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Meishu congshu underwent revision and expansion, producing four separate editions. By

the 1940s, the compendium included over 120 sections, consisting of old texts on

calligraphy, painting, sculpture, crafts, and architecture. The two major treatises in Chinese

on ceramics were both printed in the series’ first edition, including Jingdezhen Tao lu and

another late-Qianlong period monograph, Tao Shuo. Printed with type-set technology - on

thin paper with each page folded and thread-bound in the format of woodblock printed

books - in March of 1914, the Jingdezhen Tao lu version in Meishu congshu did not include

any illustrations nor did it include the 1870 Tongzhi edition preface. None of the prefaces in

the compendium gives any information as to how Deng Shi first came across the Jingdezhen

Tao lu. Nor do they contain any statements that divulged the reasons behind the editors’

choice to use a particular edition, or why they decided to exclude visual images. The

inclusion of Tao lu in the first edition did effectively locate porcelain as part of the overall

concept of fine arts. Fine arts, referred to in Chinese as meishu, was itself a changing

category during the early twentieth century, and the compendium played a major role in

advancing the view of fine arts as inclusive of ceramics, along with sculpture, architecture,

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painting, and jade, to name only a few of the objects covered in the compendium.
The lack of illustrations in the Meishu congshu version of Tao lu sheds light on how

the compilers manipulated the presentation of texts and visual images in order to reinforce

their didactic endeavors. Without the visual illustrations, the version published in the

Meishu congshu was less a visual artifact or collector catalogue. One could also say that the

lack of its images deprived the book of the part that gave it the most technical feel: the

technical illustrations. Rather, the textual layout strengthened the interpretation of the book

as a generic part of a larger body of knowledge: the Chinese art historical canon. Since the