Page 16 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

China’s china: Jingdezhen Porcelain and the Production of Art in the Nineteenth Century

by

Ellen Huang

Doctor of Philosophy in History

University of California, San Diego, 2008

Professor Joseph W. Esherick, Co-Chair
Professor Paul G. Pickowicz, Co-Chair

My dissertation examines the interaction between global political-economic

transformations and changing concepts of Chinese art in the nineteenth century. Its focus

is on the porcelain from the renowned "porcelain city," Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province of

southeast China. Jingdezhen has been the center of world porcelain production since the

thirteenth century. Although Jingdezhen’s porcelain industries experienced tremendous

changes and upheaval during the nineteenth century– including expanding overseas trade,

decimation by the Taiping rebels in 1853, reinstatement of imperial patronage by the

Qing Court during the Tongzhi Restoration – scholars of science, art, and Jingdezhen

history alike rarely investigate this period. Contrary to scholarly consensus, the

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