Page 169 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008

152

allowed Qianlong to employ methods of archaeology and textual research to made

conclusions about porcelain’s origins and dating. This intellectual excursion certifies

Qianlong’s status as the first historian of porcelain. Moreover, coupled with numerous

references to Ming Dynasty literati texts on things and handbooks to “elegant living,” the

peculiar focus on the objects’ uniqueness such as material flaws enabled the catalogues to

both resonate back with mainstream literati culture previously in vogue as well as

distinguish themselves as remnants of a collection of objects belonging to a new, stylized

27
era that pointed completely to an authoritative collector – the emperor Qianlong.

In fact, porcelain objects were not the only objects to capture the attention of the

rigorous cataloguing, ordering, ranking efforts of Qianlong's court. In 1752 and 1753 (the

17th and 18th years of the Qianlong reign period), he ordered the re-publication of the Bogu

tu and the Kaogu tu catalogues that featured bronze antiques, first printed in the Song

Dynasty. Again, each catalogue's visual illustration portrayed a single bronze object, and the

pictured object was accompanied by a corresponding page on which textual explanations

about the bronze's size, provenance, and decorative details were written. Also included in the

28
cataloguing and visual repertoire were inkstone catalogues (Figure 5). Like the ceramic
catalogues, as Yu Peichin's examination of ceramic objects along with these object

catalogues reveal, the illustrated catalogues were records and inventories of actual duobao

ges' contents that were part of the Qing emperors' own collections.

The tension between adopting the cultural practices of the Ming literati and

asserting a Qing presence embodied in the ruler also framed the broader phenomenon of

these curio boxes. As present-day museum holdings demonstrate, and archival records

for the Imperial Household show, the Qianlong emperor, the princes, and their

households commissioned and collected lacquered boxes, "cabinets of many treasures"