Page 92 - 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

Moreover, in terms of enamelled porcelain, craftsmen played an important role in

technical knowledge transfer. The knowledge carried by those skilled craftsmen is

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defined as ‘tacit’ knowledge. From Mokyr’s point of view, the sophisticated

technical language and visual images improved the ‘tacit’ knowledge articulation and

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transfer. However, eighteenth-century China, shows a different picture. In terms of
techniques on enamelled porcelain, three main sites (Beijing, Jingdezhen and

Guangdong) were involved and skilled craftsmen and artisans were exchanged among

these sites. The interaction and exchange among craftsmen and artisans were crucial

to knowledge transfer of how to produce enamelled porcelain. In his research on early

modern Europe, S.R. Epstein argues that craftsmen were the source of technological

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diffusion and innovation. He shows the experiential and collective knowledge was
moved and adapted by skilled technicians and eventually transferred the techniques

from one location to another. Maxine Berg also believes that the mobility of artisans

“contributed to webs of knowledge the networks by which new processes passed from

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one place to another.” This was also the case for enamelled porcelain. The complex

production process involved not only individual artisans but a group of craftsmen. The

technical knowledge of enamelled porcelain was a set of complexes which required

skilled artisans to deploy and adapt. Therefore, the role of skilled craftsmen became

even more important to the manufacture.

42 Tacit knowledge is defined as the kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another
person by means of writing it down. can be defined as skills, ideas and experiences that people
have in their minds. See Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press,1966).
43 Joel Mokyr, ‘The Intellectual Origins of Modern Economic Growth’, The Journal of Economic
History, Vol. 65, No. 2 (June 2005), p.298.
44 Stephan R. Epstein, ‘Transferring Technical Knowledge and Innovating in Europe c.1200-c.1800’
in Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten Van Zanden (eds.), Technology, Skills and the Pre-Modern Economy
in the East and the West (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp.25-69.
45 Maxine Berg, ‘The Genesis of ‘Useful Knowledge’’, History of Science, vol.45, 2(2007), p.129.
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