that the text of the book Tiangong kaiwu was not transmitted during the Qing period in China. This statement neglects the fact that the Tiangong kaiwu was collected and fully reprinted in the Siku quanshu project. 35 Lai Chong-ren, Jindai Jingdezhen ciqi chanye zhi yanjiu, [Economic history of the modern porcelain industry of Jingdezhen] unpublished MA thesis, Tsinghua University, Meishu congshu s publication history and centrality in establishing the canon is discussed by Professor Ogawa Hiromitsu of Tokyo University, who gave an unpublished paper at a conference in 2003, Regarding the Publication of Meishu congshu. I thank Professor Hiromitsu for speaking to me during a research trip at the Sung Grand View conference in February Chen Zhenlian, Jindai Zhongri meishu guannian de qianyi guanyu meishu yisi de yuyan de kaocha ji qi ta, [Changes in Chinese and Japanese concepts in art concerning research on the term art and others] in Jindai Zhongri de huihua jiaoliu shi bijiao yanjiu, 硏 [Comparative history of exchanges in painting between China and Japan] (Hefei: Anhui meishu chubanshe, 2000). 38 A copy of the 1925 edition was seen at the Shanghai Museum rare book library (Winter, 2006). Zhaoji bookstore printed other books on objects then categorized as national cultural artifacts, and also published a year earlier Xu Zhiheng s text on collecting ceramics, Yinliuzhai shuo ci [Yinliuzhai on porcelain] (1924). 39 Ban chizi, Cilun [On Porcelain] in Shuo Tao [On Pottery] Guwan wenhua congshu, eds., Sang Xingzhi et al. (Shanghai: Shanghai keji jiaoyu chuban she, 1993). Ban Chizi is a penname for the watercolor ink painter, calligrapher, and printer Zhang Juyuan. He wrote a preface to a nineteenth century edition of Dream of the Red Chamber (Hong loumeng), mentioned in the journal, Wu Shichang, Hongloumeng houbanbu de yushenmiao, Hongloumeng xuekan [Journal of Hongloumeng studies] vol. 3 (1982), accessed on 11/11/06 << The exact dating of this piece of writing Ci lun is not clear. There are four collectors stamps at the beginning and end of the text, from which we know it was clearly a text
144 126 collected by later readers and collectors of books and artifacts. We know that it was written after the third year of Daoguang emperor s reign (1824) since the author mentions this date as being a day he bought ten pieces of antique porcelain. Ban chizi, Cilun in Sang Xingzhi et al. (Shanghai, 1993), Ban chizi, Cilun in Sang Xingzhi et al. (1993). 41 G..W. Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York: Dover, 1956). The foil for the concrete national form for Hegel was of course, art, which was for him always a thing of the past. 42 Yuko Kikuchi, Japanese Modernization and Mingei Theory: Cultural Nationalism and Oriental Orientalism (London: Routledge Curzon, 2004), 80-82; Satō Dōshin, “Nihon bijutsu” tanjō: Kindai Nihon no “kotoba” to senryaku [The Birth of Japanese Art: Modern Japanese expressions and tactics] (Tōkyō: Kōdansha, 1996). 43 Tony Bennett, Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995); see especially the article by Timothy Mitchell, Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order. Craig Clunas discusses the British fetish with Qianlong in relation to British nostalgia for the decline of the British empire in the 1930s in China in Britain: The Imperial Collections, both in Grasping the World: The Idea of a Museum, eds. Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004). 44 The objects and location comprising the South Kensington Museum were first displayed at the 1852 Great Exhibition, held at the site that was to become the South Kensington Museum, renamed Victoria and Albert Museum in See Nick Pearce, Collecting, Connoisseurship, and Commerce: An Examination of the Life and Career Stephen Wootton Bushell ( ), Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society 69 (2007): Stephen W. Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1896), Introduction, p See the second version published in New York by D. Appleton and company, Stephen Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art (New York: D. Appleton Co., 1899[ st ed.]). The size of the second edition is smaller in size. The book was published in 1981, attesting to the book s twentieth-century significance for art history students, teachers, and ceramics scholars: Stephen Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art (New York: Crown Publishers, 1981). 47 See for example the bibliographic references in Appendix IV in A.W. Brankston s Early Ming Wares of Chingtechen which was first published by the North China Daily News in Shanghai. Later it was also published by the Oriental Ceramic Society, on December 14, 1938, in conjunction with his work on planning the International
145 127 Exhibition of Chinese Art in London at the Burlington House in A.W. Brankston s Early Ming Wares of Chingtechen (London, Hong Kong: Henri Vetch, 1970 [1938]). 48 The William and Henry Walters collection of porcelain was the first significant American based collection of porcelain, excluding export ware collections assembled through the China trade. It formed the basis of the Walters Art Museum, still open today in Baltimore, MD. Walters clearly wanted his collection to be showcased in such a book of monumental narrative and was the one to approached Bushell offering his collection to be the pieces illustrated. The 116 plates were 60 x 25 cm dispersed among 10 volumes in 5 portfolios. See William Johnston, William and Henry Walters: The Reticent Collectors (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press in association with the Walters Art Gallery, 1999). I am thankful to Curator Rob Mintz and Bill Johnston for giving me last minute access to the lithographic prints, watercolors, and ceramic objects that make up the Walters collection and for spending the time to explain what they know of the history of the Walters collection porcelain and book. See New York Times, November 20, 1909 for information about William M. Laffan. 49 Julien was the surname of the French scholar who had previously translated the Jingdezhen Tao lu into French and will be explained below. 50 Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art (New York: Crown Publishers, 1981 [D. Appleton and Co., 1 st ed., 1896]), Preface and See where Bushell discusses vases produced during the Yongzheng Emperor s reign period, Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art (New York, 1981 [1896]), 191. Bushell also refers to the Jingdezhen Tao lu on page 260 in his chapter entitled Peculiar Technical Processes, where he explains the method of creating crackled glazes. Again Bushell quotes the Tao lu when giving an overview on porcelain centers outside of Jingdezhen on pages 316 and 317. I note that the quotations and references to Chinese language texts on porcelain in Bushell s seminal study are never footnoted but only referred to by title in the text if at all explicitly credited as Bushell s source. 52 Stephen W. Bushell and Dai Yue, trans., Zhongguo meishu [Chinese Art] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshu guan, st ed.). For the art research institutes publications that relied on Bushell s work: Jiang Siqing, Jingdezhen ciye shi [History of the Porcelain Industry in Jingdezhen] (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1936); Wu Renjing, Zhongguo taocishi [History of Chinese Ceramics] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1936); S.J. Vainker, Chinese Pottery and Porcelain: From Prehistory to the Present (London: British Museum Press, 1991); Jiangxi Light Industry Department, Ceramics Institute, ed., Jingdezhen taoci shigao [Draft History of Jingdezhen] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian chuban, 1959); Chen Liu [Ji Yuansou], Tao Ya [Ceramic Elegances] (1910), in Zhongguo gudai taoci
146 128 wenxian jilu [Collection of Ancient Chinese Porcelain documents] (Beijing: Quanguo tushuguan wenxian suowei fuzhizhongxin, 2003). 53 Deng Shi and Huang Binhong, comps., Meishu congshu [Collectanea of Fine Art] (Shanghai: Shenzhou guoguang she, 1911 [1928, 1936]) 54 One of the most famous late-nineteenth century collectors and connoisseurs of Qing dynasty porcelain wrote several works about porcelain: Chen Liu, Tao Ya (1910), see fn.52 above and Bei shi [History of Cup] in Sang Xingzhi et al. (1993). 55 Paul A. Cohen, Wang T’ao and Incipient Chinese Nationalism, The Journal of Asian Studies, 26:4 (Aug., 1967), : Wang Tao held Stanislas Julien in such high regard that he invited him to co-author a history of the French nation; Julien refused the offer. Stanislas Julien, trans., Historie et Fabrication de la Porcelaine chinoise (Paris: Mallet- Bachelier, 1856). 56 Pervival David, The T ao Shuo and the The Illustrations of Pottery Manufacture : A Critical Study and a Review Reviewed, Artibus Asiae 12:3 (1949): Needham and Kerr, Ceramic Technology: Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), This has been noted by Percival David and Peter Lam, but neither analyzed what ramifications might have resulted from compressed scenes. 59 Fujie Eiko, Keitokuchin tô roku [Record of Jingdezhen Pottery] (Tokyo: Hosokawa Kaiekido, 1907). A copy is at the National Library in Tokyo and a microfilm copy is held at the University of Cambridge Library, East Asian Reading Room in Cambridge, England. 60 See picture of cover to the 1907 translation: Fujie Eiko, Keitokuchin tô roku (Tokyo: Hosokawa Kaiekido, 1907). 61 Patricia J. Graham, Tea of the Sages: The Art of Sencha (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998). 62 There is an English translation by Geoffrey Sayer, Jingdezhen Tao lu: Or, The Potteries of China, Being a Translation with Notes and an Introduction (London: Routledge, 1951). I learned how to read the Jingdezhen Tao lu in Taipei and used the Sayer translation for comparison of my reading when in the United States. 63 Another shorter length study on porcelain called Nanyao biji may have been written and published before Jingdezhen Tao lu but the dates of authorship and publication have not yet been ascertained by scholars. Professor Hsieh Mingliang and art history graduate
147 129 students of the National Taiwan University art history institute believe that this work was written in the late Qianlong period rather than during the Yongzheng period as typically believed to be. Nevertheless, it was not mentioned nor cited by the other authors of the two main specialized texts on Jingdezhen porcelain, Tao Shuo and Jingdezhen Tao lu. Perhaps the authors of Jingdezhen Tao lu did not know of its existence or it was published later. I am grateful for the conversations with National Palace Museum curators of antiquities, Shih Chingfei and Yu Peichin over a yearlong period between 2006 and Needham and Kerr, Ceramic Technology (2004), Original preface of Jingdezhen Tao lu, 1: << >> 66 Jingdezhen Tao lu, 1:…,, 67 See original preface, Jingdezhen tao lu, 1:, 68 Ibid, 1:,.,,.,,. 69 Ibid, Ibid, 1, especially last paragraph. 71 So far, my reading of Tao Shuo indicates that the term imperial (yu), most often appears with vessels (qi). See, juan 3 on Ming Dynasty, under Manufacturing Process (zaofa), yuqi chang, in Xiong and Xiong, comps. (2006), 378. Even the English translation by Bushell of 1910 interprets the section headings as either ware or vessel, however Bushell employed the word specimen, to translate qi, instead of using vessel. 72 Margaret Medley, Ching-te Chen and the Problem of the Imperial Kilns, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 29.2 (1955): Medley wrote that it was not until Julien s French translation [of Jingdezhen Tao lu], that those in the west became privy to the notion of imperial kilns. See specifically Jingdezhen Tao lu, juan 1 and juan 2 74 See Jingdezhen Tao lu, juan 2, 61:
148 See Zheng Tinggui, Taoyang zhuzhici, in Fuliang xianzhi, Daoguang edition, 1832, annotation to poem 3:.,,. Zheng Tinggui, Taoyang zhuzhici in Mian Lian, ed. (2004), is also a reprint of the thirty poems, although Mian Lian is mistaken when he says the poems were published in the Kangxi Fuliang xianzhi. 76 See Zheng Tinggui, Taoyang zhuzhici, in Fuliang xianzhi, Daoguang edition, Gong Shi was a secretary to the Jiangxi provincial governor general, and he also compiled folksongs of Jingdezhen potters: Gong Shi, Jingdezhen tao ge, in Sang Xingzhi et al. (1993). Gong Shi s hometown Nanchang was located only forty kilometers south of the Poyang Lake and was the metropolis of Jiangxi. I have yet to ascertain where these poems were first published, though in the Shanghai Museum Rare Book Library, there is a copy: Gong Shi, comp., Jingdezhen taoge. (Shanghai: Zhongguo shudian jiaoyin, n.d. [1824]). 77 Zheng Tinggui s introductory remarks, Jingdezhen Tao lu, juan 2. The characters are:. 78 See Zheng Tinggui, Taoyang zhuzhici, in Fuliang xianzhi, Daoguang edition, 1832, annotation to poem 2. The characters are:. 79 Needham and Kerr (2004), , especially 197, fn. 365 that is a citation to a Qianlong memorial 62; Wang Guangyao, Zhongguo gudai guanyao zhidu [Administration of the Imperial Kilns in China] (Beijing: Zijincheng, 2004): , especially See also Zheng Tinggui s commentary to his third poem in his poem collection Taoyang zhuzhici in Fuliang xianzhi, Daoguang edition, For example, see the following Zheng Tinggui s poems in Taoyang zhuzhici in Fuliang xianzhi, Daoguang edition, 1832: Poem 16 gives an elegiac account of Tang Ying s years as the supervisor of kiln production during the Qianlong period and the poems Tang Ying wrote while touring Jingdezhen. Poem 17 hails Tang Ying s preservation efforts for a pavilion in the mountains surrounding Jingdezhen and its subsequent decay due to official neglect. Poem 18 extols Tang Ying for writing about a temple dedicated to a god of ceramics that was described as a Jingdezhen native who had once lived there. 81 I thank Chen Ruiling, retired Professor of Art History from Tsinghua University (Beijing), for advising me over a conversation at the Shanghai Meishu Guan in December 2006 about the increase of porcelain bodies transported from Jingdezhen to Canton during the nineteenth century. See Liu Zifen, Zhuyuan taoshuo, in Guci jianding zhinan, eds., Wu Yue and Zhao Lingwen (Beijing: Yanshan, 1993), 93. Here, the poet and late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century writer noted the rising production numbers of Canton wares and their impact on the production
149 131 process in Jingdezhen during the Jiaqing and Daoguang periods. See the introduction to the exhibition catalogue for developments of other artistic genres of Jingdezhen porcelain aside from imperial use porcelain in the post in Tony Miller and Humphrey Hui, Elegance in Relief: Carved Porcelain from Jingdezhen of the 19th to early 20th Centuries (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006). 82 See Zheng Tinggui, Taoyang zhuzhici, in ed., Mian Lian (2004), I am grateful to Dorothy Ko for reminding me that local is also ambiguous and is aconcept also deployed and constructed in specific historical contexts. 84 Zheng Tinggui, Taoyang zhuzhici, ed., Mian Lian (2004), poem 12, See discussion of the specific local and Jingdezhen qualities of porcelain composition and production process in Jingdezhen Tao lu, juan 4, 8, 9. For the identification of Jingdezhen porcelain history as an object of imperial use, refer to Jingdezhen Tao lu, juan 10, Jonathan Spence has studied over forty years ago the institution of bondservants set up by the Qing emperors. The banner system was an integral part of Manchu political and social administration, carried over since its inception in 1601 and through the entire. It was a status by hereditary succession and bannermen and their families lived within the banner garrisons, being allotted lavish plots of land and food from the land. Chinese bannermen who became bondservants descended from a long line of Chinese bannermen thus engaged in capture before 1631 when Chinese banners came into their own existence institutionally. The bannermen who became bondservants to the prince or emperors often assumed exceptional, personal, lucrative tasks that had in other dynasties been part of the eunuchs duties. Jonathan Spence, Tsaó Yin and the Kańg-Hsi Emperor: Bondservant and Master (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), Introduction. 87 Arthur Hummel, Eminient Chinese of the Ch ing Period (Washington: U.S. Govt. Print, 1943), for biographical information about Nian Xiyao s family and career. 88 Tang Ying’s annotations for Taoye tu (The Twenty Illustrations of the Manufacture of Porcelain) are translated with comments by S. W. Bushell, in his Chinese Pottery and Porcelain (London: Clarendon Press, 1910); they are also reprinted together with historical prints and contemporary photographs of Jingdezhen porcelain-making in Robert Tichane, Ching-te-chen: Views of a Porcelain City (New York: New York State Institute for Glaze Research, Painted Post, 1983), A more comprehensive discussion regarding the whereabouts of certain albums of paintings depicting porcelain manufacture is the focus of the next chapter of the dissertation. The set used as the basis for Tang Ying s annotations are in a private collection in Taiwan. I have not seen the painting album in person.
150 Tang Ying memorial, Qianlong 8 yr., 5 th mo., 22 nd day, in Xiong and Xiong, comps., The characters are:,,,.. Tang Ying memorial, Qianlong 8 yr., 5 th mo., 22 nd day, in Xiong and Xiong, I have confirmed this observation by corresponding with Peter Lam, Director of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Art Museum, who then referred me to his article, Chinese Making China: Technical Illustrations in the Jingdezhen taolu (1815), in The Art of the Book in China, Colloquies on Art & Archaeology in Asia, no.23 (London: Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, 2006). 92 Song Yingxing, T’ien-kung k’ai-wu, trans., E-tu Zen Sun and Shiou-chuan Sun (1966). 93 See Philip K. Hu, comp., Visible Traces: Rare Books and Special Collections from the National Library of China, (Beijing: Morning Glory Publishers, 2000), Joseph Needham and Ling Wang, Mechanical Engineering, Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), Percival David noted that they remained in seclusion. Percival David, T ao Shuo and the The Illustrations of Pottery Manufacture, See Jingdezhen Tao lu, juan 1, 59, fn Jingdezhen Tao lu, juan 1, 58 and 59:.
151 133 Figure 1. Title page of second edition of Jingdezhen Tao lu, Shanghai Museum library
152 134 Figure 2. Top: 1891 Jingdezhen Tao lu woodblock illustration – collecting the clay (qutu) Bottom: 1925 Jingdezhen Tao lu Zhaoji edition with new illustration collecting the clay (qutu)
153 135 Figure 3. Stephen Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art, First edition, limited to 500. Figure 4. Example of black-and-white photographs in Stephen Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art, 1896.
154 Figure 5. Full-page chromolithographic plates in Oriental Ceramic Art, v. in 5 portfolios; 116 plates; 60 & 25 cm. 136
155 137 Figure 6. Last plate in Stanislas Julien s French translation, 1856, depicting China. Figure 7. First plate, Collecting the clay, in Julien, Histoire et Fabrication de la Porcelaine chinoise, 1856, showing compressed vertical scene.
156 138 Figure 8. Inscription page signed at Tokyo Museum, in the Japanese translation, Keitokuchin tô roku, Figure 9. Last page of Temmioka Tessai s handwritten preface to Keitokuchin tô roku, 1907.
157 139 Figure 10. Tiangong kaiwu woodblock illustrations: making tiles, making bricks, removing tiles from moulds. Song Yingxing, Tiangong kaiwu, vol.1115 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2002), 67.
![Jingdezhen Tao lu (1891[1815]), in order from](https://docplayer.net/docs-images/60/45260040/images/158-1.png)
158 140 Figure 11. First two woodblock illustrations in Jingdezhen Tao lu (1891[1815]), in order from top to bottom. Top image: Jingdezhen map Bottom image: Imperial Kiln Center (yuyaochang)
159 3. Picturing Jingdezhen Porcelain in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries In the midst of the critical period of formation of western (especially British) collections of porcelain as Chinese art, one of the world s most influential collectors of ceramics from China, Percival David, declared in 1933 that no illustrated work of antiquity that deals with Chinese ceramics has survived to us in any form. 1 The period of David s collecting, publishing, and art exhibition organizing occurred during the 1920s and 1930s, the years during which collecting Chinese art as art dominated modes of obtaining Chinese ceramics. Collecting art, as Stacey Pierson former head of the Percival David collection in London has pointed out, stood in contrast to a long, albeit continuous, history of British trade of Chinese porcelain as decorative as well as functional objects, including interior décor and tea and dining sets. 2 The shift can be described as moving from porcelain as display or use objects to porcelain as collected art artifacts. Percival David s collection of ceramics, became the only museum devoted to Chinese ceramics in England in In the 1930s, David was an active member of the Oriental Ceramics Society, lecturer in Chinese art at the University of London, and an advocate for public learning about traditional Chinese connoisseurship, an endeavor best expressed in his English translation of a treatise written by a Chinese scholar, Gegu yaolun, entitled by David as Chinese Connoisseurship. The Chinese title of the text, completed in 1388, did not, of course, mean Chinese connoisseurship; a more accurate translation might be Investigation on Antiquities. The English language rendering thus exposes the preoccupation held by 1930 s English collectors with the notion of authentic Chinese taste as the crucial standard by which collectors should identify and collect art objects. 141
160 142 In the twentieth century, the two overlapping worlds of Chinese art scholarship and collecting have all agreed that David s collection of ceramics and his public efforts to promote Chinese art were a benchmark in the institutionalization of Chinese ceramics as a field of study and knowledge. 3 Today, the David collection includes over 1700 objects in total and its fame predicates itself on Percival David s own reputation in art circles an international one as a Chinese connoisseur. However influential and knowledgeable a ceramics and Chinese art specialist David was, his statement regarding porcelain illustrations was inaccurate. Percival David, whose ambitions included building a public understanding of Chinese ceramic objects, was looking for pictures of ceramic objects portraying technical peculiarities of execution of the objects. 4 However, contrary to his over-generalized erasure of a history of ceramic illustrations, visual images germane to the topic of porcelain and ceramics produced in China have been recovered out of the dustbins of antiquity, to use David s own word. David was familiar with the authoritative British translator and collector Stephen Bushell s foundational works on Oriental porcelain and was writing at a time when translations and reprints of the early nineteenth- century illustrated book, Jingdezhen Tao lu abounded widely in China and in Britain, to name only two exemplary countries. In light of his purposeful neglect of the myriad of published visual images, it is clear that he spoke from the perspective of a collector who had in mind a preconceived notion of what he considered to be accurate visual representation of porcelain objects. He desired reference material that presented porcelain as art objects of a singular, collectible nature. 5 His agenda thus rendered other visual depictions of porcelain irrelevant and allowed him to make a simplified and altogether erroneous statement.
161 143 This chapter describes the emergence, circulation, and provenance of major visual sources on Jingdezhen ceramic history and production. In part, its purpose is to rectify the dismissive generalization put forth by David in the 1930s. After all, illustrations devoted to porcelain and ceramics were transmitted throughout the nineteenth century and they appeared in the major monograph analyzed in the preceding chapter. As mentioned, the first complete book on Jingdezhen porcelain history written in any language, was the Jingdezhen Tao lu. First written in the last years of the Qianlong period ( ) by a Jingdezhen literati, it was later edited, augmented, and published in This illustrated text formed the basis of many twentieth century studies on ceramic technology and art by scholars based in and outside of China. It was the first document on porcelain production and aesthetics devoted to Jingdezhen that was published in a non-official publishing context. The 1815 edition was also the first document published about Jingdezhen porcelain to have been accompanied by illustrations of ceramics. However, the woodblock illustrations in Jingdezhen Tao lu were not the only illustrations of porcelain manufacturing that were drawn in the era of active proliferation of porcelain texts and knowledge exchange. Taking issue with David s declaration by focusing on visual documentation, this chapter narrates transformations in the meaning Jingdezhen porcelain through highlighting the visual sources of porcelain. Instead of imputing primacy to texts as historical data, I explore the uses of visual media for the writing of historical change. In doing so, I show that to speak of porcelain history in the time period between the late-eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries necessitates an investigation of visual media, juxtaposed with material artifacts and textual records. Lothar Ledderose introduces a similar point in his landmark study on Chinese art: he
162 144 notes that in addition to the porcelain pieces themselves, illustrations provided a source of information from which westerners could learn about the mass production of porcelain from China. 6 First, I begin with an overview of the various visual mediums that have included ceramics as part of their pictorial content. Second, the chapter gives an account of the origination of the pictorial motif Taoye tu. To this end, I explain the historical impetus and context that spurred the production of the first instance of Taoye tu in visual form: a couple or perhaps even a triumvirate of Qing court imperial painting albums that depicted porcelain manufacturing through visual illustrations at the height of the high-qing period, the mid-eighteenth century. I then discuss the production and dissemination of the porcelain manufacturing visual motif throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By focusing on the spread of porcelain manufacturing in prints, paintings, and porcelain of the Qing period, I hope to show how the theme underwent parallel developments at various levels of production and social consumption. In doing so, the artistic, cultural, and political factors which sustained this theme may be better understood across the boundaries of political units, country, period, or medium. This chapter s narrative demonstrates two shifts in the global circulation of Jingdezhen porcelain. The first shift consists of a move from late Ming pedagogical images of ceramics technology to eighteenth and nineteenth century Qing-era images of production processes. Crucially, images in circulation during the Qing dynasty were sequentially viewed and effectively created an aesthetic illusion of reproducing the flow of time. The second shift, marked by the existence and proliferation of these visual sources, is from the exchange of porcelain objects to the exchange of the images themselves. Henceforth, there were two networks of porcelain images current in
163 145 circulation during the eighteenth century and expanding through the nineteenth. The first circuit was one in which material objects were central, a market in which people actually bought and collected porcelain. The second was characterized by the demand and consumption of porcelain s visual vestiges; here, people did not necessarily buy porcelain objects, per se. Rather, they appreciated and participated in a visual culture of porcelain. 7 This two-pronged exchange trajectory flowed within and beyond East Asia and subsequently appeared in a transmuted form in Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I. Early Images Visual artworks that included representations of ceramics in their composition appear as early as the mid-second century B.C. The earliest known paintings that portray ceramics include the Mawangdui silk banner, which depicts an array of bronze, lacquer, and pottery vessels at a funeral wake, and tomb wall murals dating to the Eastern Han ( A.D.) 8 A painting made of ink and color on silk, possibly dating to the tenth or early twelfth century, depicts porcelain dishes, ewers, and bowls in an orderly table arrangement, and expresses the importance of ceramic objects in ordinary use. 9 Another notable example is the renowned painting of the Song dynasty emperor, attributed to Emperor Huizong in the early twelfth century. In his Literary Gathering (Wenhui tu ), porcelain objects in the form of dishes, bowls, and wine ewers populate a table scene depicting the elegant consumption of food and drink by educated and refined men (Figure 1). 10 These paintings appeared on various media such as tomb wall art, silk canvases, and textiles. Their visual composition included images of ceramics; however, the
164 146 paintings do not feature porcelain as the primary subject matter. Instead, they portray scenes of daily life relevant for a certain strata of society – the elite, educated men for whom ceramic objects were used or displayed in social practices such as burial rites or dining. Also notable in the history of ceramics in visual media are paintings produced during the Ming and Qing dynasties ( ). Contrasted with paintings that depict ceramics in their various use contexts, Ming and Qing dynasty paintings depicting ceramics in the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries fall under the general rubric of bird-and-flower paintings. As is well known, this genre had its origins with the development of the Northern Song dynasty court painting academy under Emperor Huizong ( ). In the Ming and Qing dynasties, bird-and-flower paintings found resurgence in painters artistic practice. Through exchanges between the Ming court painters and Ming loyalists who painted in the wake of the Manchu conquest of their dynasty and subsequent establishment of the royal court of the Qing dynasty, this genre of bird-and-flower was the epitome of scholar-amateur ink paintings. 11 Some well known examples of paintings portraying ceramics are attributed to the extreme expressionist painters such as Bada Shanren, whose real name was Zhu Da, and Dao ji (Zhu Ruoji ), also known as Shi Tao, active between the years 1626 and 1705, and 1642 and 1707, respectively. Bada Shanren and Shi Tao s paintings have been analyzed as reflective of a modern subjectivity on the part of artists self-consciousness and alienation. 12 They are significant for bringing to prominence the material qualities of the nuances in the glazed surfaces or ceramic shapes in visual representation. In these paintings, the decorative and aesthetic qualities of ceramics
165 147 dominate the scene, as the ceramics are often featured as vases or fruit bowls. Figure 2 also shows an example of a Qing court painting measuring approximately 36 wide and 97 cm tall drawn in the Kangxi period around 1720, where the glaze crackles are clearly depicted. Besides the aforementioned bird-and-flower paintings, images specifically portraying ceramic objects in visual media date primarily from the early years of the Qing dynasty and onward. These images are categorized as the illustrated catalogues of antiquities cherished by various emperors and are currently stored in the rare books and manuscript collections of the Qing imperial archives at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. They are themselves part of a long lineage of illustrated catalogues that began primarily during the Song Dynasty, during which manuals and catalogues of bronze objects emerged alongside the development of imperial court art collections such as the Kaogu tu (1092), or Xuanhe bogu tulu (1123). With regard to ceramic objects, Qing imperial collecting and cataloguing provided the context for ceramic pictorial catalogues. Ceramic pictorial catalogues came varied in size, form, and content. One of the most famous pictorial works is the Yongzheng period ( ) handscroll painting entitled Guwan tu (Scroll of Antiquities) dated to Painted with ink and colors on paper by a painter of the Qing imperial painting academy, the grandiose Guwan tu measures 52.5 cm measures high, approximately 135 cm wide, and over twenty meters long. 14 It is a scroll whose graphic content comprises 223 assorted antique objects and can been read as a magnified pictorial record of actual objects that constituted the Yongzheng court art collection, tout court. In sum, the scroll includes a total of 103 ceramic objects whose
166 148 dates range from Song ( ) porcelains to Ming ( ) period blue-and-white wares and Qing emperor Yongzheng-period famille rose-enameled porcelain jars. II. Qianlong Period Porcelain Catalogues Insofar as the advent of porcelain illustrations is concerned, the Qing Dynasty, and specifically, the mid-eighteenth century and years of the Qianlong emperor s reign, was the crucial period. There are some recently discovered imperial catalogues of ceramics produced for Qianlong, currently held in the Qing archives at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Now catalogued under the general term, ceramic catalogues ( 册 taoci tu ce), they reveal the collecting practices and porcelain collections of the eighteenth century Qing court. 15 Collecting was a large part of the Qing emperor s leisure and political activity. The Qianlong emperor was an avid collector who was also devoted to art criticism and catalogue compilation. A number of elaborate catalogues of ceramics in the Qianlong imperial collection, carefully researched and many with illustrations, are extant. Four of them are part of the collection of the National Palace Museum (Gugong bowuyuan) in Taipei. They are called: Jingtao yungu, Fangong zhangse, Yanzhi liuguang, and Taoci puce. All four albums bear the imperial seal and provide a glimpse into the Qianlong emperor s impulse to rank, inventory, and catalogue objects in a systematic, rational fashion. 16 In the Imperial Household (Neiwufu) production account archives, records show that the Qianlong emperor in 1739, 1741, 1743, 1744, 1745, 1746, 1747, 1748, 1750, 1751, 1752, 1775, 1776, 1783 (or the
167 149 corresponding years corresponding to the 4th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12, 13, 15th, 16th, 40th, 41st, 47th years of his reign) – an astonishing total of thirteen times and the most of any Qing emperor to date – ordered by imperial decree the appraisement, ordering, and ranking of ceramic objects. 17 Moreover, the Qianlong emperor also went to great lengths to design and commission the construction of sandalwood frames, shelves, and wooden storage boxes. 18 All such art work accessories and material details were carefully designed and made of high-grade wood, for the purpose of storage, display, and protection of these objects. These preservations efforts are similar to the mindset of the modern museum s curatorial practices and reflect Qianlong s ardent desire to identify and authenticate artworks in his collection. Mounted and decorated in the same fashion, they were part of a larger project to record antiquities kept in treasure boxes or curiosity cabinets in the palaces during the 1780s and 1790s. Four albums recording bronze objects in the Qianlong collection dating to the same years and following the same graphic-text layout also exist in the National Palace Museum holdings. Each of the four thread-bound ceramic albums documents ten pieces of ceramics in the same layout. For each item, a painting detailing its stylistic features appears on one leaf, which is then followed by a corresponding textual passage describing the object s measurements and geographical kiln ware characteristics written on the opposite leaf (Figure 3). Painted in ink and color on paper, these pictures were rendered in a highly realistic style, showing the pieces in accurate perspectives and portraying their distinctive features, including colors, crackles, and painted decorations. Many of these items are extant today in the Qing collections disseminated worldwide, and after careful research, curators have matched paintings with specific objects thanks to
168 150 the painters meticulous depictions. According to the senior curator of antiquities and porcelain at the National Palace Museum of Taipei, Yu Peichin, the ten ceramic pieces in each album originally corresponded to items kept in a single curio box, known as duobao ge (Figure 4). In other words, each album was an illustrated record of what were in a certain box or a certain container within a single box. Evidence also indicates that the album was originally kept along with the objects in the box. In addition to describing the specific piece, the texts that accompanied the pictures provided comments regarding the shape, dimensions, color, and glaze of the ware. Mostly, the descriptive passages were taken from ceramics treatises from the late Ming and early Qing. Like Qianlong s poems that were inscribed onto some pieces of porcelain, the ceramic catalogues quoted instructional phrases that revealed porcelain appreciation principles from the consumer culture of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, such as those[porcelains] with flowers as decoration are better than monochrome [porcelains]. 19 The ceramic catalogues made reference to the late Ming and early Qing texts on things including the Tao Shuo of 1774, Gegu yaolun (1387), and Gao Lian s Zunsheng bajian (Eight Discourses on Elegant Living). 20 In spite of Qianlong s intense textual research to promote knowledge and an accurate understanding of the pieces as art objects from the past, no comprehensive developmental narrative of the history of Chinese ceramics appear in the ceramic catalogues. 21 Items of different types, from different kilns, and ranging in dates from the Song to the Ming were randomly grouped together. They shared one common feature: they were the choicest pieces in Emperor Qianlong s collection, each of them being ranked jia (highest quality). In addition, the items were shown standing in their most recognizable position,
169 151 sometimes revealing an imperfection, such as the shrunken and indented spot on the glaze of a Ming-dynasty bowl reproducing the style of a thirteenth-century Ge ware covered bowl. 22 Individuality of the porcelain piece and by association as will be later explained of the personality of the emperor himself– was the principal concern. 23 Qianlong s ceramic catalogues and ceramic poems differed from the two extant painting scrolls depicting porcelains in the collection of the Yongzheng emperor (r ): Scroll of Antiquities, dated 1728, now in the Percival David Foundation, and another scroll, perhaps the second of a paired set, under the same name, dated 1729, in London s Victoria and Albert Museum. While the two painting scrolls were also a record of imperial collections, they did not emphasize the views of the collector towards the treasured objects. The scrolls did not include dating, size, and kiln names alongside the pictorial representations. 24 Thus, the illustrated ceramic catalogues of the Qianlong period – along with the other catalogues of various types of collected objects – were as much about capturing an understanding of a collector s historical knowledge as they were about a simple inventory and documentation of extant objects. 25 Developing knowledge about ceramic history was a part of Qianlong s aesthetic and appreciation. In a poem written in 1789 about a Song Dynasty Guan ware bowl, Qianlong surmised that since the Kaogong ji (Record on Investigating Crafts) contained a statement of exhortation, glazes with impurities were not befit for the marketplace (guaken xuebao bu ru shi ), after which Qianlong emperor then concluded that glazed porcelains already existed during the Three Dynasties period. 26 Combining the inferences he drew from objects in tandem with textual research into literature from the third century BC
170 152 allowed Qianlong to employ methods of archaeology and textual research to made conclusions about porcelain s origins and dating. This intellectual excursion certifies Qianlong s status as the first historian of porcelain. Moreover, coupled with numerous references to Ming Dynasty literati texts on things and handbooks to elegant living, the peculiar focus on the objects uniqueness such as material flaws enabled the catalogues to both resonate back with mainstream literati culture previously in vogue as well as distinguish themselves as remnants of a collection of objects belonging to a new, stylized era that pointed completely to an authoritative collector the emperor Qianlong. 27 In fact, porcelain objects were not the only objects to capture the attention of the rigorous cataloguing, ordering, ranking efforts of Qianlong’s court. In 1752 and 1753 (the 17th and 18th years of the Qianlong reign period), he ordered the re-publication of the Bogu tu and the Kaogu tu catalogues that featured bronze antiques, first printed in the Song Dynasty. Again, each catalogue’s visual illustration portrayed a single bronze object, and the pictured object was accompanied by a corresponding page on which textual explanations about the bronze’s size, provenance, and decorative details were written. Also included in the cataloguing and visual repertoire were inkstone catalogues (Figure 5). 28 Like the ceramic catalogues, as Yu Peichin’s examination of ceramic objects along with these object catalogues reveal, the illustrated catalogues were records and inventories of actual duobao ges’ contents that were part of the Qing emperors’ own collections. The tension between adopting the cultural practices of the Ming literati and asserting a Qing presence embodied in the ruler also framed the broader phenomenon of these curio boxes. As present-day museum holdings demonstrate, and archival records for the Imperial Household show, the Qianlong emperor, the princes, and their households commissioned and collected lacquered boxes, “cabinets of many treasures”
171 153 (duobao ge). The cabinets were often small enough to carry with two hands while others were large enough to be placed on a table. The boxes were equipped with drawers, often dozens of drawers, some undiscoverable by any but the owner. In the drawers were miniature objects: jades, ivories, cloisonnés, stones, jewels, pens, and small inkstones. Each was held in its own customized container within a larger cabinet. The set could be opened and spread over the expanse of a good-sized rug, or folded together and slipped under a chaise pillow. The cabinets had a precedent in the Ming dynasty, when scholars used such differentiated and multi-level boxes to transport actual writing implements necessary for study and writing such as full-sized pens, paper, inkstones, not unlike a handheld toolkit for a scholar. During the Qing period however, the transportable boxes underwent some specific changes, not the least of which was the increased favor for duobao ge at the imperial court. This description of the diversity and completeness of Qing cabinets of multiple treasures certainly hark the European curiosity cabinets of the sixteenth through early eighteenth centuries, where natural and cultural oddities were concentrated for classification, stratification, and the general purpose of defining exotica. 29 As an exercise in collecting and containing universality, the Qing duobao ge were an extension of the Qing imperial ideology. As Philippe Foret and Pamela Crossley have pointed out, in the realms of art and landscape architecture, the reproduction of complete, albeit miniaturized worlds dominated Qing court aesthetic productions. One example would be as the imperial summer retreat grounds at Rehol, referred to as the Bishu shanzhuang (Villa to Escape the Heat). These curio boxes were no different. Just as European curiosity cabinets conveyed an impulse to know the world, so were the Qing
172 154 duobao ge. They were, in Crossley s words the toys of universalism, in which reality is bestowed upon objects by subjecting them to the imperial power to stereotype, miniaturize, and segregate. 30 As such, these treasure troves cannot simply be dismissed as a leisure activity engaged by the Qing imperial family in the eighteenth century or a personal enthusiasm for petty playthings. The duobao ge of the Qing court, and their mapping onto actual documentation as seen through these catalogues jives with what other recent scholarship has observed regarding Qing imperial ideology. Through collection, recording, precise illustration and systematic documentation, Qianlong s cabinets of curiosities negotiated between adopting Ming period consumption habits and developing an emperor s own image. This emperor-centric imperial ideology was a central tenet of the Qing imperial project that was universalistic and historicizing in nature. 31 Given the personal stamp and mark of Qianlong emperor on these research and collecting activities, they show the importance of the idea of personhood in the form of emperorship in Qing rulership. This is the general point made by Crossley in her study of Qianlong s construction of imperial ideology. 32 Literally, Qianlong wrote over one-hundred poems celebrating his porcelain collection; certain choice ceramics pieces of which were impressed with these poems that flowed from the emperor s own calligraphy. 33 Even Qianlong s imperial seal stamped the beautifully, silk-bound illustrated catalogues. Crossley s study of court productions of historical knowledge through Manchu and Chinese language texts makes the point that imperial rule under Qianlong radiated outward from the persona of the emperor himself. Expanding upon Crossley s general observation, I argue that the bond between persona and ideological production in governance is nowhere else better demonstrated in court
173 155 cultural phenomena as these illustrated catalogues that showcased individuality and systemized knowledge of the past. The insistence on the meticulous research and cataloguing of art inventory therefore encompasses the array of political and cultural mechanisms used in the construction and broadcast of Qing rulership, which was definitively, an emperorship: a mechanism of governance over a domain in parts. 34 Porcelain was an object already defined by style names and kilns, names that reflected specific geographic location. The kiln system was aptly able to encompass a total domain composed of parts. Even if produced at Jingdezhen, the focus was on the reproduction of various ware types and kiln styles spread across geographical territory and throughout history. 35 Porcelain at Jingdezhen involved modular and mass production techniques. Its completed form was composed of reproducible steps and modules: a cultural object characterized by a domain in parts. 36 Formed and impressed by an emperor s own hands, the nature and process by which collections and knowledge about those porcelain collections provide a clear picture of the link that fused persona with Qing imperial identity. III. Images of Porcelain Production and The Rise of Albums: Orderly Viewing and Orderly Viewers of the Qing court The history of ceramic images includes another category, those that depict ceramic manufacture. These are the images that have garnered the most scientific attention. The first visual depictions of porcelain production appeared in the woodblock prints of the late Ming dynasty technology treatise Tiangong kaiwu, published in In his chapter on ceramic techniques, the author Song Yingxing divides the information contained therein into six subheadings:
174 156 Tiles Bricks Bottles and Jars White Porcelain Blue-and-White ware Kiln Transmutation and Mohammedan Blue Corresponding to these subheadings, Tiangong kaiwu contained thirteen simple sketches printed by woodblock carving technique. Each image portrayed people in the process of making different ceramic objects (including tiles and bricks) loading the kiln, and molding clay. 38 Altogether, Tiangong kaiwu included thirteen images under these headings: making tiles removing tiles from center bodies making bricks (zhuan) coal- fired brick kilns making large jars (gang) firing water and quenching water bottle kilns connecting with large jar kilns making bottles (ping) shaping and polishing bodies with potter wheels dipping porcelain vessels in water glazing porcelain vessels porcelain kilns painting and decorating blue-and-white As the group of pictures indicates, the layout and content showed no specific attention to the order of a production process. Instead, the images were grouped together in a general ceramic technology chapter called “Molding Ceramics” (Tao Shan ). The first three themes depicted woodblock pictures of specific objects: tiles, bricks, and water jugs. The last six images are exclusively concerned with porcelain, which was not necessarily denoted by the word ci. These pictures are not geographically specific nor is there any graphic visualization of a landscape background. As flat images, they are generally drawn without perspective, much like the text-image couplets in Wang Zhen’s woodblock
175 157 illustrations of farming devices in Nongshu (Agricultural Treatise), written and illustrated in the first decades of the fourteenth century. 39 Tiangong kaiwu’s pictures give no indication of the location of these kilns or materials. Unlike the images in Nongshu, however, the content of Song Yingxing’s illustrations contained people as agents and users of materials and tools. The intended perspective reflected in the illustrations was much more about the idea that technology involved a symbiotic relationship between man and his natural environment. Reflective of this, the pictures show people utilizing their skills to harness the resources available in nature. 40 By contrast, the images that were disseminated and were in vogue during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were created as sets with a specific sequential order and chronology as opposed to individual stand-alone images. Moreover, they were specific to the subject of porcelain rather than a broader category of disparate ceramic materials, as depicted in Tiangong kaiwu s rather utilitarian focus on daily use items such as bricks and tiles. Beginning with the second quarter of the eighteenth and continuing throughout the nineteenth century, at least thirty-five sets of ink-on-paper drawings or ink-on-silk paintings depicting porcelain manufacture were drawn. 41 They are extant and collected in private and museum collections worldwide. Moreover, the pictorial motif of porcelain production enjoyed widespread appeal through channels of export, imperial, and domestic trade as well as, from the latter half of the nineteenth century onward, translation efforts driven by industrializing nations and scientific communities overseas. Summarizing this visual genre as a whole, Peter Lam, chief curator of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Art Museum, has categorized them into three categories: woodblock illustrations, export works, and court paintings. 42 Again, it was the Qianlong
176 158 period that saw the inception of a verifiable genre of visual images, now widely known by its conventional label of Taoye tu. By the close of nineteenth century, the genre encompassed not only two-dimensional media but also decorative motifs on porcelain objects themselves. There are, to date, three known sets of paintings that are court productions that depict porcelain in the format of a process-oriented visual experience. The most famous set of porcelain manufacturing illustrations dates almost a century after the woodblock illustrations of the Tiangong kaiwu and are now owned in a private collection in Taiwan. 43 It consists of a brief introduction to the album written by Tang Ying entitled Tuci jilue (Summary Record on the Order of Illustrations) and depicts the manufacturing process in detailed and sequentially arranged fashion, consisting of twenty images: collection of stone and making the clay washing and purification of clay burning the ashes and preparing the glazes manufacture of the saggars (zhi zao xia bo) preparing the molds for round wares (yuanqi xiu mo) throwing the bodies on the wheel (yuanqi la pei) fabrication of the vases collection of blue cobalt purification of the cobalt pigment material (lian xuan qing liao) molding the body and grinding the cobalt pigment (yin pei ru liao) painting the blue-and-white decoration on round vessels (yuan qi qing hua) fabrication and painting on vases (zhi hua zhuo qi) glazing by dipping and blowing (zhan you chui you) scraping the body and cutting the foot (xuan pei wa zu) stacking the pieces in the kiln firing and opening the kiln decorating round wares and vases with overglaze enamels (yang cai) open and closed stove wrapping with straw and packing in containers (shu cao zhuang tong) worshipping the god and offering sacrifices (sishen chou yuan )
177 159 The twenty illustrations were first painted and produced as a set of paintings, and expanded upon through the textual explanations by Tang Ying. In 1743, following an order of the Qianlong emperor, Tang Ying ( ), imperial deputy and supervisor of Jingdezhen kilns from 1728 to 1756, traveled to Beijing and annotated a set of twenty paintings illustrating the manufacture of porcelain. The paintings had first been commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor and painted by Sun Hu (active ca ), Zhou Kun (active ca ), and Ding Guanpeng (active ca ), three painters of the Qing court painting academy. 44 The memorial by Tang Ying indicates that he received the set of twenty illustrations from the inner court administrative unit, Yangxindian zaobanchu (The Imperial Household Workshops), on July 13, The emperor’s edict, conveyed two weeks earlier, instructed that Tang Ying write annotations regarding the technique and affairs of pottery production (jiye ). The emperor even stipulated that the words be written in an elegant manner and in parallel structure form, permitting a leeway of ten or so words. 45 The emperor furthermore specified that Tang Ying should chronicle even the place names in the Jingdezhen environs where raw materials such as porcelain clay (gaoling tu), stone (petuntse or baidunzi) and water could be found. Finally, the edict dictated that Tang Ying should order the paintings and explanations in a correct sequence before presenting the paintings to Qianlong Emperor. 46 The edict refers to this album with the terms Taoye tu, from which the conventional genre s name is derived. The ye in the album s name connotes a meaning of cultivation, both in character and care, effectively
178 160 folding the making of ceramics into a relationship whereby the imperial power was dominant and almost fatherly in nurture and nature. Scholars have also located another, albeit incomplete, set of such production paintings, now stored in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Beijing. There are only eight remaining leaves in this album, painted in color and ink on silk. 47 The eight leaves are: Purification of the clay (Figure 7a) Making saggars (Figure 7b) Making porcelain bodies and placing in kiln (Figure 7c) Shaping vases Shaping round vases Collection of cobalt pigment material Decorating with blue-and-white on round wares Opening the kiln (Figure 7d) According to Yu Peichin and Wang Guangyao, researcher at the Beijing Palace Museum, the Qing court Imperial Household production account contains discrepant documentation for the production of these albums, so it is difficult to correctly match the date and origins of the either of the two physical painting artifacts with Tang Ying s memorial to the throne of A 1738 record in the Imperial Household workshops account records register an imperial edict commissioning a set of twenty paintings appears in the archives, where Tang Dai would paint trees and rocks, Sun Hu painted the jiehua, and Ding Guanpeng painted the human figures. 48 However, the item recorded in the 1745 Shiqu baoji states that the set s three painters were Zhou Kun, Sun Hu, and Ding Guanpeng. Clearly, either Zhou Kun replaced Tang Dai after 1738 or there were already two sets of albums in the Qing court collection. A third album of paintings rendered in the court style is in a private French collector s holdings. This set consists of thirty
179 161 leaves depicting steps in making porcelain. 49 This set bears the mark of Jiao Bingzhen, a painter for the court of emperor Kangxi and active in the Kangxi and Yongzheng reign periods. Since the years of Jiao Bingzhen s painting career at the Qing court ranged from the late 1680s through 1722, it is possible that the earliest sets of Taoye tu visual images were already in existence in the early 1720s. The Tang Ying memorial indicates textually that by 1738, one or perhaps both of the court Taoye tu albums had already been painted and presented to the emperor. Having in part been the impetus for the writing of Jingdezhen Tao lu in the early nineteenth century, the imperial court painting set Taoye tu that was annotated by Tang Ying had a direct impact on the transfer of the motif onto woodblock illustrations and their translations and reprints in France and Japan during the years of heightened political clash and scientific inquiry. As shown in the previous chapter, the court images provided the context for the image-text pairing, whereby the Tang Ying annotations initiated the writing project of Zheng Tinggui. Zheng s own textual rendition of the Jingdezhen porcelain making process acquired its own corresponding visual images, the pairing of which became the illustrated first chapter of the 1815 publication of Tao lu. Also mentioned in the previous chapter is Taoye tu s adherence to a sequential visual format narrating a production process that first appeared during the reign of the first emperor of the Southern Song, Gaozong (reign years ). Between 1132 and 1134, Lou Shou 璹 ( ) a native of Zhejiang province who at the time was an official stationed in Jiangnan, the center of the country s most advanced rice farming techniques in the twelfth century, painted two sets of twenty-four images showing in visual form
180 162 rice-farming and sericulture, each of the forty-eight scenes inscribed with a poem by Lou himself. After their presentation to the Song emperor in 1153 the Gengzhi tu (Pictures of Tilling and Weaving) also underwent variations and new editions, crossing media from silk canvas to porcelain vases and wall art. Francesca Bray has argued that the Gengzhi tu in the Southern Song was a visual depiction that conveyed a message to the court celebrating the indispensable role of the Jiangnan landscape in relation to the state s responsibility to construct social harmony and political order. At the time of Lou Shou s painting, the imperial state had suffered a disastrous defeat. Having lost the north to the Mongol rulers, it was now dependent on the areas in Jiangnan for economic livelihood. While the desire to relay a message about the importance of a locale or region to the larger imperial livelihood was certainly the mission of the visual project of Zheng Tinggui s woodblock prints in 1815, Bray s interpretation does not explain the Qianlong period sets of Taoye tu that had imperial court origins. In fact, the Qing period saw an upsurge in courtly interest in image-text paired paintings albums depicting production processes. In 1696, Kangxi emperor commissioned a new painting album of the Gengzhi tu, rendered by court artist Jiao Bingzhen. The Gengzhi tu received significant official patronage by the Kangxi court in that Kangxi ordered not only the drawing of the paintings but also followed his order with an edict to engrave, print, and distribute woodblock printed versions among regional officials. Later, the Yongzheng and Qianlong emperors commissioned their own reproductions and composed new poems to accompany the pictures. The lack of attention in the Gengzhi tu composition of the Qing period to the technical improvements in farming practice that occurred between the Song and Qing allow Bray to conclude that
181 163 Qing emperors favored symbolic over material instrumentality of these sequentially viewed albums. 50 It was the Qianlong period that saw the utmost development of the genre of sequentially viewed sets. Aside from the Gengzhi tu, there were two derivatives during Qianlong s reign, which were received in imperial audience. First, there are the Mianhua tu (Pictures of Cotton Production) of In addition, Qianlong specifically commissioned the porcelain manufacturing illustrations, Taoye tu. Both followed the album illustration format and found coherence as an ordered set of visual illustrations. Yet the Taoye tu were not dictated by Qianlong to be reproduced as woodblock prints, even if they ultimately became the inspiration for the woodblock prints in the Jingdezhen Tao lu. As discussed in the previous chapter, their reproduction and trajectory was contingent upon the writing and research of Zheng Tinggui, who was purposefully rewriting an account of Jingdezhen porcelain for the objective of creating a unified account of porcelain making in Jingdezhen and the essential role of Jingdezhen in imperial production. The Taoye tu images continuing circulation relied upon a specific moment that involved the interplay between text and images and also imperial and local action. With the printing of Jingdezhen Tao lu and later the mid-nineteenth century foreign translations and re-illustrations of the Tao lu, the porcelain production images became a type of visual form in their own right. Qianlong s interest in particularity and universality (and the intertwined relationship therein) – as reflected in his ceramics collecting, the duobao ge, authentication, and cataloguing activities – also provides the context for understanding his motivation behind the court production of the annotated Taoye tu. The initial aim behind
182 164 the painting of the imperial album(s) is not explicitly stated in any known textual record. Most scholars impute the motivation behind the imperial commission to Qianlong s interest in traditional knowledge and technique leaving us to concur with Bray s rather binarized construction of these images as offering the emperor s view of timeless representation of idealized order favored for their moral force rather than technical information. 51 However, this line of interpretation does not explain the frenzy of court patronage of these albums as illustrated sequences, or the fact that Qianlong s album surpassed the illustrations of the Tiangong kaiwu in terms of visualization of technical details and specific steps. 52 Such an analysis considers only the graphic content and not the form. True, Qianlong was interested in fashioning his imperial identity as a moral emperor in the traditional sense. The concept of such a moral leader who oversaw his subjects in useful and productive activity appeared in the Guanzi, a compilation of philosophical treatises compiled in the Han dynasty circa 20 BC. In the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji : ) there is an account of the mythical Emperor Shun (circa BC) making tao (ceramics) at a river bank (hebing ), and, as a result of his morality, created flawless ceramics( ). 53 Thereafter, the idea that flawless ceramics were made by a moral emperor appeared in the Tao ji, the thirteenth century text on ceramic production, a text amply referenced by the Qing dynasty porcelain specialists Tang Ying and Jingdezhen Tao lu s authors Zheng Tinggui and Lan Pu. Qianlong himself used this literary allusion many times in his various poems exalting the porcelains of his own collection, such as the four poems Gutao guange, Yonggu taoguan, Yonggu qiping, Yong taoqi shouhuan hu
183 165, to name only a few. 54 Along these lines of interpretation, Qianlong was indeed both a patron and scholar of classical culture who endeavored to construct an image of himself as a follower of this ceramic based moral principle. However, insofar as Qianlong s construction of imperial power implicated an ambitious concern for detail, systemization, and universal knowledge, so too did such ambitions spur the efficacy of both the format and pictorial content of the Taoye tu paintings for imperial selfconstruction. Tang Ying s memorial expressed the emperor s desire for technological detail, place names, and sequentially ordered visual pictures. In the 1743 Tang Ying preface to Taoye tu, Tuci jilue, no mention of the literary allusion appeared. However, Tang Ying did give an overview of the techniques necessary for making porcelain by detailing the minutiae involved in labor and collecting raw materials, molding the shapes of objects using models and scraping methods, all for the making of exquisite porcelain fit for the emperor (tian fu ). 55 In addition to being more detailed in content (textually and visually), there is also an important difference from the Tiangong kaiwu pictures from the point of view of the image-viewer relations. Viewing the series of actions and techniques as steps distances the viewer from the object being viewed: the process. Since the entire set of paintings portrayed a sequential action spanning scenes painted over twenty leaves, the viewing experience not only captured one s attention, fixing the viewer to a certain position outside the object, it also enabled the viewer to observe the flow of time. In this sense, the Taoye tu album of the Qianlong court, was an instrumental tool for the creation of a viewing subject who stood outside of time all while being able to observe and hence, know temporal flow. Perhaps it is this temporal sense, as experienced through visual sets,
184 166 that drew the Qing emperors to favor such an art form. If we are to accept Crossley s understanding of imperial power as dependent on a historicizing impulse premised on a concept of time, then, in the grand scheme to construct an all-knowing, omniscient, and historicizing emperor, sequential images were much more appropriate than those of the Tiangong kaiwu. 56 IV. Rhapsody on a Theme of Taoye tu: Creating A Global Visual Culture Images of porcelain production circulated most widely after the publication of Jingdezhen Tao lu within the boundaries of Qing territory and beyond through reprints and translations after the mid-nineteenth century. Still, visual depictions of the manufacturing process were already major exports items starting the mid-eighteenth century; for example, watercolor export painting sets were produced in Canton for consumers in the United States, France, and Britain. 57 Figure 8 depicts one ink-on-paper set that is now a part of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The entire set depicts the process on seventeen connected ink drawings, and dates to between 1840 and The two leaves shown portray scenes of collecting the clay material and pounding the clay in preparation for making the porcelain body material. Close inspection of the frayed edges of the background paper indicate that the set was taped and displayed as wallpaper in the interior of English homes. Export watercolors have been the object of study for art historians and curators writing in the English language. Both Carl Crossman and Craig Clunas have argued that the export paintings, characterized by idealized idyllic settings in which diligent workers crafted objects of trade such as porcelain or tea en masse, fulfilled wishful fantasies for a peaceful industrial production process. Crossman and Clunas
185 167 approach these paintings from the perspective of viewers, residents, and consumers living in England and America, who were in the throes of social changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution and projected their dreams onto a distant Orient. Since these watercolor paintings catered to the export audience, understood by Clunas as a foreign market, scholars generally dismiss them as being devoid of any native or authentic Chinese aesthetic value. This approach depends on a sharp distinction between a Chinese aesthetic norm and Western tastes and foregrounds the British and American reception of such images. The existing scholarly literature on porcelain manufacture images in the English language has hitherto accredited export and foreign demand as the driving forces behind the circulation of visual sets illustrating porcelain manufacture. Because of the attribution to foreign taste, the export albums are often neglected in the scholarly canon of Chinese art and relegated to historical obscurity. Yet, it is altogether possible that the originating moment cannot be wholly attributed to foreign taste, especially in light of the chronological order of appearance of these narrative illustrations. The overarching aim in this chapter has been to highlight the historical order and specific conditions in which individual sets of Taoye tu images were created in the first place. Their history included various sub-genres of porcelain production illustration — export, locally produced woodblock prints, and imperial album sets. Examining their individual contexts of production and juxtaposing the sub-genres with each other demonstrate the history of exchange and influence between disparate people and sub-genres in the creation of different Taoye tu production images. After all, the Tang Ying memorial dating to the eighth year of Qianlong (1743) and Imperial Household Workshop record of
186 168 the third year of Qianlong (1738) demonstrate the existence of possibly two court Taoye tu albums already extant by The set currently in a French private collection bears the painter s seal of Jiao Bingzhen, who happened to have been the first Qing court painter to paint architectural images influenced by perspective drawing. Painting with perspective in the Western art historical sense was a technique brought over to the court by Jesuit painters and astronomers working at the Kangxi court. 58 According to a study of a watercolor album held in Sweden, the earliest known export album dates to the late 1730 or early 1740s, making the earliest export album to have appeared either as the Qing imperial albums contemporary or antecedent. 59 Thus, the influence of Jesuit painters at the Kangxi court and influence on Jiao Bingzhen shows a history riddled with exchange and interaction across the boundaries of China and the West long before even the first set of Taoye tu appeared as a Qing court album constructed for the sake of imperial ideology. To dismiss or analyze these as quintessentially foreign or Chinese, ignores this crosscultural history of network and exchange. Moreover, the social life of these images illuminates the international circulation of visual images of porcelain and perhaps makes it possible to speak of a global visual culture of porcelain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A community of global viewers with a keen interest in porcelain and the composition of porcelain shared a viewing practice that was process-oriented, contributing to a conception of the self that was in the stages of formation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in both the west countries and in the Qing. Integral to this idea of the self is its perception of a developmental temporality. 60 The vested interest held by Qianlong in Jingdezhen production as demonstrated by his commissioning of the Taoye tu text-image album indicate a history of production
187 169 images that cannot be reduced to romanticized images of the Orient produced in the context of the West s Industrial Revolution. In fact, the Qing court Taoye tu paintings were equally as unreal in their depiction of depopulated groves and spacious artisan workshops. They adopted Western perspective in drawing technique in some scenes while other leaves exhibited shifting perspective drawing techniques that were exemplary of landscape painting methods. Furthermore, the existence of a Jiaqing imperial inscription on the cover page of a hitherto under-studied album of paintings with fourteen leaves of Jingdezhen porcelain manufacturing paintings called Jingdezhen taotuji drawn during the Jiaqing reign period ( ) reveals that the production process in visual form was significant to the Qianlong emperor and continued for the Jiaqing emperor. 61 Jiaqing s inscription, qi guan, (amazing view) captures the emperor s amazement and further indicates the broader phenomenon of Qing emperors visual investment in Jingdezhen production processes as systematic and rationalized technology. A comparison of reproductions of the Jingdezhen taotuji album with the painting set of the Qianlong commissioned Taoye tu, the woodblock prints of Jingdezhen Tao lu by the local sketch artist Zheng Xiu, and export paintings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries point to their commonalities as well as differences. All fall under the rubric of the Taoye theme and showcase the sequentially-viewed format. The particularities of this early nineteenth century album further exemplifies the argument of recent studies on visual culture that pictures and visual images are not transparent mediums of a fixed meaning. This album consists altogether of fourteen leaves, the first being a textual preface whose author is unknown. The second leaf in the
188 170 album is an image of the Jingdezhen imperial kiln center (Figure 9). The twelve pictorial leaves depict the following scenes of the process with their headings listed below: obtain the clay purifying the clay making the bodies shaping the bodies mixing (ru) the blue cobalt pigment painting blue-and-white decoration applying the glaze stacking the kiln firing opening the kiln painting overglaze colors (cai hong) second firing (shao lu) The preface s textual content diverges from Tang Ying s Tuci jilue written for the Qianlong set. Both emphasize the importance of portraying each step in the technical process: after detailing the steps and places whereby materials were to be harvested and porcelain would be created, the writer of the preface of the early nineteenth century album states that the [pictures] cannot skip any step or leave out any labor (deng bu ke lie, gong bu ke que, ). Whereas Tang Ying begins his narrative by locating the genealogy of cultivating porcelain (taoye ) with the Three Dynasties reign of Emperor Shun ( the Jingdezhen taotuji album begins its narrative with a description of the physical distance between the Jingdezhen township from the Raozhou prefecture. After specifying the geographical location of Jingdezhen, the preface narrates the history of the imperial kiln administration beginning with the second year of the Ming dynasty s first emperor, Hongwu. It then begins to discuss the shift from Ming system of eunuchs who oversaw imperial kiln production to the resident kiln supervisor sent from the Neiwufu and concludes with the transfer of administrative
189 171 duties to the Jiujiang customs office. Clearly, the nineteenth century album took as its departure point the changing relationship between Jingdezhen and the imperial court, centered specifically on the Jingdezhen as the site of the imperial kilns (Figure 10). Porcelain production images continued to attract imperial attention in the nineteenth century, a century often glossed over as the century of Jingdezhen and porcelain s decline. For instance, the Shanxi Museum has in its collection a dual set of famille-rose porcelain vases portraying the production process at the Jingdezhen imperial kilns (Figure 11). The collection at the Beijing Capital Museum also includes a large blue and white porcelain plate produced during the Guangxu period that depicts porcelain production at Jingdezhen imperial kilns (Figure 12). 62 Both images show remarkable resemblance to the first leaf of the Jingdezhen taotuji album in content. All three works, as seen in Figures 9, 11a and 12a, show a zoomed-in digital image of the flag waving the words yuyao chang, denoting the imperial kilns as the scene of production activity. The media itself is now porcelain and not a set of sequentially ordered illustrations yet they signify the lasting influence of the book Jingdezhen Tao lu and its commemoration of Jingdezhen as the location of the imperial kilns. Their mutual similarities also suggest a closer relationship than previously envisioned among visual sub-genres usually studied in isolation. This roundabout history of circulation cannot be reduced to a unidirectional narrative of Western-influence driven by export tastes or even top-down history of court driven production. In fact, the dating of the Jingdezhen taotuji album as being subsequent to the woodblock prints of the Jingdezhen Tao lu (1815) strengthens the idea that the Tao lu s mission to raise the banner – literally, visually, and figuratively – of the imperial kiln as being situated in Jingdezhen was quite successful (Figure 9, 11a, 12a).
190 172 The Jingdezhen taotuji album of the nineteenth century and later nineteenth century export paintings and wallpapers show a remarkable resemblance and even reliance – in format, composition, and content – to Jingdezhen Tao lu s woodblock illustrations, revealing the significant role that a local artist s sketches might have had in picturing and understanding porcelain manufacturing and in shaping imperial knowledge and beyond (Figure 8). Towards a Conclusion Craig Clunas has studied the formation of a discourse on things through his investigation of late-ming period connoisseurship texts. He makes the point that the rise of texts and the discourse on hierarchies of tastes reflected the commodification of books and visual knowledge among elite literati in early modern China. 63 He further concludes that discussions of things and taste reflected the elite s anxiety over blurring status distinctions in a Ming society driven by active consumption. My analysis reveals a migration and transmission of texts and images that also seem to demonstrate an increasing interest in knowledge about porcelain in the latter half of the eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries. But instead of emphasizing the stimulus for such exchanges in a purely economic sense, including commodification and the related elite status distinctions in the vein of Pierre Bourdieu, I draw attention to the intricacies of historical relationships (sometimes exploitative) – including origin, media, and order- by which information about Jingdezhen porcelain production appeared. Knowledge about the kilns at Jingdezhen was commissioned to serve imperial needs, but the scope of this knowledge exceeded the emperor s intention and official
191 173 contexts. Qianlong did in fact commission some paintings and kept them exclusively for court use. The textual commentaries written in 1743 by Tang Ying that were supposed to accompany the original paintings eventually circulated outside the court, and they in turn spawned new images and the new commentaries not the least of which was the first chapter of the Jingdezhen Tao lu. In other words, whereas the first set of images conceived the texts, the extracted texts conceived images in another context. These manuals were then used as the collector s standard by which to enjoy and buy porcelain. The fact that much knowledge about porcelain production originated in the Qing court suggests the limitations of attributing such images and texts only to the growing market for porcelain. The process I have delineated seems to point to the non-fixity of meanings of porcelain in ways that cannot be reduced simply to the influence of the art market or technological developments. The nineteenth century proliferation of ideas and images of porcelain production shows the ways in which knowledge formation itself was the product of interactions among various sectors. By mapping the flow of these images, it is possible to see an inter-connected history of circulating knowledge about Jingdezhen manufacturing processes linking export audiences, Jingdezhen residents, court painters, and Qing emperors. Ultimately, in its varying contexts, Jingdezhen porcelain seemed to escape definition, variously representing imperial use, local technique, or idealized Chinese object created by means of mass production. Its potency and staying power as a cultural icon might actually be a product of its diverse history of interchange and its ability to defy definitive categories such as image/text, west/china, material/symbolic, local/imperial center.
192 174 1 Percival David, Hsiang and His Album, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society 11 ( ): Stacey Pierson, Collectors, Collections, and Museums: The Field of Chinese Ceramics in Britain, (London: Peter Lang, 2007). 3 Stacey Pierson points out that the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, which opened in 1950, was the only museum completely centered on Chinese ceramics in Britain and the only academic institution where the history of Chinese ceramics can be studied at degree level. See the pivotal role David played in the promulgation of popular understanding of Chinese porcelain in her book that recounts his personal and professional history in Collectors, Collections, and Museums (2007). The foundation has since then shut down. 4 Percival David, Hsiang and His Album, I use singular in the sense of art work that is valued from the perspective of the viewer or beholder as something that is unique and relatedly, authentic. The idea that a piece of Art that should not able to be reproduced is prevalent in most modern aesthetic thinking after Kant, and the reproducibility of art is most carefully considered in Walter Benjamin s essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction written in See also John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin Books, 1972). Walter Benjamin, an important theorist of art and cultural history (of Europe), observed the effect of film and other such technologies of mechanical reproduction as photography on art s experience. Included in the shift from handicraft and manual production of works of art to mechanical methods, he notes a diminution of the singularity of an artwork, since mechanically reproduced works such as prints render the need for authenticity irrelevant. Whereas before, the artwork was valued as an object of cult value, the work is now appreciated for its exhibition value. An artwork s exhibition value draws attention away from the artwork s privileged entity to the space between the viewer and the artwork. 6 Lothar Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), I stress the visual here because the dissertation attempts to probe theoretically and historically, the negotiations between the visual and material aspects of perceptions about porcelain. The nineteenth century, for instance, saw an increasing interest in glaze technology and the proliferation of color terminology through the confluence of collecting, museum practices, and French, Japanese, and English language research, in understanding, appreciating, and authenticating porcelain. Painters in France worked in tandem with the same chemists who were developing color theories based on their research into glazes sent from Jingdezhen. Broadening the scope of nineteenth century
193 175 art history to cross national boundaries allow us to see how these are tangibly connected, parallel processes of understanding color perception, chemistry, and Jingdezhen porcelain. 8 Roderick Whitfield, Ceramics in Chinese Painting, in Imperial Taste: Chinese Ceramics from the Percival David Foundation, ed., Rosemary Scott (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art), Hunan sheng bowuguan, ed., Changsha Mawangdui yihao Hanmu [#1 Tomb at Mawangdui, Changsha], (Beijing: Wenwu, 1973), pl. 77. Yinan guhuaxiang shimu fajue baogao [Report on the stone tomb with ancient engravings at Yinan], ed. Nanjing Museum and Shandong Bureau of Antiquities (Beijing: Wenhuabu Wenwu Guanliju, 1956), pl Whitfield, Ceramics in Chinese Painting, 126: Night Feast of Han Xizai. Handscroll, ink and color on silk. Song dynasty, possibly early 12 th century at the Palace Museum, Beijing. 10 National Palace Museum, Grand View: Painting and Calligraphy From the Northern Song Dynasty Exhibition Catalogue (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2006) and also National Palace Museum, Grand View: Special Exhibition on Ju Ware (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2006), 128, James Cahill, The Painter s Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994) for a sustained critique of the traditional division between professional and amateur painting. James Cahill, The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth Century Chinese Painting, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 1; For a perspective on Ming dynasty art and painting as a social practices see Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 73; Craig Clunas, Elegant Debts: The Social Art of Wen Zhenming (London: Reaktion Books, 2006). 12 These are the transition painters conventionally known as individualist painters who painted scenes of seclusion, melancholy, and recluse landscapes; scholars point to these two representative painters as individualist and thus exhibiting modernist tendencies, perhaps showing how China was already modern. For an example of a Qing art history piece of scholarship that takes this approach and makes this argument, see Jonathan Hay, Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 13 This long handscroll is now held in the archives and rare book collection of the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art in London. The actual scroll has a counterpart held in the Victoria and Albert Museum also in London.
194 Yu Peichin, Pinjian zhi qu: shiba shiji de taoci tuce jiqi xiangguan wenti, : 册 [Eighteenth century ceramic manuals and related problems] Gugong xueshu jikan 22:2 (Winter, 2004): ; and also Shane McCausland, The Emperor s Old Toys: Rethinking the Yongzheng Scroll of Antiquities, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society 66 ( ): These are accession numbers guci #13898 and 13900, and at the National Palace Museum. 16 The fourth album, Fangong zhangse, also bears the imperial seal of the Jiaqing emperor. 17 Yu Peichin, Pinjian zhi qu: shiba shiji de taoci tuce jiqi xiangguan wenti, The Neiwufu zaobanchu huoji dang have special sections on these display accessories and their construction. See for instance the Imperial Household Production archives: Qianlong 1 st yr. One of the items enumerated bears the subsection title: The Guang wooden stand workshop (Guangmu zuo ). The Guang woodstand workshop was ordered to construct a sandalwood stand decorated with ivory inlay for the display of blue-and-white tall gourd shaped porcelain bottles that were sent from Jingdezhen. Also see Qianlong 52 nd yr., where the item records the order from the lacquering workshop to produce a woodstand for a large celadon water jar. Feng Xianming, ed., Zhongguo gutaociwenxian jishi [Annotated collection of historical documents on ancient Chinese ceramics] (Hong Kong: Yishujia chuban she, 2000), 227, See Cao Zhao, Gegu yaolun (1387), quoted in Yu Peichin, Pinjian zhi qu: shiba shiji de taoci tuce jiqi xiangguan wenti, Gao Lian was an educated writer and dramatist from Hangzhou and was active in the second half of the 1500s. His text belongs to the category of literature on material culture analyzed in all of Craig Clunas scholarly work. Zunsheng bajian contains no pictures or illustrations of the material objects at the center of its discussions and was written in the 1590s. 21 By comprehensive and developmental historical narrative I mean the history in the modern linear sense whereby an objects development is bounded by a national framework and its progressive development is assumed. 22 Yu Peichin, Pinjian zhi qu: shiba shiji de taoci tuce jiqi xiangguan wenti, 160 and 141, and Figure 14.
195 For a detailed discussion on these albums, see Yu Peichin, Pinjian zhi qu: shiba shiji de taoci tuce jiqi xiangguan wenti, Yu Peichin, ibid., Yu Peichin s main point is that the catalogues reveal the collectors sensibility towards these porcelain objects but she does not stress the sense of history embedded in these cataloguing productions. For Qianlong s vanguard status in the exploration of historical origins of ceramics, see Hsieh Mingliang, Qianlong de taoci jianshang guan, [Qianlong s Connoisseurship of Ceramics] Gugong xueshujikan 21:2 (Winter 2003): See the poem reference in Hsieh Mingliang, Qianlong de taoci jianshang guan, 26, fn The Kaogong ji was a section of the book Zhouli (Zhou Rituals), an ancient work on ritual artifacts, including construction of carriages, tools, vessels, supposedly all employed by the Zhou court from the third century BC. 27 Yu Peichin, Pinjian zhi qu: shiba shiji de taoci tuce jiqi xiangguan wenti, 143; on Qianlong s historical sense see the discussion of sources and poems by Qianlong in Hsieh Mingliang, Qianlong de taoci jianshang guan, 26, Jessica Rawson and Evelyn Rawski, eds., China: The Three Emperors, (London: Royal Academy of Art, 2006). 29 Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, eds., Wonders and the Order of Nature, (New York: Zone, 1998); Oliver Impey, The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). Collections of exotica were assembled for scientific purposes as well as for personal predilection, and were most popular in the Hapsburg Empire, Germany, and Italy. The period of early modern science spans for historians of science, and the Park and Daston volume examine the role of curiosity and wonder and its attendant cognitive responses such as awe, delight, fear, befuddlement in the ambition for scientific inquiry. 30 Pamela Crossley, Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), The point that historicizing and knowledge production as part of the ideological construction of imperial identity is precisely the main point of Crossley s work, as she contends that the reworking of knowledge created a set of identities within under the emperor s domain. Pamela Crossley, Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (1999). Erica Yao, Qing Court Display in Duobao ge, unpublished conference paper for the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting (2008). I have
196 178 not read or been in contact with the presenter but am grateful to Professor Esherick for this reference. 32 Pamela Crossley defines the Qing rulership as the originator of historical production. She likens rulership to emperorship whereby simultaneous edicts and utterances in multiple languages emanate, a physical mechanical construction similar to spokes and hub of a wheel. See Crossley (1999), Guo Baochang re-edited and re-published Qianlong s poems in an edited publication called Guo Baochang, ed., Qing Gaozong yuzhi yong tao Gaozong imperial poems about ceramics] (n.p.: N.d.). A copy was accessed at the Shanghai Museum Rare Book Library. 34 Crossley, See Lan Pu and Zheng Tinggui, Jingdezhen Tao lu, the chapters entitled Jingdezhen lidai yaokao, and Guyao kao. See also the two Qing period texts on kiln ware style that categories the typologies according to yao: Nanyao biji [Report on Southern Kilns] and Yaoqi shuo [On Kiln Styles] in Shuo Tao [On Pottery] eds., Sang Xingzhi et al., (Shanghai: Shanghai keji jiaoyu chuban she, 1993), For a modern summary of the history of the kiln system of categorization see, Qin Dashu, Lun yaoxi gainian de xingcheng, yiyi, ji qi juxianxing,,, [About the kiln system concept development, its meanings, and its limitations] Wenwu 5(2007): I thank Professor Qin from Beijing University for his last-minute reference to his article during research in Beijing. 36 Lothar Ledderose s analysis of porcelain art advances the same point, which is articulated in his chapter entitled Factory Art, in Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art (1998). 37 Song Yingxing s book is discussed in the previous chapter (Ch.2). 38 Song Yingxing, T’ien-kung k’ai-wu, trans., E-tu Zen Sun and Shiou-chuan Sun (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1966). 39 Peter Golas argument that the original Ming dynasty Tiangong kaiwu illustrations display a great degree of flatness is outlined in his article, Like Obtaining a Great Treasure, in Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China, eds., Francesca Bray and Georges Metailie (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 576 and Peter Golas, Like Obtaining a Great Treasure, in Bray and Metailie, eds. (2007), 576.
197 Appendix A is the beginning of the research in list form. 42 My research in this section has been aided by conversations with Peter Lam, Stacey Pierson, and Wang Guangyao of the Palace Museum (Beijing), over and in Hong Kong and Beijing between 2007 and I am very grateful to them for their guidance regarding locations of paintings and their willingness to answer questions about circulation and provenance. 43 The set Taoye tu accompanied by Tang Ying s text, variously called Taoye tu bian ci or Taoye tushuo (1743), comprises twenty commentaries paired with accompanying illustrations. The paintings were originally kept in the Forbidden City, and then left China, resurfaced in Hong Kong in Christies in 1996 and now in Taiwan in the hands of a private collector. See Peter Lam, Tang Ying ( ): The Imperial Factory, Superintendent at Jingdezhen, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramics Society 63 (2000): In this dissertation, the Tang Ying annotated set will be referred to as the original set, though the exact dating of these three imperial albums cannot be ascertained at this time. The Tang Ying annotated set is completely reproduced in Chang Foundation of Chinese Art, Chinese Art from the Ching Wan Society Collection (Taipei: Chang Foundation 1998). 44 The names of the painters appear in the Qing painting catalogue compiled first in 1745 by Zhang Zhao. The Qing catalogue s title is translated into English as, Precious Book Box of the Stone Drain (Shiqu baoji), and is a catalogue of secular paintings, textiles, and art work. See Zhang Zhao, Shiqu bao ji (Taipei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1983), 66. Qianlong also commissioned a catalogue to record Daoist and Buddhist paintings, entitled Bidian zhulin, see Patricia Berger, Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), 64. Tang Ying memorial: Qianlong 8th yr. 5 th mo. 22 nd. day, in Xiong Liao and Xiong Wei, comps., Zhongguo taoci guji jicheng 国 [Collected documents on Chinese Ceramics] (Shanghai: Shanghai wenhua chubanshe, 2006), 108. The words read: << >> 45 The characters are. See Tang Ying memorial: Qianlong 8th yr. 5 th mo. 22 nd day in Xiong and Xiong, comps. (2006), The characters are:,.. See, Xiong and Xiong, comps. (2006), The eight leaves of the incomplete court painting album are reproduced in Gugong bowuyuan, eds. Qing shi tudian: Qing chao tongshi tulu, Yongzheng 淸 图 淸 图录 Qing dynasty catalogue, Yongzheng reign] (Beijing: Zijincheng, 2002),
198 See Qianlong, 3 rd year, Yangxindian neiwufu huojidang quoted in Yu Peichin, Bieyou xinyi yi Qianlong guanyao de cuangxin wei li, [Innovations as seen through the Qianlong imperial kilns] in Qianlong huangdi de wenhua daye Emperor Ch ien-lung s Grand Cultural Enterprise (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2002): 285, fn Only one leaf of the thirty leaves painting album has been published in, Michel Beurdeley and Guy Raindre, Qing Porcelain, Famille Verte, Famille Rose (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), 33, Figure Francesca Bray, Agricultural Illustrations, in Bray and Metailie, eds. (2007), There are no studies that focus specifically on the meaning of the Qing court productions of Taoye tu that I know of. Yu Peichin has written several pages on Qianlong s objectives in her curatorial essay, Yu Peichin Bieyou xinyi, yi Qianlong guanyao de cuangxin wei li, and This is Yu Peichin s point in Bieyou xinyi, yi Qianlong guanyao de cuangxin wei li, 286. Yu Peichin concludes that the Tiangong kaiwu pictures overly vague and lacking in reason. 53 Shi ji was written by Sima Qian between 109 BC to 91 BC. See the quote from Shi ji in Hsieh Mingliang, Qianlong de taoci jianshang guan, 24, fn See Yu Peichin, Bieyou xinyi, yi Qianlong guanyao de cuangxin wei li, 285, fn. 43 and Hsieh Mingliang Qianlong de taoci jianshang guan, 24. For instance, in the poem Gutao guange, Qianlong s verse reads: futuo kouyan de neng xu..tao yu hebin ciqi zhu. 55 See Tang Ying s Tuci jilue, in Xiong and Xiong, comps. (2006), See Crossley s introduction for an overview of her argument about history, time, and imperial identity during Qianlong s reign: Translucent Mirror (1999). 57 Craig Clunas, Chinese Export Watercolours (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1984); Carl L. Crossman, Decorative Arts of the Chine Trade: Paintings, Furnishings and Exotic Curiosities (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1991); Victoria and Albert Museum and Guangzhou Cultural Bureau, eds., : Souvenir from Canton Chinese Export Paintings From the Victoria and Albert Museum (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2003). 58 Anita Chung, Drawing Boundaries: Architectural Images in Qing China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004).
199 E. Belfrage, Chinese Watercolours from the 18 th Century Illustrating Porcelain Manufacture, in Association internationale de bibliophilie, ed., International Association of Bibliophiles XVth Congress, Copenhagen, September 1987: transactions (Copenhagen: Danish National Library of Science and Medicine, 1992). 60 Edward Said commented on this in Orientalism (New York: Penguin Books, 1978) and the relationship between the self, temporality and historical knowledge is also explored in Prasenjit Duara s work on nationalism. 61 The National Palace Museum in Taipei holds the set of paintings of this album, Jingdezhen taotuji (guhua) #3650. I have attempted to spend more time with this set, including its binding and material nature, however, it is not available for study or viewing due to its poor condition and the complex process of application to study specific objects in the National Palace Museum objects. I am grateful to the Professor Pickowicz for making possible the access to the digital images I bought in order to engage in the study I have so far of this album. The dating to the second quarter of the nineteenth century (Jiaqing reign) is explained in Tan Danjiong, “Taoye tongshi, [General Summary on Taoye] Gugong jikan 5:1 (1970): Wang Guangyao, Zhongguo gudai guanyao zhidu [Administration of the Imperial Kilns in China] (Beijing: Zijincheng, 2004); Li Yong, Cong Qing Jiaqing fencai yaogong zhici tu ping kan Jingdezhen zhici gongyi, [Understanding Jingdezhen porcelain production technique from examining production images on Qing Jiaqing vases] Wenwu jikan 1 (1999): Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things (London: Blackwell 1991) and Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 15.
200 182 Figure 1. Literary Gathering (Wenhuitu, detail), ink and color on silk. National Palace Museum (Taipei) Roderick Whitfield, Ceramics in Chinese Painting, Imperial Taste Chinese Ceramics from the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, ed. Rosemary Scott, (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989), 127.
201 183 Figure 2. Lotus of a Thousand Pearls. Zhang Tingxi ( ), Qing Dynasty court painter. Jessica Rawson and Evelyn Rawski, eds., China: The Three Emperors, (London: Royal Academy of Art, 2006), 85.
202 184 Figure 3. Leaf from the Qing dynasty ceramic catalogue, Taoci puce, dr. circa National Palace Museum, ed., Emperor Ch ien-lung s Grand Cultural Enterprise (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2002).
203 185 Figure 4. The duobao ge (cabinets of many treasures) of the Qianlong period and Qing dynasty. Jessica Rawson and Evelyn Rawski, eds., China: The Three Emperors, (London: Royal Academy of Art, 2006).
204 186 Figure 5. Two pages from Qianlong s illustrated inkstone catalogues. National Palace Museum, ed., Emperor Ch ien-lung s Grand Cultural Enterprise (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2002).
205 187 Figure 6a. Image of text-image pairing from the album of porcelain production annotated by Tang Ying. Left: Tang Ying, Taoye tu bian ci (1743) Right: first painting leaf of album Taoye tu (circa 1730) Figure 6b. Left: Tang Ying, Taoye tu bian ci (1743) Right: second painting leaf of album Taoye tu (circa 1730) Chang Foundation of Chinese Art, Chinese Art from the Ching Wan Society Collection (Taipei: Chang Foundation, 1998).
206 188 Figure 7a. First leaf of eight from incomplete painting album set. Figure 7b. Second leaf of eight from incomplete painting album set. Beijing Palace Museum
207 189 Figure 7c. Third leaf of eight from incomplete painting album set Figure 7d. Eighth leaf of eight from incomplete painting album set. Beijing Palace Museum. Gugong bowuyuan, eds., Qing shi tudian: Qingchao tongshi tulu, Yongzheng chao (Beijing: Zijincheng chu ban she, 2002).
208 190 Figure 8a and 8b. Leaves from export ink drawing set of 17 leaves. 15 ¼ x 23 ¼ cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Acsension # E E Gift of Mrs. Mary Goodman. Figure 8a. Retrieving the clay Figure 8b. Pulverizing clay
209 191 Figure 9. Jingdezhen taotuji. d Second painting leaf of an album set of fourteen. Figure 10. Preface to Jingdezhen taotu ji album. d First painting leaf of an album set of fourteen. National Palace Museum (Taipei), guhua
210 192 Figure 11. Pair of vases, circa Famille rose enamels with imperial kiln production process decoration. Shaanxi Museum Figure 11a. Detail of flag bearing the phrase yuyao chang, (imperial kiln) on vase, circa Wang Guangyao, Zhongguo gudai guanyao zhidu (Beijing: Zijincheng, 2004).
211 193 Figure 12. Daoguang period large porcelain plate. Underglaze blue and white with Jingdezhen imperial kiln production process decoration. Beijing Capital Museum.
212 194 Figure 12a. Detail showing Daoguang period large porcelain plate, flag with characters yuyao chang, (imperial kiln) shown. Beijing Capital Museum
213 195 Figure 13. Export painting set of porcelain production. 24 leaves, 7 shown, watercolor on paper, Victoria and Albert Museum Craig Clunas, Chinese Export Watercolours (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, Far Eastern Series, 1984), 29, 30.
214 4. Neither Empire Nor Nation: Understanding and Appreciating Porcelain in Tao Ya, Chen Liu, who wrote under the pen name of Old Man of the Lonely Garden (Ji Yuansou ), hated The Records of Jingdezhen Ceramics (Jingdezhen Tao lu). To him, the book was without organization and pillaged old books haphazardly. In great indignation, he excoriated The Records of Jingdezhen Ceramics for, in essence, plagiarizing. There was later an author, Lan Pu, Chen Liu wrote, who compiled, copied various writings, freely pillaged their words and changed the works name to Jingdezhen Tao lu. The body of the text and examples listed therein are full of errors. 1 These strong words were a damning statement of, as we have seen, a vanguard book in the development of scholarship on porcelain that took place over two hundred years. Chen s calumny was an opinion stated blatantly but without much more justification. He declined to explain why he was so disparaging. However, Chen s harsh opinion of earlier work was rather myopic; his own major written work was just as haphazard. Hypocrisy notwithstanding, his was an opinion forcefully articulated in the next major text on porcelain written in the Chinese language during the Qing dynasty after the Records of Jingdezhen Ceramics. An investigation into the themes and content of this major study on porcelain, entitled Tao Ya, forms the core of this chapter. Writing some time between 1904 and 1906, Chen Liu was a government official living in Beijing. Having lived there for more than twenty years, he observed the operations of an increasingly international antiques market in the context of changing Sino-foreign relationships and the breakdown of sovereignty of the Qing government. He witnessed these social relationships and political movements firsthand from a 196
215 197 geographically proximal location, the capital of the Qing dynasty. A native of Jiangpu, located at the northwestern corner of present-day Nanjing in southwest Jiangsu province, Chen himself was an avid porcelain collector and a self-professed lover of alcohol. Indeed, his entire collection of porcelain was comprised of wine cups. When he began his preface to a collection of poems extolling his porcelain collection in 1904, he declared in his first sentence, Ji Yuansou loves to drink (Ji Yuansou shi yin). 2 The porcelain pieces in his collection numbered over 300. He also made his own wine, the primary reason for beginning his vast collection of porcelain cups. As a minor official working in the Qing bureaucracy in the last decade of the dynasty writing in the literary language commonly referred to as classical Chinese, Chen belonged to a generation of literate, learned men who experienced a perceived crisis in order and meaning. 3 He lived in a context comprised of changing social institutions that affected men whose education centered upon an empire-wide imperial examination system. That system s foundation originated around the fourteenth century and had remained intact since then. The most significant institutional change for the lives of educated men was the 1905 termination of the civil service exam system. The abolition occurred in tandem with a push for constitutional reform. The breakdown of the old system of advancement rendered those educated under late-imperial methods wondering about their next steps — socially, professionally, and intellectually. As has been pointed out, the first ten years of the twentieth century and the collapse of the Qing dynasty witnessed an intellectual sea tide of change. Not the least of these changes involved a shift from universal concepts of culture to a particularistic understanding of self and nation. 4 The large numbers of Qing students on Boxer scholarships reflect the extent to
216 198 which the decade s newfound opportunities became available to a generation of students, artists, and writers, whose overseas studies provided the platform for a flurry of interaction across territorial borders. This generation of writers and intellectuals living at home and abroad has often been characterized as alienated. 5 In doing so, scholars have analyzed this era in emotional and even psychological terms. Through a systematic study of philosophical treatises written by renowned thinkers Kang Youwei, Tan Sitong, Zhang Binglin, and Liu Shipei, historian Chang Hao describes the gradual abandonment of Confucianism after the 1860s, the influx of Western views, and the decline of legitimacy of Chinese cosmology and kingship. The breakdown of such an epistemological order and the ensuing perceived crisis resulted in intense feelings of doubt about the contemporary existential and socio-political order. Analytical constructions such as existential and political are interpretive tools of a scholar writing in hindsight and a focus on the perception of crisis as the root of self-doubt paints a monochromatic psychological picture of the late-qing dynastic experience. 6 Chang Hao rightly shows how thinkers constructed new universalisms by drawing on cosmological traditions, but his emphasis is on the breakdown of order. However, not all writers experienced the waning years of the Qing dynasty in such a psychological way. This chapter introduces the work and text of Chen Liu in order to shed light on the historical nature of the idea of a perception of crisis that has informed so much historical scholarship of the late Qing and so many notions about the motivation for change in modern Chinese history. I. Tao Ya: Circulation and Reception
217 199 Written in the last decade of the Qing dynasty, Tao Ya is an intimidating and exasperating text. Its title means literally Ceramic Elegances. Perhaps a better translation would render it as Ceramic Aesthetics. Indeed, the primary subject matter of the text was the beauty and intricacies of porcelain art. The terms of discussion were centered upon taste and aesthetics. As a two-hundred page tome, Tao Ya first appeared in print in 1910 and was published by the author s personal printing press. Its publication occurred during a critical time in Jingdezhen history. In 1910 just months before the end of the Qing dynasty, a joint state-merchant factory supplied with funds from official provincial treasuries and converted from former imperial kilns was established. The name was Jiangxi Porcelain Company (Jiangxi Ciye Gongsi) and the manager was Kang Dezhang from Qimen, a village very close to Jingdezhen. 7 The founding of the Jiangxi Ciye Gongsi was part of the central government s plan to industrialize and introduce mechanized production processes. The company was one of the ten of such factories established between 1904 and 1910 by the central government to instigate mechanical industrial production. 8 The text s sheer length and the author s long-windedness are exacerbated by the lack of a systematic organizational structure. The text is divided simply into two volumes, juan shang (volume 1) and juan xia (volume 2), a division based upon no apparent rational reason. Given the author s predilection for drinking (in another one of his writings, he rather humorously punctuated his passion for drinking by claiming that every member of his family loved alcohol) his stream of consciousness writing blurs the fine line between consciousness and unconsciousness. In light of his penchant for drink,
218 200 Chen Liu might even have written the entire text while drinking away his later years of near retirement. 9 According to the author, Tao Ya was the first study to examine Qing period porcelain aesthetics and techniques. The two specific works to which Chen contrasted the uniqueness of Tao Ya were the (purported) illustrated book by the sixteenth-century collector Xiang Yuanbian ( ) entitled Lidai mingci tupu (Illustrated Catalogue of Porcelains of Successive Dynasties) and Zhu Yan s 1774 monograph Tao Shuo. While Chen s Tao Ya refers to and even relies upon many other disparate writings on objects, only these two were singled out as worthy predecessors. Regarding Zhu and Xiang s books on porcelain, Chen felt that, due to their dates of publication and authors lifespan, they were not capable of discussing the porcelain of this dynasty (benchao). 10 Chen is correct in describing Zhu Yan s Tao Shuo and the Xiang Yuanbian illustrated catalogue as focusing on the pre-qing history of ceramics. However, his claim that no other works investigate the porcelain of the Qing period is misleading since he disdainfully refused to note contemporary accounts of Qing-era porcelain in Jingdezhen Tao lu. Apparently, the Jingdezhen Tao lu, which actually does discuss the production of wares and styles extant through the late eighteenth century and the end of the Qianlong reign, was so worthless to Chen that he did not even bother to acknowledge the book in Tao Ya s preface. A survey of the twentieth-century literature on porcelain reveals that Tao Ya was one of two sources written during the Qing dynasty that reconstructed knowledge about Qing period porcelain, the other being the Jingdezhen Tao lu. Even in recent times, ceramic scholars acknowledge that the Qing dynasty was the crucial period during which
219 201 the wellspring of Chinese-language scholarship on ceramics appeared: Tao Ya (1910), Tao Shuo (1774), and Jingdezhen Tao lu (1815). 11 Tao Ya was already an influential text in the first half of the twentieth century. By 1925 four separate editions had already been published, including the first edition. The 1918 edition was printed by a private publisher with a title page displaying a calligraphic inscription by Zhu Deyi 彜 ( ), a stele researcher and calligrapher active in the early twentieth century trained in the epigraphic, seal-script style (Figure 1). 12 Around the same time another edition appeared with a title also inscribed in an epigraphic calligraphic style (Figure 2) by Liu Jiaxi, a calligrapher. His script was rather free-flowing. Even more demonstrative of Tao Ya s importance in the ceramics and antiques arena is the 1923 edition printed with stone lithographic technology and commissioned by the Shanghai Society for Research on Antique Porcelain (Guci yanjiu hui) (Figure 3). Along with another study of porcelain written by a Cantonese connoisseur, Xu Zhiheng, entitled Yinliuzhai shuoci, Chen Liu s Tao Ya was again printed in 1925 by the publisher Zhaoji shuzhuang in Shanghai (Figures 4a and 4b). 13 As mentioned, this publishing house was the same printing company that published Jingdezhen Tao lu in the mid-1920s. Besides attracting the attention of connoisseurs, Jingdezhen researchers and general ceramic historians also used Tao Ya as a reference book to write modern histories of porcelain. In 1936 it was a primary source for History of Chinese Ceramics (Zhongguo taoci shi), one of the first Chinese-language ceramic textbooks to be included in the Ministry of Education s vocational curriculum. 14 Published by the Commercial Press, the principal author was a Japan-educated ceramicist, Wu Renjing, who also worked as principal of the Art Institute of Eastern Art (Jingdezhen dongfang yishu
220 202 zhuanke xuexiao) located in Jingdezhen. Wu noted that Tao Ya was, among other works, a necessary reference for ceramic historians. 15 Another scholarly work published in 1936 entitled Jingdezhen ciye shi (History of the Jingdezhen Ceramic Industry) by Jiang Siqing also relied on Tao Ya to narrate the apex of ceramics development during the Ming and Qing dynasties. 16 Passages taken from Tao Ya informed readers of Jingdezhen ciye shi about aspects of porcelain including the development and existence of multicolored decoration on Ming-Qing ceramics, the throwing of porcelain bodies, and copper inlays. In 1959 an English translation was published. Translated by an independent ceramics scholar Geoffrey Sayer, it is terminologically vague and meant for specialists only. 17 As the only English translation, Sayer s work is invaluable, but his straightforward translation does not consider history or the fact that translation itself is historical. 18 For instance, it consistently renders qing as blue/green to explain visual phenomenon of ceramic glazes. The invariable usage of the term, blue/green is altogether limiting and misleading given the wide range of hues that fall under the color qing. Sayer s translation does harm to the word qing which accounts for the vagaries of the glaze due to its chemical oxidization process. Considering the way in which qing appeared in Ming dynasty (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) texts, it encompasses an entire genre of ceramics, not simply a color. 19 It is thus difficult to gauge the application of the original Tao Ya by reading Sayer s book. Insofar as the multiple printed editions and references to Tao Ya point to its significance in the writing of historical surveys and in the discourses of modern antique circles, Tao Ya can be said to have played an important role in the development of modern histories of porcelain as Chinese art in the era of national art. But its
221 203 appropriation by national scholarship notwithstanding, Tao Ya was still a product of a specific historical context and its prose allowed for a gamut of possible meanings that slipped easily between empire and nation. II. Timing Porcelain and Porcelain Knowledge At the turn of the twentieth century, the wider world of porcelain collectors regarded with contempt the state of expert knowledge about porcelain in the Chinese language. In the 1896 preface to the monumental study by Stephen Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art board member and art historian William Laffan impugned Chinese texts as worthless. 20 Though totalizing and dismissive, Laffan s disparaging comments likely carried much weight. After all, he was a publiclyacknowledged expert on porcelain and a prominent figure in the museum field. To a certain extent, writers living in China held similar views of Chinese texts on porcelain. Not the least of these writers was Chen Liu, the author of Tao Ya, who initially entitled his book Ci Xue. 21 The combination of two terms in the original title, porcelain and learning, could be interpreted to mean porcelain-ology. 22 To use Ci Xue in effect elevated the subject of porcelain from simply a topic of leisure or technique to an academic pursuit. There were three prefaces written for the text, all three of which reveal the author s motivations for writing Tao Ya. Chen stated that he saw an utter lack of records. 23 Chen s views indicate that he too felt that previous writings on porcelain were inadequate. Thus, Tao Ya was intended to compensate for the gap in the written record about porcelain. Specifically, Chen aimed to spread knowledge about Qing dynasty porcelain. 24 In a sigh of great admiration, Chen wrote that the [porcelain]
222 204 production of the three reigns of Kang[xi], Yong[zheng], and Qian[long], is able to make the [porcelain] of the Ming dynasty pale in comparison, and overwhelm the [porcelain] of the five continents. Are they not worthy of putting on record? 25 An awareness of the necessity of a rigorous study on porcelain on Chen s part cannot simply be attributed to a teleological march towards rational knowledge and its complementary modern subjectivity, wherein an intellectual must achieve selfconsciousness. Of course, he later connected the feeling of social shame to a society that did not understand its own porcelain. 26 Still, Chen s motivations derived in part from the times in which he lived and his access to a global circuit of information to which he responded. In this sense, Tao Ya s history shows how the production of knowledge involved a network of cross-border conversations despite a movement towards nationalizing porcelain. For instance, Chen Liu noted that Westerners impute importance to Xiang Yuanbian s Illustrated Catalogue. They have translated it. 27 Here, Chen revealed his understanding of the international context in which knowledge about porcelain developed during his lifetime. One of the major books on which he relied and had previously studied before writing Tao Ya was a book entitled, Mirror to the World s Porcelain (Shijie ci jian ). 28 Clearly, a world context underpinned the book on which Chen relied. In the 1906 preface, Chen again located his intellectual project in a global context: It is said that translators render huaci (Chinese porcelain) as zhina (China), most likely a shorthand way of saying zhina ci (China porcelain). Therefore, the people of the whole world all view zhina (China) as ci guo (nation/country of porcelain). 29 What is striking about Chen s understanding of the intellectual environment is not only his articulation of a worldwide scope, but also his
223 205 acknowledgment of the importance of translation to the identification of porcelain with his own country. Moreover, his comments stress a distinction between porcelain that was Chinese, or huaci, and the object s corresponding phonetic term, zhina. He clearly had encountered the homonymic relationship between the material object and its country of production but he resisted using the easy pun. Distinguishing between the moniker zhina, and the phrase that refers to Chinese porcelain as huaci, opened up a conceptual space through which Chen Liu could begin to expound on the subject of porcelain. The key subject of analysis for Chen was ciguo. The rest of the preface was written as follows: Lately, our country, China s, porcelain industry has fallen decrepit. The reason why our porcelain is able to maintain its world-wide esteem is because the porcelain that people of the entire world praise as not in decline or decay is the antique old porcelain from the early years of the country (guo). People who live in Zhongguo cannot earn the respect of other countries with battleships and cannons. Secondly, our commercial goods cannot compete in the market. But if we can only rely on the reputation of the porcelain produced in the early years of this country in order to boast for the purpose of convincing the people of the whole world to regard this country as the ciguo [country of porcelain], then that is the shame of our statesmanship. To live in the ciguo [country of porcelain] and to not thoroughly understand porcelain is to earn the derision of the people of the whole world. To grow up in the porcelain country, and yet to not know the reason why our porcelain is so famous that is the shame of our people. 30 These words reveal two important aspects of Chen s conception of porcelain. First, Chen s preface placed the discussion of porcelain in a temporal framework. Porcelain was not simply part of a discursive field on antiquity (gu), but rather a changing object with ebbs and flows. His statements regarding the recent crisis of the porcelain industry
224 206 suggested an understanding buttressed by an expectation of change over time. Porcelain, in the Tao Ya framework, was not simply relegated to the general category of the ancient past, an idea expressed in the word gu prominently featured in texts on things that had gained popularity between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries in such works as Cao Zhao s Gegu yaolun. 31 Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, collecting objects took place in the context of a broader elite penchant for a high culture wherein the emphasis was on an aesthetic standard named antiquity. 32 The movement toward exalting antiquity through artistic production and collection resulted in an increase in the printing of catalogues and manuals about objects such as jades, bronzes, and inkstones. This included the Northern Song catalogue that was commissioned by the early twelfthcentury Song emperor, Huizong. It was called the Xuanhe bogutu (The Xuanhe Illustrated Catalogue of Antiquities). Another catalogue highlighting ancient objects that attracted attention and reprint efforts in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the privately printed Kaogu tu (Illustrated Research on Antiquities). These two catalogues were compiled in 1120s and 1092 respectively. They were not concerned so much with outlining a history of progress or decline; rather they were instructional manuals on taste, markers of elegance and social status. Referencing artifacts by using the adjective antiquity (gu) indicated a functional use of antiquity as an social marker of difference. Rather than referring to historical change, gu was a marker of taste around which the highly cultured tried to differentiate themselves from the nouveau riche. 33 A major thrust of the discussion on porcelain was not on locating its place in antiquity but on the changes that had occurred over the three hundred years that spanned the dynastic order of the Qing.
225 207 Secondly, Chen connected porcelain with governance, rather than with cultural essence. In fact, he resisted using the word zhina to discuss porcelain. Disarticulating china from China, Chen preferred instead to use the term zhina ci to mean porcelain. He then harnessed the phrase ciguo [Country of Porcelain] to refer to his political entity, the Qing dynasty. Whatever his implied reason for such a de-coupling, Chen s use of the word guo connected a government institution to porcelain. The linking of porcelain to some aspect of the state, of course, was not new. The Records of Jingdezhen Ceramics (Jingdezhen Tao lu), which to Tao Ya s author was a book worthy of utter contempt, also exalted a view of ceramic objects produced by and for a governing body. For the authors of the 1815 edition of Records, that governing body was literally embodied in the physical presence of a person, a porcelain production supervisor sent from the inner court of the central government to live in Jingdezhen as a production overseer. Chen did not specify which branch of the central government was the most significant in the production of porcelain. Rather, the configuration stressed a connection between porcelain and a more general management entity, the central polity, guo. In addition to being suggestive of historical change, porcelain now inhabited a different spatial context. The change comprised a shift from a focus on Jingdezhen to the political – and temporal – boundaries of the dynasty. Emptying the Jingdezhen focus of porcelain s qualities, Chen stressed the imperial aspects of porcelain. He was interested in propagating knowledge of porcelain and specifically of Qing dynasty porcelain. In Tao Ya, the axis of value turned on two points: porcelain as a material and its date of production. In fact, Chen succinctly outlined the criteria by which porcelain should be assessed: The beauty of old pieces
226 208 rests on three things, the quality of the glaze, the handicraft, and the time period to which the porcelain belonged. 34 Furthermore, Chen believed that only with the configuration of these three aspects could porcelain objects reach an aesthetic level of perfection. 35 In another part of the text, he separated the composition of porcelain into two integral parts, the porcelain glaze and the porcelain body. 36 In the author s preface, Chen defined ci, implicitly distinguishing it from the word tao, which prior to the publication of Chen s text in the early 1900s was not a meaningful distinction in written documents. 37 When analyzed from the perspective of material science, ci was often paired with the words for bright and brilliant and referred to celadon, which was a type of stoneware. 38 Tao and ci were used interchangeably and after the language reform of the 1920s, taoci became the general phrase for an overarching category that included both porcelain and pottery. In fact, while twentieth century conservationist scholars armed with the tools of technology and material science have labored to define the difference between pottery and porcelain, Chinese textual tradition before the twentieth century did not emphasize the distinction in the temporal terms Chen employed. Thus, in Tao Ya, we have the first usage of ci as historically more advanced than tao. 39 Chen specified that ci was pottery that is durable and delicate. 40 If materiality mattered, so did temporality. Linking porcelain to the indeterminate entity of guo went hand in hand with the elevation of temporality over place in the description of porcelain in Tao Ya. As Chen Liu had made explicit, porcelain objects were to be judged by their time period. In Tao Ya, reign periods or dynastic names constituted the terminology in which porcelain objects were categorized. The
227 209 author s 1910 self preface, the third of all the prefaces for Tao Ya, revealed a conception of porcelain historical timeline that followed dynastic and imperial appellations: [Emperor] Yu favors pottery which is elegant. Pottery that is durable and delicate is called ci. The sparkling porcelain pours forth honeyed nectar is a line from a poem from Pan Yue [ AD]. Starting with the early years of the Western Jin [ AD], there are the beginnings of qing [celadon] vessels. Haiyang wrote, During the Han dynasty, there were porcelain drinking vessels (qi). These words were not carelessly spoken. Since the Sui [ AD] and Tang dynasties [ AD], the number of porcelain producers increased. Both green and purple porcelain were praised in songs and ballads. During the times of the Chai emperor, Zhao [AD ], elegant wares were produced. This continued until the Yuan dynasty, during which some decline (shuai ) occurred. A tremendous revival occurred during the Yongle [ ] and Xuande [ ] reigns. It was during that time when multicolored painted decorations received emphasis. Throughout the whole Ming period, the brilliance did not diminish. 41 To be sure, reign names were defining markers of porcelain before the 1900s. In fact, reign names were the primary system of markings on porcelain produced in Jingdezhen for Ming and Qing objects starting in the eighteenth century. The texts followed suit, using the markings as general terms of reference. The 1774 monograph On Ceramics (Tao Shuo) by Zhu Yan, the 1778 biji text entitled Research on the Scholars Studio (Wenfang sikao) by eighteenth century Qing scholar and medical doctor Tang Bingjun, and the imperial degree holder Liang Tongshu s Research on Old Wares (Guyao qikao) all referred to Ming dynasty wares according to emperor reign title such as Hongwu (r ) wares, Yongle (r ) wares, Xuande (r ) wares, Chenghua (r ) wares, Zhengde (r ) wares, Jiajing (r ) wares, and so on (Figures 5, 6, 7, 8). 42 The Record of Jingdezhen Ceramics continued the
228 210 norm for designating Qing dynasty porcelains made in Jingdezhen kilns with reign names. 43 The Record of Jingdezhen Ceramics went a step further in porcelain-naming protocol. In the Record, the authors categorized Qing porcelain types by the surname of the imperial household official assigned to supervising kiln production who had either lived in Jingdezhen or supervised production by making frequent visits to Jingdezhen, in addition to reign name. Kangxi Zang wares was the term used for Kangxi period wares produced under the official who had been sent from the Imperial Household treasury department overseeing Jingdezhen porcelain activity. Zang was the surname of Zang Yingxuan, appointed in Yongzheng Nian wares referred to the porcelains produced during Yongzheng reigns under Nian Xiyao, who was a Manchu bannerman and whose formal position was the Grand Minister of the Imperial Household. No list would be complete without mention of the naming practice in the Record of Jingdezhen Ceramics for Qianlong period wares made under the direction of celebrated ceramicist Tang Ying: Qianlong Tang wares. 44 Of course, the fact that marks on porcelain produced during the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong periods did not actually appear with the names of imperial porcelain officials surnames on the markings reinforces the idea that the book was an homage to relations between the court and Jingdezhen, relations that were weakening at the time of its authorship (Figures 9, 10, 11). 45 Temporal dimensions come to the fore through themes of decline, a lamentation over which the author repeatedly anguished in the text. Chen s perception of an art in decline and crisis was a motivating factor in clarifying the brighter moments of the Qing s porcelain. In the 1906 preface he bemoaned that Lately, our country China s
229 211 porcelain industry has fallen ill (diao zhan). 46 The idea of decline and crisis in which the porcelain industry was mired served as a counterpoint to the three imperial eras of Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong that Chen Liu lauded as the pinnacle of porcelain artistry. Chen particularly lavished praise upon the official kilns of the Kangxi and Yongzheng period boldly declaring them as exhausting the limits of beauty. 47 Chen equated these three periods as the highpoint in Chinese porcelain, perhaps in contradistinction to the views of Bushell who made widely known his appraisal of the Kangxi period as the most flourishing period of the art. 48 Since Chen was concerned with the falling status of Chinese porcelain in the world s eyes after the years of apex, extending the lifeblood of its pinnacle years was a sensible intellectual strategy. Contrasted with the brilliance of the periods of Kang and Yong Today our Chinese porcelain is in sad decline. The workmanship is no good; the material is rough. Thus has perished its original quality. 49 Elsewhere in Tao Ya, Chen clarified the nature of the deterioration: Our Chinese porcelain pieces are highly esteemed, but today they are no longer what they used to be. And the reasons are many and complicated. Speaking of the body biscuit (pei tai), in the past it was made of fine and rich earth; today it is rough and coarse (kuyu). Speaking of handiwork (shou gong), in the past the patterns were skillful and complete, today they are full of flaws. Speaking of the glaze material, in the past the clay was lustrous and glossy; today it is dry and parched. Speaking of the color, in the past the coloring matter was fresh and bright; today it is dull and blotchy (an bai). Speaking of the shapes; in the past they had a deep and broad aura of antiqueness; today they are vulgar and vile. Speaking of the painters handicraft (hua shou), in the past they were true to life, elegant and refined; today it is clumsy and exaggerated. Speaking of the firing, in the past the vessels came from the
230 212 kiln entire and beautiful, today they emerge limp and cracked. 50 A dichotomy exists in Chen s narrative: the past as the locus of excellence and the present as the site of impoverishment. Moreover Chen s descriptions depended on the use of subjective adjectives posited as objective observations relevant for an entire time period: rough (kuyu ), life-like, elegant, refined (xiesheng yazhi ), or vulgar and vile (su e ). Before this, texts described porcelain in more tangible and concrete ways the shape of a vessel, the color of a glaze, the worth in gold, or the geographic location of its kiln. Decline was posited by Chen Liu in opposition to prior (xi ) glory. To be sure, the pervasive feeling of an exigent crisis did not compel Chen to advocate a return to the past. Peter Osborne s observations on modernity s space-time configuration offer some insights here. 51 According to Osborne, the meaning of modernity is unique not because it designates a chronological stage along a timeline of historical progression. Rather, it is a way of thinking about history wherein a temporalization of consciousness pervades all modes of ontology. Modernity derives its significance by defining itself in purely temporal terms. Tao Ya s presentation of a post-qianlong period of decline and decay of porcelain left a lasting impression on twentieth-century scholarship. It was the first to put forth such a view of decline and crisis and almost all succeeding studies such as the History of Chinese Ceramics published in 1936, Guo Baochang s early 1930s essay on porcelain (Ciqi gaishuo), and the 2004 comprehensive Science and Civilisation volume on Ceramic Technology adopted the same narrative of peak and decline. 52 Later scholarship has given more technical and scientific flesh to the barebones assessment of
231 213 decline such as the physical nature of course clay and kiln-firing conditions, but all assume the basic idea of a nineteenth century decay. 53 III. Elisions of Modernity: Porcelain Production in the Nineteenth Century There is a disjunction between the content of the text of Tao Ya and the material remnants of the time period. If modernity consists of a temporal structure that designates itself as new, then it requires a conceptual framework that sees the present as distinct and distant from the past, even the very recent past. 54 This logical structure demands a constantly vanishing present. 55 The negation of nineteenth century artistic development in Tao Ya reflects how the work s temporal structure registered the nineteenth century present and recent past in a shroud of decline and crisis. As such, Chen s text is structured by a feeling of self-rejection and loathing in the name of narrating moments of (self)-glory. In fact, innovation and different forms of production did appear in the nineteenth century. A decrease in court patronage of Jingdezhen porcelain gave rise to a surfeit of time and raw materials and the ensuing flexibility of time and resources gave way to experimentation by which porcelain makers could create pieces individualized and marked with the potter s own seal. An inverse relationship between the court patronage and the appearance of diverse porcelain forms was not without historical precedent. In 1620, with the end of the penultimate reign of the Ming dynasty, the imperial kilns ceased production activity. From then until 1683, when Kangxi instated two officials from the Imperial Household to manage production of high-fired porcelains for the Qing court at the Jingdezhen kilns, significant new styles were created. In the open market, vigorous experimentation produced new wares with original decorative
232 214 motifs and styles. 56 These new designs were so dazzling that the porcelains produced for the imperial court after 1680 bear the co-opted innovations on their glazes. A similar dynamic can be seen in the nineteenth century. A republican-era collector native of Canton (Guangzhou), Xu Zhiheng, singled out three skilled craftsmen who achieved renown during the early nineteenth century: Wang Bingrong, Chen Guozhi, and Hu Wenxiang (Figures 12, 13, 14). As their porcelain pieces show, each piece bears the potter s name, most often applied in the same relief carving method as the decoration of the porcelain itself. As is well known, prior to the nineteenth century, reign marks were the prevailing norm for seals on Jingdezhen porcelain. Individual porcelain makers names rarely appeared on the bottom of porcelain objects. Another development that began in the Tongzhi ( ) and Guangxu ( ) eras was the emergence of qianjiang or pale-burgundy painted porcelain. The term qianjiang, drawn from painting on silk or paper, denotes a particular color palate used for decoration on porcelain. Black ink provided the outlines of figures and flora and a pale reddish-brown ink was used to apply color for foliage, water, and elements in the light. 57 The resultant works were pale in shading and delicate in its decoration. The vanguard qianjiang porcelain painters active in the mid-nineteenth century were Wang Shaowei, Jin Pinqing and Cheng Men (Figures 15, 16). 58 All three worked as porcelain painters at Jingdezhen in the 1860s and 1870s and are generally acknowledged as being the forefathers of a group of porcelain artists commonly referred to as the Eight Friends of Mt. Zhu based in Jingdezhen in the 1910s and 1920s. This society of porcelain makers found inspiration from examples of literati painting for their porcelain compositions and popularized the art of porcelain plaques (Figure 17). 59 Meeting once a month to discuss and brainstorm
233 215 ideas for new types of designs, members of the Eight Friends of Mt. Zhu achieved enough artistic renown to allow some of them to be hired by high-ranking officials and political figures of the 1910s. When producing imperial porcelain for the Yuan Shikai reign, Guo Baochang hired Wang Xiaotang ( ) a painter based in Jingdezhen and native of Jiangxi province, to decorate the Yuan Shikai porcelain ware. A Poyang, Jiangxi native, Pan Taoyu ( ) painted porcelain for Cao Kun, who was president of China in the 1920s and an army general who was head of one of the factions stemming from the breakdown of the Beiyang Army, the Zhili clique after From the perspective of export porcelain, the nineteenth century was a period of increasing numbers of Jingdezhen export objects. As statistics in the General Gazetteer of Jiangxi Province (Jiangxi tongzhi gao) indicate, between 1860 and the outbreak of war with Japan in the 1930s, the average annual quantity of porcelain exports from Jingdezhen rose steadily. 61 Table 1. Average Annual Quantity of Export Porcelain from Jingdezhen, Tongzhi ( ) Guangxu ( ) Xuantong ( ) Republic ( circa) 839,050 kg 1,523,350 kg 2,978,800 kg 3,565,300 kg The upward trend in export ware from Jingdezhen parallels an observation made in 1925 by Liu Zifen, a Cantonese poet and collector living in Shanghai. In his notes on porcelain, Liu outlined the development of a new porcelain production process. The process, according to Liu, started in the late-qianlong period and increased through the early
234 216 nineteenth to mid-nineteenth century during the Jiaqing and Daoguang periods. Liu noted that in response to the export demand from Europe, merchants from Canton would transport fine, white porcelain bodies from Jingdezhen to the Canton area. In Canton, porcelain bodies would undergo painting decoration, whereby polychrome colors were added and sealed by a second firing. Liu s discussion also distinguished the two ways in which these Canton-decorated and Jingdezhen porcelain bodies were described in the two major studies on Qing dynasty porcelain: Tao Ya and the Record of Jingdezhen Ceramics. In the latter book, the authors referred to these porcelains as imitative of yangci (foreign porcelain). In essence, they did not belong in the same category of Jingdezhen-based porcelains. In Tao Ya, Chen Liu reversed the definition of the Canton-decorated porcelains and brought them back into the fold of Jingdezhen ceramics. Chen insisted that the Guangdong porcelains with white bodies were precisely those porcelain wares that resembled Jingdezhen porcelain (lue si Jingdezhen suo zhi ). 62 Clearly, the authors of the Record organized their enumeration of Jingdezhen porcelain based on whether production of wares took place completely in the town, from the making of white bodies to the decoration of finished pieces. Tao Ya s author Chen Liu regrouped them as Jingdezhen porcelains. The lack of consensus here points again to the instability of porcelain knowledge and the influence of a writers or collector s positionality in the definition of porcelain. Regardless of how these export wares were produced, they certainly signify a new development in porcelain production that continued throughout the nineteenth century marked the first state efforts to introduce modern forms of porcelain production with the founding of the Jiangxi Porcelain Company (Figure 18). 63 Thorough object-
235 217 based research into the relationship between the Jingdezhen export wares and overseas collectors has yet to be undertaken. Still, the date of such wares coincides with the rise of a type of export wares collected and used in households in Southeast Asia. These wares, now collected in museums such as the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore, were produced in a similar fashion as that described by Cantonese writer and collector Liu Zifen in the early 1920s: porcelain bodies made in Jingdezhen and transported to Canton for polychrome glaze decoration before overseas export. 64 Finer wares tended to go to European and Japanese markets and courser ones to Southeast Asia. Commonly referred to as kitchen ch ing so as to mirror their status as crude objects, these porcelains pointed to a growing market influenced by the overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. 65 Their absence in Tao Ya s narrative, however, reflect how the early twentieth century narrative of porcelain history paralleled the hardening of nationalizing political boundaries alongside an increasingly fluid movement of populations and goods across those boundaries. 66 The same political and cultural forces that favored fragmentation into nations and races, as well as perceptions of distinct cultural regions as developed or under-developed, also operated in the valuation of certain types of porcelain that warranted scholarly attention. As inclusive as Tao Ya aspired to be, it ultimately excluded certain kinds of porcelain as well. IV. Acquiring Porcelain Knowledge through Objects, Loot, and the Market Perhaps the most vexing aspect of Chen Liu s writing is his assumption of objectivity when assessing declining aesthetic standards. The entire text relies on various methods to reinforce the gravity and authoritativeness of its scholarship. The author was
236 218 clearly a well read person as his text is speckled with literary references to classic works and allusions from literature spanning thousands of years including the Western Chamber, the Book of Odes (Shijing), the Book of Rites (Liji), Tang poetry, and many written works now referred to as manuals of taste. Such manuals were not specific to porcelain or ceramics, but spanned an array of object genres. In order to establish his intellectual authority, Chen adopted the methods of philology, a mode of scholarly research practiced with increasing intensity during the eighteenth century. Chen Liu ended the study by enumerating seven texts written in the Ming dynasty, one from the last two years of the Yuan Dynast, and one from the early Qing period. The list was equivalent to a modern bibliography that appends the end of a written scholarly work. Even more important, especially to Chen Liu himself, was the intellectual authority gained through his visual observation of objects circulating while he was working in Beijing. Chen proudly buttressed his own abilities as an expert on porcelain by differentiating himself from scholars without firsthand object-based experience and those antique dealers and collectors who lacked literary and writing ability: There were blurry-eyed scholars who lived in remote places and laboriously examined old methods, but their material strengths were insufficient, and their insight therefore limited. As for the porcelain dealers and honored officials who know how to distinguish objects, and have some measure of ability, they were not able to put their words to paper. 67 He spoke highly of his own opportunities and on several occasions exalted the advantages of working as an official in Beijing for twenty years. The advantages were spoken of by Chen in terms of both a positive visual experience and intellectual gain. He enthused that the antique objects in circulation constituted a delight of my own eyes
237 219 (yan fu ), which in these recent days, I indulged to the utmost limit Here is the humble achievement of twenty years of residence in Beijing. 68 The visual experience was, as Chen himself admitted, a phenomenon of objects that appeared for display in public circles only in recent years. Chen illuminated the historical process by which he could view these objects. The recent years, which he stipulated using the temporal terms of the lunar calendar ganzhi system, spanned 1894 and 1906, with 1895 and 1901 being the most important. Furthermore, he observed that after 1901, very large number of plates and dishes in five-color made their appearance. 69 Due to the availability of visual experience, Chen could then make aesthetic conclusions: Daoguang period objects were bad compared to Yongzheng period porcelain. 70 Of course, the history of the process by which these objects became available for viewing is a familiar one fraught with human violence and filled with visual brilliance. It is a history that included a combination of interrelated activities, including the art market, looting, and war debts. As is well known, looting began on October 7, 1860 after the French and British sacked the Yuanming yuan imperial gardens. The violence and thievery gave foreigners and residents in Beijing the opportunity to see objects that had never been displayed for public viewing. For British collecting practices, the availability of imperial objects signaled a shift from preferences for export porcelain to those objects that were deemed authentic. The authentic was defined as the porcelain now revealed to have been stored in the imperial grounds and produced for the emperor, which was labeled imperial taste in 1875 and later, Chinese taste in the 1940 s. 71
238 220 By 1906, two more disastrous wars had been fought, with the victors exacting crushing indemnities on the losing Qing government. In 1895 the Qing lost to the Japanese, and in 1900, the allied forces of Britain, Russia, Japan, the United States, Germany, France, Italy, and Austria, together crushed Qing troops. Chen Liu reported in Tao Ya that in order to pay the indemnities the government began to sell the porcelains and art pieces stored in imperial palaces and gardens such as the imperial summer retreat grounds in Chengde. As a result, Chen lived in a landscape whereby precious objects formed an active antiques market in ever increasing numbers. Yet this market was not the product of a free invisible hand of demand and supply; its origins lay in war indemnities. Chen noted this in Tao Ya several times. He wrote glowingly that the collected treasures of a thousand years are stored in the Qing capital. Once they burst forth onto the world stage, everyone will know and it will arouse admiration. 72 On the other hand, the ambiguous moral valence of the sudden visibility of imperial collections artworks that ensued from these depressing international political circumstances was a point not lost on Chen. He continued to explain that the admiration gained through seeing imperial collections of porcelain with an ironic description. To see such dazzling treasures was a so-called opportunity that one could hope for but not seek. 73 The key phrase here is so-called (suo wei). Chen clearly experienced joy from viewing these spoils of war, but he was more concerned that the knowledge about porcelain from his country was made possible by the opening of the palace collections. Proclaiming the bursting forth of three hundred years of collected splendor as a rare opportunity, Chen felt that the opportunity was a lost cause saying that Our Chinese porcelain is the best in the entire globe, but we Chinese do not know their value. 74 He not only extolled
239 221 the objects for being able to compensate and fulfill the indemnities but he also praised them for their ability to constitute a large museum such that the people of the five continents would be in awe. 75 Here, porcelain s value was understood by Chen as contributing to self-knowledge in the context of being seen in the world. Chen s opinion was shaped by the circumstances in which porcelain objects were accessed from imperial treasures in palace grounds to spoils of war to visible beauty. V. Inscribing the Collector as Knower The foregoing discussion highlighted how knowledge about porcelain was produced and for what reason in the late Qing. Another issue Chen tackles in his text is the status of connoisseurs and their moral and intellectual superiority over merchants and money-grubbing art dealers. He was concerned with the development of knowledge (and taste) about porcelain. In doing so, he established a hierarchy of knowledge (taste) makers. His allegiances fell with connoisseurs who comprehended aesthetic standards. This is clearly expressed in statements of this sort: The fine judgment of the connoisseurs frequently exceeds that of the man in the market. And when it comes to the collectors, their physical energy is robust and stout, far beyond that of the shopkeepers. A single vessel however small, a single sketch however small, once they have examined its origin and history, then they are happy with delight. So they beg for books of reference they are certain to appeal to the antiquarians to search and pick out the gems; reserving a slight smile for the nouveau riche. 76 As mentioned, Chen Liu was himself an avid collector of porcelain. In a preface he wrote for his collection of poems dedicated to his porcelain wine cups, Chen enumerated the objects of his collection ranged from Han Dynasty, Six Dynasties, Tang,
240 222 Five Dynasties, Song, Yuan, Ming, and through the Qing period. Among the different forms Chen acquired were oval, round, square-shaped, bronze-inspired objects, and so on. He devoted effort to understanding their special qualities and studying the porcelains, after which he ordered them carefully ( ). 77 However, his positive appraisal for the collector went beyond the purpose of promoting culture, elegance, and taste. He saw collectors as integral to his country s position in international society. He did not mince words when it came to criticism directed toward the collectors who clung to old cracks and imperfect ways (baocan shouque), and scoffed with their noses (chizhi yibi) at sending porcelain objects to international exhibitions such as the 1904 St. Louis Exhibition, where Westerners regarded highly our Chinese porcelain (huaci). 78 Evidently, Chen had in mind a particular sort of collector whose taste and knowledge stood above the vulgar and fast-paced market. Only a politically and socially insightful collector in tune with the aims of redeeming his society s worldwide reputation was worthy of Chen s praise. The term for connoisseur typically used by writers was jianshang, which means to view and enjoy. However, for Chen, the connoisseur was first and foremost a person of visual knowledge, a jian jia. The type of collector and connoisseur that Chen valued was someone who understood ceramics for more than their monetary value. Neither was connoisseurship simply about joy. He despised those who only saw porcelain as a means to make money, despite his acceptance of the government doing the same thing in raising funds to fulfill indemnities. He also disdained the collectors whose selfishness contributed to social disarray and competition. Thus, in his brief essay,
241 223 Doubei tang ji 鬬 (Record of Collecting Wine Cups), he stressed the meaninglessness of attaining self-centered goals. The essay encapsulates his meticulous collection of porcelain cups and the tender care with which he examined each one and its history. He constructed a tang [room or hall], in order to chu [place] vessels there. Outside the room, on a bamboo strip, [he] carved a name given to the room: doubei to commemorate a year s worth of successful harvest in a place of rest. Despite the comprehensiveness and exquisite quality of his entire porcelain collection, Chen had no desire to use his expertise or porcelain acquisitions for self affirmation at the cost of social division. He rejected the competition and selfish ambition that emerged from pride and arrogance. At the end of his essay, he concluded, there were those who said my worldly success stemmed from my own insight. What have I pursued and not achieved? However, to imitate those immersed in [personal] achievement and for the sole sake of competing like those scholars and laborers over the superior or inferior qualities of each ou [drink vessel] and wan [bowl], is this not an absolute delusion? A human s life seeks joy and that s it. Even if you have a reputation and fame, after you die, you are alone, lonely and forgotten by the world. I, as an old man, would not like to exchange the former for the latter. 79 In setting up such a contrast, Chen seemed to be inscribing intellectual value into collecting antiques and objects and drew attention away from the derision of leisure to which it was previously attributed. 80 Moreover, he establishes the lack of social morality in egocentric behavior. In his conception, aesthetic collection still brings about joy but more important is the connoisseur who does not seek self-elevation. In conjunction with his desire to develop substantive connoisseurship over monetary profit as expressed in Tao Ya, Chen s appreciation for the revealed collections of the Qing emperor that had
242 224 hitherto been privately stored can be understood. An aesthetic understanding of porcelain was a part of a person s social and moral being. Chen also held favorable views toward a book that similarly placed utmost value on collecting porcelain and the collector s knowledge about the history of porcelain: the Xiang Yuanbian illustrated manual. As I have discussed earlier, in Tao Ya, the Lidai mingci tupu (Illustrated Catalogue of Porcelains of Successive Dynasties) was the focus of much praise and Tao Ya aspired to be its successor. At the same time that Chen was announcing and celebrating the social roles of the collector, English collectors pointed to an image of the Chinese collector as one of the key indicators of authenticity, an emerging standard for porcelain collectors in Britain. 81 As mentioned, the late 1880s and 1890s saw the rise of a new standard by which collectors in England chose porcelain. With the looted objects from imperial collections available for consumption by foreigners and antique dealers in Beijing, there emerged an idea of authenticity based on a late nineteenth century concept of Chinese taste. One could presumably access authentic taste by understanding the Chinese collector. Bushell commented in his essay on the significance of the Xiang album: The Chinese collector is an antiquarian first and cares more for an incense-pot, dulled by centuries of war, than for the most brilliantly decorated of the vases in which we delight. The objects are often ugly enough, but it is impossible to get a notion of the progress of the ceramic art without some acquaintance with them. In the absence of specimens, some help may be got from figures, and the main purpose of my paper is to bring before the notice of the Society an illustrated manuscript catalogue, in four volumes by a collector of the sixteenth century of our era, who has drawn in colour and described eighty-two explanations of the different kinds of porcelain. 82
243 225 Bushell s words show how he interpreted the Chinese collector s taste as a penchant for antiquity, an impression that influenced later scholars critique of Chinese aesthetics. Moreover, while they were living in the same cities and geographical areas, sharing neighborhoods and friends, Bushell and the circle of western collectors reified the Chinese collector as an antiquarian and divested him of voice, narrowing the scope of Chinese collectors ideas to cultural essence. In scholarly works, backward-looking aesthetics bore the brunt of a backward Chinese culture. Tao Ya s existence at this time period as a written text about art, taste, and knowledge dissuade us from seeing Chinese aesthetics as an invariable paradigm but rather one constructed and deployed with intention. A look at the terms of Tao Ya s discussion reveals the uneasy fit between imperial, personal, and national notions of Chinese porcelain. As noted, the Xiang catalogue was an album Tao Ya s author respected. It is one of the few texts on porcelain that aspired to be a comprehensive history of porcelain styles that had been produced at the time of the author s life in the sixteenth century. The narrative of the preface stretches the history of ceramics back to the pre-historic stone age with Emperor Shun as a moral potter as well as farmer and fisher. Moreover, the collector, Xiang, wrote that his collection included extant works from the Yuan, Song, and Ming dynasties, all of which he treasured as much as he did ancient bronzes ritual objects. The preface, supposedly written by the collector Xiang himself, divulged a similar willingness to engage in studying and identifying collected porcelain as an honorable activity, ending with an exhortation: Don t regard this activity as simply an old man who has reverted to liking a child s leisure activity. 83
244 226 Again, the Xiang preface showed respect for researching and recording qualities such as height, glaze qualities, kiln, and year of production. Tao Ya s author was of course aware of Bushell s translation of the Xiang catalogue. As they were both living in Beijing during the last few decade of the nineteenth century, they likely ran in the same circles of antiques and art dealerships. It is striking to see divergence in Bushell and Chen s discussion of porcelain, which can only be described as speaking past each other. Moreover, Chen Liu was probably familiar with the importance that Bushell and other Western collectors attached to the Xiang catalogue: a representation of authentic and native taste that would guide Westerners in their collecting decisions. Given that many of the imperial objects were sold in the late 1890s and early 1900 s art market, Chen s project was to exalt aesthetic knowledge not the building of collections. After all, he admitted that many of the precious objects were no longer to be seen: Of the pieces recorded by Mr. Zhu of Haiyan [the author of 1774 Tao Shuo], scarcely one in a hundred can be obtained; what I have seen and written about are no longer able to be seen. Those who read my writings in the future will thus sigh with hopeless grief. 84 Chen stated twice – once in the 1906 preface and once in his collection of poems about porcelain wine vessels – that it was fruitless to compare possessions. The importance was not in having objects but in knowing them. Comparing the two contemporaneous ideas of Chinese porcelain connoisseurship, we see that English collectors conceptions of the collector were based essentialized notions of authenticity and Chen Liu s exhortations was predicated upon a globally significant and aesthetically informed connoisseur. The contrasting, yet contemporaneous, opinions reveal the constructed-ness of the notion of Chinese taste and
245 227 connoisseurship. The fact that the Xiang Yuanbian illustrated catalogue has in large part been vilified as a later copy reinforces the importance of cross-border comparisons of such concepts and the historical contexts of international dialogue that gave rise to such divergent constructs as a Chinese collector (Figure 19). 85 In fact, no version of the Xiang book that dates to the sixteenth century has been found in collections and the version that Bushell used was the first appearance of the printed book in global antique circles. The book was found without illustrations and re-illustrated according to the text which was found in the 1880s. 86 Xiang s album might not even have existed in the sixteenth century. The images in Figure 20 show a comparison of the translated and annotated versions, produced in the 1880s by Stephen Bushell and 1920s by Guo Baochang, the Yuan Shikai porcelain official, and American John C. Ferguson. Figure 21 depicts three separate stages of the process by which the text was translated and annotated, sans visual illustrations. The entire history of the two later editions, which were based on a textual discovery in the 1880s disrupts the seemingly unreflective truthfulness of a book s existence; the Lidai mingci tupu just might have been the material remnant of wishful imagination. In light of the (non)evidence, the history of interpretation, extrapolation and appropriation of ideas and concepts of porcelain is even more important. Whereas the English collectors essentialized the Chinese connoisseur, Tao Ya s author saw the connoisseur as politically relevant for the present. Moreover, he believed that the growth of understanding was boundless. Chen wrote that the journey of cultivation has no ending. The mature student knows that the learning of the collectors do not speak of socalled graduating. 87 By advocating innovation through cultivation, Chen Liu s text stands as an example of an imminent critique of westerners hegemonic discourses. Thus,
246 228 for Chen, there was no essential Chinese taste and knowledge; aesthetic understanding was always in process. Recently, historians of the medieval period have been preoccupied with the phenomenon of the Wunderkammer (cabinet of wonder), which were collections of diverse collected items enjoyed by scholars, researchers, and physicists in places such as Antwerp or Venice in the late-sixteenth century. As actual containers with different levels displaying various objects of natural history, exotica, paintings, and antiques, the cabinets of wonder were self-contained worlds, a collection of objects viewed with a metonymic purpose. The floor-to-ceiling displays of disparate objects placed side by side functioned as a purveyor of aesthetic enjoyment reflecting the universe bounded in a discrete space. In other words, the cabinets of wonder were a microcosm. For historians, they are forerunners of the way in which modern subjectivities developed in that both included a yearning for universal knowledge. 88 It is interesting that the idea of the collector from the non-west has not been treated with similar scholarly rigor. Where the collector as connoisseur is a subject of scholarly inquiry, they continue only to speak for China or Chinese taste. As the previous chapter on visual images demonstrates, collecting universality also existed as a form of emperorship and imperial rule that intensified during the Qianlong period. Even more interesting is the historical process by which Chen Liu came to encourage the importance of ideas and knowledge in modern society. Quite regrettably, he witnessed the loss of material objects from imperial collections. Their ensuing inaccessibility contributed to his fervent advocacy for the continuing and gradual process of understanding porcelain. Of course, porcelain was an aspect of his own society: to
247 229 know porcelain was to know the value of his own community. In that respect, Chen s connoisseurship was an act of self-construction, even if his nineteenth-century denigration led to a subsequent erasure of porcelain s history. Self-constitution implied self-destruction in this sense. Intellectual historians have located the 1898 to 1911 period as a decade when reformers and revolutionaries placed utmost importance on education and intellectual reform, at times privileging the realm of ideas over materialist solutions. 89 However, an examination of how porcelain became the center of concern for community renewal, social change, and aesthetic educators like Chen Liu shows that the cleavage between material and idea was itself a historical one. Chen chose connoisseurship as a path of action over collecting in light of historical circumstances that included material losses: looting, war indemnities, and power struggles. 1 Tao Ya, juan xia, 314:. Tao Ya is reprinted in Zhongguo gudai taoci wenxian jilu [Collection of Ancient Chinese Porcelain documents] (Beijing: Quanguo tushuguan wenxian suowei fuzhizhongxin, 2003) and in Shuo Tao, eds., Sang Xingzhi et al., (Shanghai: Shanghai keji jiaoyu chubanshe, 1993). Hereafter, the footnote citation will follow the format of the handwritten reprinted copy in the anthology Zhongguo gudai taoci wenxian jilu (2003) as such: Tao Ya, juan xia or juan shang, (if relevant), page number. 2 Chen Liu, Doubei tang ji 鬬 [Record of Collecting Wine Cups], Guangxu 4 th year, Copy accessed at the rare book collection in the Shanghai Museum Library in December Chang Hao, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), Introduction. 4 Joseph Levenson s articulation is in Confucian China and Its Modern Fate (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). 5 Joseph Levenson, Liang Ch i ch ao and the Mind of Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953).
248 230 6 Ironically this period saw an increase in multicolored porcelain decoration, perceived at the time as vulgar by the supporters of the earthy Arts and Crafts Movement in England and America. 7 Jingdezhen taoci shigao [Draft History of Jingdezhen], ed., Jiangxi Light Industry Department, Ceramics Institute (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1959), 220; Xiang Zhuo, Jingdezhen taoye jishi [Records of the Porcelain Industry at Jingdezhen] (1920), in Nanjing shi geye gaikuang diaocha [Nanjing city survey of industries] (Nanjing: Shoudu gejie tichang guohuo weiyuanhui diaochazu, 1935), 52. See the Qing government memorial, Concerning the establishment of the Jiangxi porcelain company, Guangxu 29th year (1904), 5th month, 24th day, in Xiong Liao and Xiong Wei, comps., Zhongguo taoci guji jicheng 国 [Annotated collection of historical documents on ancient Chinese ceramics] (Shanghai: Shanghai wenhua chubanshe, 2006), Stanley Wright, Kiangsi Native trade and Its Taxation (New York: Garland Press, 1980 [Shanghai, 1920]), 185; Albert Feuerwerker, China’s Early Industrialization (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958). 9 Chen Liu, Doubei tang ji. The complete disclaimer uttered by the author was: My old mother, all my brothers, concubines, wives, sons, daughters, none of them do not like to drink. His maturity in years can be inferred by his three separate prefaces to Tao Ya which contain lamentations about his old age. 10 Tao Ya, Original First Preface. 11 Tao Jiren, Jin ershi nian Zhongguo ciqi shi yanjiu shouhuo shuping, [Review of the scholarship on Chinese ceramics from the past twenty years] Zhongguo Taoci 11 (1982): Zhu Deyi was a stele researcher of the late Qing and early Republican periods. He belonged to the Zhejiang school of seal carving, which enjoyed a period of unprecedented popularity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The style of their seals purposely imitated Qin and Han dynasty seal scripts. Zhu Deyi, whose zi was Songchuang and whose hao was Litang (his alternative name was Hanwei ), was from Yuhang near Hangzhou. For an overview and examples of the seal scripts of the Zhejiang school, see R. H. van Gulik, Chinese Pictorial Art (Rome: I. S. M. E. O., 1958). Zhu s written studies included Zhuren luxu [Biographical Record of Bamboo Carvers, Cont.] (Shanghai: n.p., 1930).
249 Xu Zhiheng Yinliuzhai shuoci [Yinliuzhai on Porcelain] in Sang Xingzhi et al. (1993). 14 See the preface of the 2006 edition of Wu Renjing, Zhongguo taoci shi [History of Chinese Ceramics] (Guangzhou: Tuanjie chubanshe, 2006 [1936]). 15 Wu Renjing, Zhongguo taocishi [History of Chinese Ceramics] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1936), Jiang Siqing, Jingdezhen ciye shi [History of Jingdezhen Ceramic Industry] (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1936), 93-94, and Geoffrey Sayer, trans., Tao Ya: Or, Pottery Refinements, Being a Translation with Notes and an Introduction (London: Routledge, 1959). 18 Lydia Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity-China, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995). Michael Sullivan, Review, The Burlington Magazine, 103: 704 (Nov., 1961): Yutaka Mino and Katherine R. Tsiang, Ice and Green Clouds: Traditions of Chinese Celadon (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1987). 20 Mr. William Laffan, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 16:81 (Dec., 1909): Tao Ya, Original First Preface. 22 Tao Ya, Original First Preface. 23 Tao Ya, Author s Preface. 24 Tao Ya, Second Original Preface:. 25 Tao Ya, Second Original Preface. 26 Tao Ya, Second Original Preface, and Tao Ya, juan shang,18: 27 Tao Ya, juan xia, 312: 为 绘 国. The illustrated album was authored by Xiang Yuanbian (alternative name Zijing which is used in the text of Tao Ya), the famous art collector of the Ming dynasty, whose catalogue and text on porcelain will be discussed below.
250 In the Tao Ya text, Chen Liu relies on the authority of this book Mirror to the World s Porcelain in order to discuss Kangxi period porcelain pieces (Tao Ya, juan shang, 14), pieces that have a Qianlong period mark (Tao Ya, juan shang,14), and marks with Latin characters inscribed (Tao Ya, juan shang, 14). Throughout the text there are seven separate references to this book that covers world porcelain. Chen Liu often uses the phrase: For details, see Mirror to the World s Porcelain. I have yet to identify the book, the actual title, locations, and author, including its actual non-chinese title, author, and publication date. 29 Tao Ya, Original First Preface. 30 Tao Ya, Original First Preface. 31 Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (London: Basil Blackwell, 1991). 32 National Palace Museum, Gu se : Through the Prism of the Past: Antiquarian Trends in Chinese Art of the 16 th to 18 th Century (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2003). James C. Watt, the Literati Environment, in The Chinese Scholar s Studio: Artistic Life in the Late Ming-Period An Exhibition from the Shanghai Museum (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987), Craig Clunas, Luxury Knowledge, Techniques et culture 29 (Jan-June 1997): Taste is the descriptor Clunas uses to summarize the basic thrust of these object manuals, including catalogues and technical manuals; R. H. van Gulik, Chinese Pictorial Art As Viewed by the Connoisseur (1958), 51. Van Gulik s technical study of art appreciation also identifies a tradition of literary works aimed at defining the refined lifestyle, all of which begun in earnest in the Song dynasty. 34 Tao Ya, juan shang, Ibid, 29: 36 Tao Ya, juan shang, 16:. 37 Lydia Liu, Robinson Crusoe’s Earthenware Pot, Critical Inquiry, 25:4 (Summer, 1999): Liu also notes that tao and ci were not significant categories of analysis for porcelain and ceramics in Chinese language texts but finds that Lin Shu, at the turn of the twentieth century in 1904 and 1906 purposefully rendered tao as ci. See Needham and Kerr, Ceramic Technology (2004), 11, though Needham and Kerr argue that ci and tao were distinguished by Chinese authors. This is an anachronistic reading of the text that does not analyze the meaning of the text beyond the terms.
251 Mino and Tsiang, Ice and Green Clouds: Traditions of Chinese Celadon (1987). 39 See footnote 41 below. 40 Tao Ya, Self Preface: 41 The family of Chai was the ruling house of the Later Zhou dynasty which lasted from 951 to 960 AD. Haiyang was the alternative name for Wang Shizhen ( AD), a poet and literary figure active during the middle and latter half of the sixteenth century. Yu was the ruler of the Xia dynasty ( BC) and one of the three mythological rulers exalted as moral rulers in Confucian thought. 42 Tang Bingjun, Wenfang sikao tushuo [Research on the Scholars Studio] (Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe, 1996 [1778]); Zhu Yan, Tao Shuo [On Ceramics] and Liang Tongshu, Guyao qikao [Research on Old Wares] both in Xiong and Xiong, comps. (2006). 43 Jingdezhen Tao lu in Mian Lian ed., (Jinan: Shandong huabao, 2004 [1815]), juan 5, Liu Lanhua and Zhang Bo, Qingdai taoci [Qing dynasty porcelain] (Harbin: Beifang wenwu zazhi, 1988), This is discussed in the dissertation s second chapter. 46 Tao Ya, Original First Preface: 47 Tao Ya, Self-Preface: 窰 48 Stephen W. Bushell, Chinese Porcelain Before the Present Dynasty (Beijing: Pei-t ang Press, 1886), 3; See also Stephen W. Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art (New York: D. Appleton, 1896): Tao Ya, juan shang, 13: 50 Tao Ya, juan shang, Peter Osborne, Modernity is a Qualitative, Not a Chronological, Category, New Left Review I/192 (March-April 1992):
252 Needham and Kerr, Ceramic Technology, 30-31; Wu Renjing, Zhongguo taocishi (2006 [1936]), 71; Guo Baochang, Ciqi gaishuo. 53 Only one book refutes the idea by raising myriad examples of court productions of Jingdezhen porcelain in the 19 th century: Gunhild Avitabile, From the Dragon s Treasure: Chinese Porcelain from the 19 th and 20 th centuries in the Weishaupt Collection (London: Bamboo Publishing, 1987). 54 Peter Osborne s description is that modernity is a time period when people are conscious of the new and that it aware of the epoch s contemporaneity. See Peter Osborne s Modernity is a Qualitative, not Chronological Category. 55 In addition to the theme of belatedness and not-yet, the other prominent theme related to modernity is the discourse of the lack. Marilyn Ivy, Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 56 Jonathan Hay, The Diachronics of Early Qing Visual and Material Culture, in The Qing Formation in World-Historical Time (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), The period is referred to by ceramic historians as the transitional era and the research is based on trade wares now extant in Japan and elsewhere. See Julia B. Curtis, Chinese Porcelains of the Seventeenth Century: Landscapes, Scholar s Motifs, and Narratives (New York: China Institute Gallery, University of Washington Press, 1995) and Stephen Little, Chinese Ceramics of the Transitional Period, (New York: China House Gallery, 1983). For new forms of porcelain technique and artistry in the nineteenth century, see Tony Miller and Humphrey Hui, Elegance in Relief: Carved Porcelain from Jingdezhen of the 19 th and Early 20 th Centuries (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006); Urban Council, Brush and Clay: Chinese Porcelain of the Early 20 th Century (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1990); Geng Baochang and Qin Xilin, eds., Zhu Shan Bayou [Eight Friends of Mt. Zhu] (Nanchang : Jiangxi meishu chubanshe, 2004). 57 See definition for qianjiang shanshui, in Zhongguo meishu cidian [Dictionary of Chinese Art] (Taipei: Hsiungshih tushu, 2001), Jingdezhen taoci shigao (1959), 315; Brush and Clay (1990), Brush and Clay (1990), See also Zeng Meifang Jingdezhen caici sanbainian: Nanchang Zeng shi suocang Jingdezhen shiqi zhi ershi shiji caihui ciqi [Ms. Zeng s Collection
253 235 of Jingdezhen Painted Porcelain during the 17 th to 20 th Centuries] Nanchang (Jiangxi meishu chubanshe, 2002). 60 Brush and Clay (1990), Wu Zongci, Jiangxi tongzhi gao [General Gazetteer of Jiangxi Province] (Nanchang: Jiangxi sheng bowuguan, 1985), volume 21, reprinted in Li Keyou and Wu Shuicun 吴, eds., Guci jianding zhinan [Guide to Expertising] (Beijing: Yanshan chubanshe, 1992), Liu Zifen, Zhuyuan taoshuo, in Sun Yan, ed., Guci jianding zhinan [Guide to Expertising] (Beijing: Yanshan chubanshe, 1993), 93-94; Tao Ya, juan xia, Jiang Siqing (1936), Southeast Asian Ceramic Society, Nonya Ware and Kitchen Ch’ing: Ceremonial and Domestic pottery of the 19th-20th Centuries Commonly Found in Malaysia (London: Distributed by University of Oxford Press, 198 1). I am grateful to the librarian at the Asian Art Museum for this reference. 65 Theodore Hermann, An Analysis of China’s Export Handicrafts to 1930, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1954, Adam Mckeown, Global Migration, , Journal of World History 15.2 (June 2004): Tao Ya, Self-Preface. 68 Tao Ya, juan shang, 18: 峯 63 Tao Ya, juan shang, 9: 盌 70 Ibid, 9: 钜 窰 虽 盌 窰 盌 71 For the first instance of the phrase imperial taste in relation to the looted objects, see Lawrence Archer, Chinese Porcelain, particularly that of the Ta Ming Dynasty, Art Journal (1875), 241 quoted in Stacey Pierson, Collectors, Collections and Museums
254 236 (London: Peter Lang, 2007), 61. For Chinese taste, see William Honey, Foreward, in Soame Jenyns, Later Chinese Porcelain (New York: T. Yoseloff, First American Edition, 1965). 72 Tao Ya, juan xia, Ibid., 43: 74 Tao Ya, juan shang, 18: 75 Tao Ya, juan shang, 18: 76 Tao Ya, juan shang, Chen Liu, Doubei tang ji. 78 Tao Ya, juan shang, 9: 昻 进 79 Chen Liu, Doubei tang ji:,?, 盌 Li Wai-yee, The Collector, The Connoisseur, & Late Ming Sensibility, T’oung Pao (1995), ; Hsieh Mingliang, Qianlong de taoci jianshang guan, [Qianlong s Connoisseurship of Ceramics] Gugong xueshujikan 21:2 (Winter 2003): Stacey Pierson, Collectors, Collections and Museums (2007), Stephen W. Bushell, Chinese Porcelain Before the Present Dynasty (1886), Xiang Yuanbian, Preface to Lidai mingci tupu, in Sang Xingzhi et al. (1993). 84 Tao Ya, Second Preface. 85 Percival David, Hsiang and His Album, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramics Society 11 ( ):
255 Stephen W. Bushell, Chinese Porcelain Before the Present Dynasty (1886). Stephen W. Bushell, trans. Chinese Porcelain, Sixteenth Century Colored Illustration with Chinese Ms. Text by Hsiang Yuan-pien (London: Clarendon Press, 1908). 87 Tao Ya, juan shang, 22: 88 Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 89 Rebecca Karl, Staging the World : Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002). Stuart Schram, Mao Tse-tung (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966); Chen Jian, Mao s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
256 238 Figure 1. Cover of Tao Ya edition with the seal-script style calligraphy of Zhu Deyi. National Palace Museum (Taipei) Figure 2. Liu Jiaxi inscription of title page using another title, Guci huikao, for Tao Ya, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art
257 Figure. 3. Edition of Tao Ya printed under the aegis of the Shanghai Society for Research on Antique Porcelain (Shanghai Guci yanjiu hui). Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art 239
258 240 Figure 4a. Advertisement for Tao Ya, Jingdezhen Tao lu, and Yinliuzhai shuo ci by publisher Zhaoji shuzhuang. Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art Figure 4b. Edition of Tao Ya (mid-1920s) by publisher Zhaoji shuzhuang. Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art
259 241 Figure 5. Da Ming (Great Ming) Wanli mark. Figure 6. Da Ming Jiajing mark. Figure 7. Da Ming Zhengde mark. Figure 8. Da Ming Xuande mark Chang Foundation of Chinese Art, Chinese Art from the Ching Wan Society Collection (Taipei: Chang Foundation, 1998).
260 242 Figure 9. Great Qing Kangxi mark on famille verte dish. Figure 10. Great Qing Yongzheng mark and pair of yellow-glazed bowls. Figure 11. Qianlong mark for a covered jar with doucai glaze decoration. Chang Foundation of Chinese Art, Chinese Art from the Ching Wan Society Collection (Taipei: Chang Foundation, 1998).
261 243 Figure 12. Left: Mark on bottom of porcelain carving by Wang Bingrong ( ). Right: Porcelain Brush Holder by Wang Bingrong. Figure 13. Chen Guozhi ( ) mark and carved brushpot made in Jingdezhen. Tony Miller and Humphrey Hui, Elegance in Relief: Carved Porcelain from Jingdezhen of the 19 th and Early 20 th Centuries (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006).
262 244 Figure 14. Snuff bottle made of carved porcelain between 1821 and 1850 in imitation of jadeite and landscape decoration. Jingdezhen. Mark: Hu Wenxiang zuo. Tony Miller and Humphrey Hui, Elegance in Relief: Carved Porcelain from Jingdezhen of the 19 th and Early 20 th Centuries (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006).
263 245 Figure 15. Wang Shaowei (active ), dated porcelain plaque decorated with qianjiang enamels. Figure 16. Jin Pinqing (active ) porcelain plaque painted in qianjiang enamels. Hong Kong Museum of Art, Brush and Clay: Chinese Porcelain of the Early 20th Century (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1990).
264 246 Figure 17. Wang Qi, dated Porcelain plaque decorated with fencai enamels. Figure 18. Pair of porcelain cups in fencai enamels with mark Jiangxi Porcelain Company ( ). Hong Kong Museum of Art, Brush and Clay: Chinese Porcelain of the Early 20th Century (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1990).
265 Figure 19. Cover and title page of Stephen Bushell s translation of the illustrated catalogue, Lidai mingci tupu. Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art. 247
266 Figure 20. Comparison of two translations of purported Ming dynasty collector s porcelain catalogue: text and accompanying watercolor illustration of Song Ding ware porcelain. Top: Stephen Bushell s 1908 translation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908). Bottom: Guo Baochang and John C Ferguson, trans. Noted Porcelain of Successive Dynasties (Beijing: Zhizhai shushe, 1929). 248
267 Figure 21. Image of the annotation and translation process using un-illustrated Xiang Yuanbian catalogue Lidai mingci tupu original. Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art. 249
268 Conclusion Today, the 362 ceramic objects sent by the Nationalist government to the exhibitions in Shanghai, London, and Nanjing are still housed in the collection of the National Palace Museum. But now the National Palace Museum is no longer on the grounds of the old imperial palace in Beijing. Rather, the museum s collections are stored in a replica of a traditional Chinese palatial structure in the Shilin district outskirts of Taipei, Taiwan. They were taken to Taiwan between 1948 and 1949, years of embittered battle over control of mainland China. When the Nationalist Party moved their political base across the straits, it also physically transferred over to Taiwan for safekeeping most of the artworks and what some, if not most, art historians laud as the best of the imperial collections,. The National Palace Museum in Taipei (Gugong bowuyuan) is still known today as the world s largest and preeminent collection of Chinese art. Few would argue with the notion that the best of Chinese porcelain is also in the Taipei location. In 2006 and 2007 the National Palace Museum opened its doors after a four-year renovation project in which the permanent galleries were architecturally reconstructed and the object-displays reconfigured. The overarching narrative of ceramic history in China, however, has remained for the large part unchanged since the museum s doors opened to the public in the 1960s. A walk through the six second floor gallery rooms (Rooms # ) that display ceramics highlights roughly the following timeline of ceramic development (Figure 1). Potters of the Six Dynasties ( AD) through the T’ang dynasty ( AD) used low temperature lead-based glazes, often in yellow, green, and white colors to decorate daily use objects such as funerary and ritual figurines 250
269 251 for elite families. The era is identified by the appearance of these tricolor (sancai ) glazes. Contrasted with the pottery of the Tang period, the Song period saw the rise of porcelain s classical era, where simplicity, elegance, and solemn forms of daily life dominated production types, including lotus leaf shaped warming bowls, monochrome glazes, and incised decoration. In south China, the Song and Yuan periods ( AD) were also the days during which Jingdezhen kilns began to produce porcelain bodies of ever increasing thinness and purity of whiteness, with a white-bluish tinted glaze of high consistency for the Mongol court. The Ming period ( AD) is known as the era of new ornamentation. It is represented by two large gallery rooms, boasting the emergence of the world famous underglaze blue porcelains that became fashionable in Europe the blue-and-white. Compelled by the competitive commercialized society of the late Ming, ornamentation and technique reached dazzling heights, embodied in multicolored designs (wucai), competing color glaze decoration (doucai), and of course, blueand-white (qinghua). As one enters gallery 209, the wares of Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong stand in technical virtuosity, adopting cloisonné techniques to apply painted enamels (falang) on a porcelain base. An exemplary piece would be a Qianlong vase that has a rotating interior, combining techniques of geometrical and ornamental precision to produce dual layered, openwork visual illusions. At this point, one s eyes literally glaze over at the sight of such myriad forms and styles of glaze decoration and porcelain objects. As one of the writers of the Chineselanguage audio guides for the collection, I am well aware of the larger narrative with which ceramic history and glaze development is associated that of Chinese culture and civilization. The narrative is certainly developmental but it is Chinese nonetheless. Eras
270 252 are encapsulated in a particular exemplary style, in order to leave a coherent impression on museum visitors, including: incipient Tang sancai, Song classicism, Ming ornamentation, and Qing technical perfection. This dissertation has aimed to present an alternate conception of ceramic history. While the goal of appreciating porcelain and its aesthetics is the same, the narrative it proposes is the opposite of that to which I was linked at the National Palace Museum. First, the project has sought to open up the history of porcelain by de-coupling china from China. It is of course impossible to erase the linkage, as much of the symbolic and iconic power of these objects come from a profound national cultural attachment. However, by investigating the ways in which scholars and researchers have appropriated, translated, and negotiated textual and visual sources about porcelain, this dissertation has shown that porcelain, as an art object, embodied a diverse and infinite set of meanings for different people. Second, this dissertation has sought to complement past scholarship on porcelain from China by studying a period that has often been ignored in art historical research. Often, as even the National Palace Museum s displays attest, the nineteenth century (including the late eighteenth century) has been glossed as a time of decline. At the National Palace Museum, only two smaller-sized display cases are devoted to the nineteenth century. Yet, these studies overlook the fact that it was precisely during this time when information about porcelain most actively appeared in print or visual form. Thus, by examining how knowledge was produced, I seek to show the specific circumstances that enable one to speak of decline or decay, and the histories that are neglected as a result of such judgments. The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
271 253 were periods when people were intentionally creating knowledge about porcelain for their own purposes. The records and pictures they produced were mutually constitutive and even took on lives of their own. Meanings often escaped original intentions. Most notably, porcelain stimulated cross-cultural discussion, enabling understanding as well as misunderstanding, as attitudes of superiority and self-condescension showed. The history of Jingdezhen porcelain is a story of abundance and multiplicity. Porcelain comes in a diversity of material forms and styles. It has traveled extensively, its material remnants and visual representations disseminated across multiple locations in the world. From the perspective of production and technique, it was mass produced, requiring hundreds of artisans and workers for each step in the process. Even within China, kiln centers were located all over the country (Map 1). Porcelain embodied different meanings. It is the quality of abundance that makes porcelain the most aesthetic art form of all. Porcelain s boundlessness inspires us to think beyond ourselves and points us to a wider world of humanity.
272 254 Figure 1. Floor plan of permanent ceramics galleries National Palace Museum (Taipei) Adapted from:
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