Page 76 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

The Yuanmingyuan and Design Reform in Britain 61
What came from Loch is not certain. Christie’s did not specify his pieces and the
Fonthill archive has no sale record. 80 The archive does hold Durlacher receipts for
Chinese cloisonné, “surface enamel” vessels, yellow-glazed porcelains, jades, and silks.
One 1863 receipt for “Goods purchased at Christie’s,” lists “two basins yellow ground
green dragons” and silks. 81 Three days earlier, Christie’s featured “Silks from the
Emperor’s Palace at Pekin”(three with yellow grounds), and Durlacher bought the
group. 82 So, Durlacher was selling Morrison imperial pieces and Jones probably saw
Yuanmingyuan artifacts apart from the Loch collection at Fonthill.
As for Jones’ creative agenda, he did not present a comprehensive view of Chinese
ornament, but reproduced only patterns conforming to his design propositions, of
which he reprinted 10–13. The first three stipulated the correct disposition of linear

Figure 4.4 Plate 11 from The collection of Chinese enamelled porcelain, cloisonné and
Canton enamels and a jade brush pot formed by the late Alfred Morrison and
now sold by order of the Rt. Hon. the Lord Margadale of Islay, T.D. . . .
October 18, 1971. London: Christie, Manson & Woods. Lot 77 was reproduced
by Owen Jones in Examples of Chinese Ornament, Plate 54. © 1971 Christie’s
Images Limited.