Page 131 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008
P. 131
114
Besides being sent to Jingdezhen in 1728 to reside and help oversee kiln production
on a day-to-day basis, Tang Ying himself was a prolific writer who recorded the
management of kilns and production processes at Jingdezhen. In this sense, the Qianlong
period (1735-1795) witnessed another watershed moment in Jingdezhen history. In addition
to hosting the presence of a porcelain commissioner sent from the court to manage porcelain
affairs, Jingdezhen became the inspiration for a word-image paired painting album through
an imperial order for textual annotations to match a painting set depicting porcelain
production. The man ordered by the emperor to annotate these paintings was Tang Ying. Of
all his writings, the imperially commissioned annotations became his most significant. It
was referred to as the Taoye tushuoௗзྡႭ (Explanations of Illustrations on Ceramic
Production), which were not only reprinted in the 1880 edition of Jiangxi tongzhi (General
Gazetteer of Jiangxi Province) under the name of Taoye tu bianci, but also word-for-word
in Zhu Yan’s Tao Shuo ௗႭ (On Ceramics).
Tang Ying's Taoye tushuo was not only reproduced in the Jiangxi provincial
gazetteer, but also in Wenfang sikao (1778), the Fuliang xianzhi (Fuliang County Gazetteer)
(1783), and as mentioned above, in Tao Shuo (1774). Because it was included in the Tao
Shuo, it was also translated into English and published as a separate chapter in Stephen
Bushell’s monumental Oriental Ceramic Art (1896) and Description of Chinese Pottery and
Porcelain (1910). The textual explanations were written in 1743, the eighth year of
Qianlong at the behest of the emperor himself. Given its widespread reproduction in the
latter half of the eighteenth century after the death of Tang Ying in 1756 and the end of his
role at Jingdezhen, Tang Ying’s Taoye tushuo can be said to have provided the basis on
