Page 27 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

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exhibition was launched for the 83 anniversary of the National Palace Museum,
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and proved to be so successful that the catalogue was reprinted four times.

In 2012, another exhibition, entitled A special exhibition of porcelain with painted

enamel in Yongzheng period (r.1723-1735) of the Qing dynasty was held between

December 2012 and October 2013. This exhibition presented enamelled porcelain

only made during the Yongzheng period and the curator Cai Hebi illustrated this

enamelled porcelain from the style of decorative patterns, the emperor’s taste as well

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as the rareness of such objects.

These exhibitions shed light on the study of enamelled porcelain of the Qing

dynasty, especially in the reign of the three emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng and

Qianlong of the eighteenth century. However, none of these exhibitions and their

catalogues made mention of the issue of how enamelled porcelain circulated beyond

the court. Holding the largest collection of Chinese art, the National Palace Museum,

its exhibitions and researchers all played a fundamental role in the study of Chinese

art. The exclusive emphasis on the imperial collection, and the neglect of all other

consumers of enamelled porcelain therefore resulted in a situation in which the world

of connoisseurship and the public’s perception on enamelled porcelain are severely

13 The holdings of the National Palace Museum are composed primarily of the imperial collection
of the Qing dynasty. Most of the collection was housed within the imperial city. In 1948, the
Chinese Nationalist Party shipped more than 4,000 objects in three groups from Nanjing to Taiwan.
In 1965, the collection was finally opened to the public as the National Palace Museum. Now it
has nearly 700,000 pieces. For a brief history of its collection, see, Chang Linsheng, ‘The National
Palace Museum: A History of the collection’ in Wen Fong, James C. Y. Watt, Possessing the Past:
Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei (Taipei & New York: National Palace
Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996), pp.3-27.
14 The National Palace Museum. ‘Stunning Decorative Porcelain from the Chi’en lung Reign’,
http://www.npm.gov.tw/exh97/porcelains/introduction.html, accessed on 25 April, 2013. For the
catalogue, see Liao Baoxiu, Huali yangcai: Qianlong yancai tezhan [Illustrated Catalogue of
Stunning Decorative Porcelains from the Ch'ien-lung reign] (Taipei: The National Palace Museum,
2008).
15 Yu Peiji, Jincheng xuying; For the website of this exhibition, see
http://www.npm.gov.tw/exh101/yongzheng/, accessed on 25 April 2013.
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