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corresponding years corresponding to the 4th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12, 13, 15th, 16th,

40th, 41st, 47th years of his reign) - an astonishing total of thirteen times and the most of

any Qing emperor to date - ordered by imperial decree the appraisement, ordering, and

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ranking of ceramic objects. Moreover, the Qianlong emperor also went to great lengths

to design and commission the construction of sandalwood frames, shelves, and wooden

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storage boxes. All such art work accessories and material details were carefully

designed and made of high-grade wood, for the purpose of storage, display, and

protection of these objects. These preservations efforts are similar to the mindset of the

modern museum’s curatorial practices and reflect Qianlong’s ardent desire to identify and

authenticate artworks in his collection.

Mounted and decorated in the same fashion, they were part of a larger project to

record antiquities kept in treasure boxes or curiosity cabinets in the palaces during the

1780s and 1790s. Four albums recording bronze objects in the Qianlong collection dating

to the same years and following the same graphic-text layout also exist in the National

Palace Museum holdings. Each of the four thread-bound ceramic albums documents ten

pieces of ceramics in the same layout. For each item, a painting detailing its stylistic

features appears on one leaf, which is then followed by a corresponding textual passage

describing the object’s measurements and geographical kiln ware characteristics written

on the opposite leaf (Figure 3). Painted in ink and color on paper, these pictures were

rendered in a highly realistic style, showing the pieces in accurate perspectives and

portraying their distinctive features, including colors, crackles, and painted decorations.

Many of these items are extant today in the Qing collections disseminated worldwide,

and after careful research, curators have matched paintings with specific objects thanks to