Page 134 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008

117

paintings made for the emperor’s visual perusal and his understanding of an ordered

process.

With regard to visual images of porcelain production, Tang Ying’s explanations

formed a defining moment in the formation of knowledge about porcelain. As the twenty

paintings constituting the set called Taoye tu were products of the direct imperial request,

the paintings themselves remained in storage in the Imperial Household and therefore

94
hidden from the view of people outside the court. However, Tang Ying’s textual
explanations, Taoye tushuo, circulated beyond the confines of the inner court after being

compiled and printed in the Jiangxi tongzhi (Provincial Gazetteer of Jiangxi). The

Jiangxi tongzhi was catalogued in the history section in the Siku quanshu (1773-1783)

95
under the title Taoye tu bianci. In 1774, the explanations found their way into the

writings of Zhu Yan’s monograph on ceramics history, Tao Shuo. Apparently, Tang

Ying’s annotations not only circulated among provincial and court-level officials but also

fell into the hands of the English doctor Stephen Bushell, who translated Zhu Yan’s Tao

Shuo. Completed in 1891 but published in 1910 in London, Bushell’s translation, entitled

Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, rendered Tang Ying’s explanations into English for an

audience of museum specialists, private collectors, and twentieth-century scholars of

Chinese art.

Further demonstrating the far-ranging influence of the Tang Ying text is the fact

that Zheng Tinggui relied on Tang Ying’s explanations to write the first chapter of

Jingdezhen Tao lu. Tao lu’s first chapter includes fourteen annotated woodblock prints

depicting porcelain’s manufacturing process. Zheng Tinggui based his comments for the

96
woodblock prints on Tang Ying’s explanations, as Zheng himself pointed out. Because