Page 109 - 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

correct and it is worth noting that only towards the end of Ming period (second of the

sixteenthcentury) did Jingdezhen’s craftsmen start to have the freedom to choose their

employers. During most of the Ming period, the court controlled labour in Jingdezhen;

thus craftsmen who worked for the Imperial Kiln were not allowed to work for private

kilns. In this regard, because the Imperial Kiln and the private kiln shared craftsmen,

the circulation of the style or the design could not be controlled. Therefore, it is

arguable that the design sketch itself may not have been circulated outside the Imperial

Kiln, but the information, such as the patterns and colours could have been transmitted

and circulated among craftsmen. This is important for the production of enamelled

porcelain, because the design could have been circulated among the Imperial Kilns

and the private kilns.

79
During the Yongzheng period, Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766) edited his

first Chinese-language book on the mechanics of perspectives entitled Visual

Learning (Shixue, 视学). The book was published in cooperation with Nian Xiyao

(1671-1738), a painter, mathematician and a government official. What is more

important was that Nian Xiyao had also supervised the Imperial Kiln at Jingdezhen.

The published Shixue adapted section of the first volume of a contemporary study of

perspective entitled Perspective pictorum et architectorum by Andrea Pozzo (1742-

80
1709), published in 1693. Castiglione and Nian’s book was first published in
1729, 81 and a second, enlarged edition appeared in 1735. The second edition

79 He was an Italian Jesuit lay brother who served as a missionary in China, where he became a
painter at the imperial court of the Yongzheng and Qianlong Emperors.
80 Pozzo was a celebrated Italian Jesuit painter, architect, and above all, champion of the theory
of perspective in the baroque age.
81 In his preface to the 1729 edition, Nian writes that he was able to use Western techniques for
Chinese subjects after receiving advice from Castiglione. This preface was reproduced in the 1735
edition, a copy of which resides in the collection of Bodleian Library, Oxford University.
93