Page 114 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008

97

38
re-carved (Figure 2). The early twentieth-century commercial calligrapher and publishing

reformer, Tang Tuoࡥቲ (1871-1938), transcribed the text by hand for the lithographic

printing, along with gracing the book’s cover with his calligraphy. For whatever reasons

however, the Zhaoji bookstore version did not include the second preface written by Wang

in 1871, which suggests that both twentieth-century editions of the Jingdezhen Tao lu – the

Zhaoji 1925 version and the Meishu congshu version – were based on the 1815 printing,

even if the others were available. Finally, the Zhaoji version reflected the early twentieth-

century printing industry in its smaller size and lithographic printing technology. The

earlier half of the twentieth century did see a boom in printing presses and the publishing

industries in urban China. The smaller size made the book more portable, and the

lithographic technology insured a longer preservation of the Tao lu’s content, since

lithographic proofs were easier to reproduce than the easily damaged woodblock negatives.

Before the book made its way into the canon of art history during the early years of

the new republic, collectors in the nineteenth century were already using it as a guide to

understand and identify porcelain. Nothing in the prefaces of 1815 and 1871 or in the

original text of 1815 indicates that the book’s purpose was to provide a comprehensive

guide to porcelain authentication. Still, collectors of Jingdezhen porcelain by the mid-

Daoguang period (1821-1850) did employ this manual on Jingdezhen porcelain

production and overview of wares to inform collecting behaviour and identifying pieces.

A case a point is the observations recorded by one mid-nineteenth-century collector, who

also wrote his own ceramic guide, “Sometimes, I meet with friends who regularly carry

everywhere Jingdezhen Ci lu [or: Jingdezhen Tao lu] and use it as a guide to view (guan ᝈ)