Page 96 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

“True Beauty of Form and Chaste Embellishment” 81
in the fabric of actual Chinese buildings, like the Summer Palace or the Porcelain
Pagoda, would have encouraged such precise identification, unlike other forms
such as “vases” that were usually not so physically associated with a specific structure
like a building or a tomb. We see this geographical classification also of course in
the public displays for the industrial exhibitions at Crystal Palace, which were essen -
tially ethnographic. But such classifications for Chinese art did not really take off
in British museums until much later in the nineteenth century. At the V&A, for
example, Chinese objects were displayed collectively with other Asian material in the
East Cloister until the early twentieth century, when Bushell’s specialist catalogue of
Chinese art was also published (1904).
In the ceramics field, however, specialization and subdivision in categories took
place much earlier, as exemplified by Franks’s catalogue of Oriental Ceramics
mentioned earlier. In the second edition of this catalogue of 1878, not only do we
find examples of the new styles of Chinese vessel ceramics that became more popular
after the looting of the Summer Palace, but we also find a selection of architectural
fragments from China included in the Pottery section, which he defined as
“Class VI.” 43 The text for this section is interesting because it gives what can be seen
as a state of the field comment about architectural fragments that is very similar in
some respects to the language used for European architectural fragments. Franks says,
with reference to the nine fragments from China that are catalogued:

The Chinese employ glazed pottery very extensively as architectural ornaments.
The famous porcelain tower near Nankin, now destroyed, was formed chiefly of
this material, the white portions alone being in porcelain. It has also been used
in the decorations of the imperial residences, from one of which, the well-known
Summer Palace, were obtained the two heads of statues and two animals described
below. 44

The fragments in Franks’ catalogue thus include tiles and pieces of decorative statues,
roof ornaments and bricks. The names given to these pieces often borrow from the
nomenclature of European architecture, as would be expected, and these are combined
with historical and geographical information specific to China. For example, this
description of one of the fragments included in the catalogue:

ANTEFIXAL ORNAMENT, from a roof, in the form of a circular medallion.
Chinese pottery, yellow glazed; on it, in low relief, a five-clawed dragon. From
the tombs of the first and second emperors of the Ming dynasty to the East of
Nankin, built about 1400, and destroyed by the Taipings in 1853. 45

The location of origin of all of the fragments discussed by Franks is considered to
be an important part of the objects’ history and as we have seen this was standard
practice for similar material throughout the nineteenth century, and into today in
fact. Architectural fragments, unlike most vessels, are not independent of their physical
origins however. They are tied to their location and thus represent this location (and
China) metonymically. That the collecting of such fragments should have occurred
somewhat seamlessly is likely related to the fact that in Britain there was a well-
established history of collecting architectural fragments, primarily as souvenirs of the