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the painters’ meticulous depictions. According to the senior curator of antiquities and
porcelain at the National Palace Museum of Taipei, Yu Peichin, the ten ceramic pieces in
each album originally corresponded to items kept in a single curio box, known as
“duobao ge” (Figure 4). In other words, each album was an illustrated record of what
were in a certain box or a certain container within a single box. Evidence also indicates
that the album was originally kept along with the objects in the box.
In addition to describing the specific piece, the texts that accompanied the
pictures provided comments regarding the shape, dimensions, color, and glaze of the
ware. Mostly, the descriptive passages were taken from ceramics treatises from the late
Ming and early Qing. Like Qianlong’s poems that were inscribed onto some pieces of
porcelain, the ceramic catalogues quoted instructional phrases that revealed porcelain
appreciation principles from the consumer culture of the fourteenth through sixteenth
centuries, such as “those[porcelains] with flowers as decoration are better than
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monochrome [porcelains].” The ceramic catalogues made reference to the late Ming
and early Qing texts on things including the Tao Shuo of 1774, Gegu yaolun (1387), and
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Gao Lian’s Zunsheng bajian (Eight Discourses on Elegant Living). In spite of
Qianlong’s intense textual research to promote knowledge and an accurate understanding
of the pieces as art objects from the past, no comprehensive developmental narrative of
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the history of Chinese ceramics appear in the ceramic catalogues. Items of different
types, from different kilns, and ranging in dates from the Song to the Ming were
randomly grouped together. They shared one common feature: they were the choicest
pieces in Emperor Qianlong’s collection, each of them being ranked jia Գ (highest
quality). In addition, the items were shown standing in their most recognizable position,
