Page 95 - 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

to the local manufacture. Ellen Huang has traced these images and texts in a wider

context. She has discussed the production and dissemination of the porcelain

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manufacturing visual motif throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By

tracing the spread of porcelain manufacturing processes in prints and paintings, she

argues that the flow of images and manufacturing process, linked export markets,

Jingdezhen residents, court painters and Qing emperors. Moreover, the Qing court

were also concerned about issues of form, design and processing. Sketches and three

dimensional wooden samples and models conveyed the visual image of the product

were sent to the manufacture in order to manage keeping accounts of manufacturing

process.

Through the exchange of artisans with different manufactures, the court managed

to control the imperial production. Meanwhile, the new techniques and knowledge

that was used in the imperial workshops have been disseminated by the artisans as

well as those texts and images. The following sections will examine the interactions

among different sites of production. By doing so, we can gain a better and more

detailed understanding of how enamel and enamelling as technique travelled. And

more importantly, by analysing the interactions between the court, Jingdezhen and

Canton, we can also gain a better understanding of how new techniques were

perceived and adapted.

48 Ellen Huang, ‘China’s China: Jingdezhen Porcelain and the Production of Art in the Nineteenth
Century’, (Ph.D Thesis, University of California, 2008), pp.80-141.
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