Page 107 - 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

76
to achieve the consent of the emperor. However, there is no evidence in the archival

materials to show the location of samples in the Forbidden City. None of these

sketches of the eighteenth-century examples is preserved in the Forbidden City or in

77
Jingdezhen. Wang Guangyao believed that the Taiping Rebellion destroyed most
of the samples and the Imperial Kilns in Jingdezhen. Still extant samples are sketches

mainly of Tongzhi (r.1862-1874) and Guangxu (r.1875-1908) periods containing

78
more than one hundred sheets stored in special cases. For instance, designs for an
enamelled porcelain bowl, giving detailed instructions about the different dimensions

and the required quantity of each size on the right side of the painting, (Figure 2-13)

which possibly resulted in a piece of enamelled bowl, as Figure 2-14 shows.

76 Wang Guangyao, ‘Cong gugong cang qingdai zhici guanyao kan zhongguo gudai guanyang
zhid’ [The study of official Sample System from the collection of Palace Museum] Gugong
bowuyuan yuankan [Journal of Palace Museum], 6 (2006), pp.6-16.
77 The Taiping Rebellion was a widespread civil war in southern China from 1850 to 1864.
78 An exhibition entitled Guanyang yuci—gugong cang qingdai tongzhi guangxu yuzhi tuyang ji
ciqizhan [The Imperial Design of Porcelain during Tongzhi and Guanxu reigns] was held in
Palace Museum in Beijing in 2007, which is by far the only exhibition on the design samples.
For a general introduction, see the website of this exhibition:
http://www.dpm.org.cn/shtml/272/@/119468.html. A catalogue was published, Wang Guangyao
and Guo Xingkuan eds.,Yuci guanyang [Imperial Porcelain and Official Sample] (Beijing: The
Forbidden City Publication, 2007).
91