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dates range from Song (960-1279) porcelains to Ming (1368-1644) period blue-and-white
wares and Qing emperor Yongzheng-period famille rose-enameled porcelain jars.
II. Qianlong Period Porcelain Catalogues
Insofar as the advent of porcelain illustrations is concerned, the Qing Dynasty,
and specifically, the mid-eighteenth century and years of the Qianlong emperor’s reign,
was the crucial period. There are some recently discovered imperial catalogues of
ceramics produced for Qianlong, currently held in the Qing archives at the National
Palace Museum in Taipei. Now catalogued under the general term, “ceramic catalogues”
(ௗନྡ册taoci tu ce), they reveal the collecting practices and porcelain collections of
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the eighteenth century Qing court.
Collecting was a large part of the Qing emperor’s leisure and political activity.
The Qianlong emperor was an avid collector who was also devoted to art criticism and
catalogue compilation. A number of elaborate catalogues of ceramics in the Qianlong
imperial collection, carefully researched and many with illustrations, are extant. Four of
them are part of the collection of the National Palace Museum (Gugong bowuyuan) in
Taipei. They are called: Jingtao yungu ၚௗㅯ̚, Fangong zhangse ⮸̌࿎Ѝ , Yanzhi
liuguang ẂṺݴΈ , and Taoci puce ௗନᗅ̅. All four albums bear the imperial seal
and provide a glimpse into the Qianlong emperor’s impulse to rank, inventory, and
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catalogue objects in a systematic, rational fashion. In the Imperial Household (Neiwufu)
production account archives, records show that the Qianlong emperor in 1739, 1741,
1743, 1744, 1745, 1746, 1747, 1748, 1750, 1751, 1752, 1775, 1776, 1783 (or the
