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notes that in addition to the porcelain pieces themselves, “illustrations provided a source

of information from which westerners could learn about the mass production of porcelain

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from China.” First, I begin with an overview of the various visual mediums that have
included ceramics as part of their pictorial content. Second, the chapter gives an account

of the origination of the pictorial motif Taoye tu ௗзྡ. To this end, I explain the

historical impetus and context that spurred the production of the first instance of Taoye tu

in visual form: a couple or perhaps even a triumvirate of Qing court imperial painting

albums that depicted porcelain manufacturing through visual illustrations at the height of

the high-Qing period, the mid-eighteenth century. I then discuss the production and

dissemination of the porcelain manufacturing visual motif throughout the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries. By focusing on the spread of porcelain manufacturing in prints,

paintings, and porcelain of the Qing period, I hope to show how the theme underwent

parallel developments at various levels of production and social consumption. In doing

so, the artistic, cultural, and political factors which sustained this theme may be better

understood across the boundaries of political units, country, period, or medium.

This chapter’s narrative demonstrates two shifts in the global circulation of

Jingdezhen porcelain. The first shift consists of a move from late Ming pedagogical

images of ceramics technology to eighteenth and nineteenth century Qing-era images of

production processes. Crucially, images in circulation during the Qing dynasty were

sequentially viewed and effectively created an aesthetic illusion of reproducing the flow

of time. The second shift, marked by the existence and proliferation of these visual

sources, is from the exchange of porcelain objects to the exchange of the images

themselves. Henceforth, there were two networks of porcelain “images” current in