Page 101 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 2 The Production of Enamelled Porcelain and Knowledge Transfer

eighteenth centuries; however, can we conclude that Canton could also produce

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enamelled porcelain?

The main reason why such an assumption was made by current scholarship lies

in the fact that there was less investigation of the original archival resource. If we look

at the Imperial Workshops Archives more closely, we find that Canton had indeed sent

craftsmen to the Imperial Workshop. These craftsmen were exclusively described as

‘craftsmen who know how to manufacture enamel colours’. Thus the technical

support from Canton to the Imperial Workshop was different from Jingdezhen. It is

very apparent from the original records that Canton was supplying craftsmen in

making enamel colours, rather than applying enamels to other materials. For instance,

Pan Chun, one of the Canton craftsmen, made some metal materials, including a piece

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of red enamel.

However, it would be unreasonable to suppose that there was no connection

between enamelled copperware and enamelled porcelain production. Because the

nature of the Imperial Workshop was to create products for the emperor, they would

have recruited the best craftsmen of every skill, including painters, enamel makers

and porcelain makers to work together. Certainly, each of them would provide their

own expertise, but they might also have involved co-operation, which in a way they

could have learnt from each other. However, no records survived relating to this,

which caused difficulty in addressing this issue. It is impossible to illustrate how the

Imperial workshop organised those craftsmen, but this section of my research aims to

address the fact that the technical supports from Beijing to Jingdezhen and from

64 Shi, Riyue guanghua, pp.43-47.
65 Quoted from Shi,Riyue guanghua, p.36. The First Chinese History Archive, Qinggong
yugangao shangmao dangan quanji [The Complete Trading Records of Canton, Macao Merchants
survived in the Qing palaces], vol.1, (Beijing: Zhongguo shudian, 2002), p.102.
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