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never cite the Jingdezhen Tao lu. In fact, the only footnotes that are cited are Western
language studies such as the works by Sevres Director Brongniart and French chemist
Georges Vogt. Again, not only explicit condescending statements but the way in which
scholarly writing presented it sources structured who were allowed to speak and on whose
behalf.
Even if English writers did not accredit the Tao lu, the book’s influence comes to
light by tracing its circuitous trajectory of translation and reception. In the 1920’s, various
Shanghai-based artists and art educators, such as Dai Yue ᏖᏋ and other art research
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institute scholars referred extensively to Bushell’s work. Thus, through the development
of the modern discipline of Chinese art history, major portions of Tao lu from Bushell’s
English translated version were re-interpreted and even retranslated back into Chinese.
Besides the aforementioned Zhaoji shuzhuang republication of Jingdezhen Tao lu, Dai Yue
translated Bushell’s handbook, Chinese Art, into Chinese in the 1920’s, the first edition of
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which was published by the Commercial Press in 1928. Cai Yuanpei, father of republican
China’s art education movement and intellectual advocate of reforming the nation through
art historical scholarship, annotated Dai Yue’s Zhongguo meishu (1928). The author of Tao
Ya (Ceramics Elegances), which was often valued as a successor to Tao lu in terms of
Chinese-language literature on Jingdezhen porcelain, took as his scholarly point of
departure his disagreements with Tao lu’s narrative of porcelain history and Bushell’s
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work. Tao Ya is discussed at length in the dissertation’s fourth chapter.
The Western language translation of Tao lu that was the focus of Laffan’s criticism
was the mid-nineteenth century version rendered by the aforementioned sinologist Stanislas
Julien. His text was Bushell’s predecessor not only temporally but also substantively.
