Page 62 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

societies such as Jiangnan and Beijing. 106 Genre paintings depict aspects of everyday

life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. The illustrations of

porcelain production and trade served a similar role to demonstrate the enamelled

porcelain trade. As viewers of these objects in the museum today, we should bear in

mind that such objects were never displayed or experienced in isolation, but were

always part of a larger context. These paintings, along with the ever-present foreign

traders and enamellers, provide clues as to the trading activities and the appearance of

enamel workshops. These paintings reveal the actual trading activities, the shop

scenes and the production of enamelled porcelain.

Besides these written and visual resources, surviving enamelled porcelain objects

will also be included in the discussion. These are the collections of the British

Museum, the National Palace Museum in Taipei, the Palace Museum in Beijing,

Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, the

Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, will also be consulted.

I will also draw on my previous research. My MA dissertation entitled

‘Rethinking 'Imperial Taste': the Yongzheng Emperor and His Role in Court

Enamelled Porcelain Production’ in History of Art at SOAS mainly focused on the

imperial production of enamelled porcelain between 1723 and 1735. This allowed me

to become familiar with most of the primary resources mentioned above. It also

established a proper contextual framework for the manufacture of Qing imperial

enamelled porcelain that can be used as reference material for this research.

106 For example, see Ginger Cheng-chi Hsu, ‘Merchant Patronage of the Eighteenth century
Yangzhou Painting’, in Chu-tsing Li (ed.), Artists and Patrons: Some Social and Economic
Aspects of Chinese Paintings (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1989), pp.215-21; A brush of
pearls: painting for sale in the eighteenth century Yangzhou (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2001).
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