Page 57 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

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concentrated mostly on the ceramics of the Ming and earlier dynasties. Zhu Yan,

the author, travelled and observed the production at Jingdezhen, and thus his

monograph on porcelain was based on first-hand observations.

Records of Jingdezhen Ceramics was first published in 1815, originally written

by Lan Pu 蓝浦 and translated into French and English in the mid-nineteenth century

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and twentieth centuries respectively. This thesis will consult both the original texts
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and the translation. Western literature, such as the monographs written by Bushell,

91
is also useful for this research.
The available historical records on porcelain manufacturing in Canton are

relatively scarce, and more scattered than those of Jingdezhen. Accordingly, this

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research will draw on other historical documentation such as travel diaries and

Chinese export paintings. I will introduce visual sources in the following section.

Most of the primary sources used in this research are available in the digital

database from School of Oriental and African Studies’ library, SOAS, University of

London. By consultation of textual records of Jingdezhen porcelain production, I am

able to demonstrate the processes of enamelled porcelain production, which provide

this thesis background information of eighteenth century Jingdezhen.

88 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 (London, 1910).
89 The translation of French was produced by Julien Stanislas, Histoire et Fabrication de la
Porcelaine Chinoise (Paris, 1856). A full English translation was published by Geoffrey Sayer,
Ching-te-chen taolu or The potteries of China (London, 1951). It has recently been the subject of
a chapter of a Ph.D. thesis by Ellen Huang, ‘China’s China: Jingdezhen Porcelain and the
Production of Art in the Nineteenth Century’, (University of California, 2008).
90 For the full text in Chinese records, see Lan Pu, Jingdezhen taolu [Records of Jingdezhen
Ceramics] (Jinan, 2004).
91 Stephen, W. Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art (New York, 1899).
92 There are diaries both written by Chinese and traders. See Zeng Yandong（1750-1830,
Xiaodoupeng [Little Bean Shed], (Jinan, 2004). Alfred Spencer, Memoirs of William Hickey
(London, 1925).
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