Page 168 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008
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sometimes revealing an imperfection, such as the shrunken and indented spot on the glaze
of a Ming-dynasty bowl reproducing the style of a thirteenth-century Ge ࡩware covered
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bowl. Individuality of the porcelain piece and by association – as will be later
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explained – of the personality of the emperor himself-- was the principal concern.
Qianlong’s ceramic catalogues and ceramic poems differed from the two extant
painting scrolls depicting porcelains in the collection of the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723-
1735): Scroll of Antiquities, dated 1728, now in the Percival David Foundation, and
another scroll, perhaps the second of a paired set, under the same name, dated 1729, in
London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. While the two painting scrolls were also a
record of imperial collections, they did not emphasize the views of the collector towards
the treasured objects. The scrolls did not include dating, size, and kiln names alongside
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the pictorial representations. Thus, the illustrated ceramic catalogues of the Qianlong
period - along with the other catalogues of various types of collected objects - were as
much about capturing an understanding of a collector’s historical knowledge as they were
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about a simple inventory and documentation of extant objects. Developing knowledge
about ceramic history was a part of Qianlong’s aesthetic and appreciation. In a poem
written in 1789 about a Song Dynasty Guan ֜ ware bowl, Qianlong surmised that since
the Kaogong ji (Record on Investigating Crafts) contained a statement of exhortation,
“glazes with impurities were not befit for the marketplace” (guaken xuebao bu ru shi ⴒ
ኤᑡᅳʔɝ̹), after which Qianlong emperor then concluded that glazed porcelains
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already existed during the Three Dynasties period. Combining the inferences he drew
from objects in tandem with textual research into literature from the third century BC
