Page 17 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008

nineteenth century witnessed a surge in the production of texts and visual images

detailing the aesthetics, technology, and manufacturing of Jingdezhen porcelain. This

study focuses on the systemic production of knowledge about a material object -

Jingdezhen chinaware - by tracing the global trajectories of key documents and visual

images on porcelain that circulated within and across boundaries of such places as China,

France, and Japan. I will highlight the circulation of such texts and visual images at

crucial historical junctures of the nineteenth century, concentrating on periods of

industrialization, inter-state conflict, and changing trade patterns. Thus this project will

attempt to articulate the global and political processes that negotiate and re-position an

object’s materiality—specifically the materiality of Jingdezhen porcelain—in relation to

its visual and textual aspects. By historicizing the discourse and practices of a specific

object of trade and art, especially one that was and remains closely associated with a

particular place and culture, I examine how concepts of self and other find material

embodiment through representative objects of culture and exchange.

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