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The twenty illustrations were first painted and produced as a set of paintings, and

expanded upon through the textual explanations by Tang Ying. In 1743, following an

order of the Qianlong emperor, Tang Ying ࡥߵ (1682-1756), imperial deputy and

supervisor of Jingdezhen kilns from 1728 to 1756, traveled to Beijing and annotated a set

of twenty paintings illustrating the manufacture of porcelain. The paintings had first been

commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor and painted by Sun Hu࢑ᵷ (active ca 1728-

1746), Zhou Kunմ㆕(active ca 1737-1748), and Ding Guanpeng ɕᝈᘄ (active ca

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1726-1768), three painters of the Qing court painting academy. The memorial by Tang
Ying indicates that he received the set of twenty illustrations from the inner court

administrative unit, Yangxindian zaobanchu (The Imperial Household Workshops), on

July 13, 1743. The emperor's edict, conveyed two weeks earlier, instructed that Tang

Ying write annotations regarding the technique and affairs of pottery production (jiye Ҧ

ุ). The emperor even stipulated that the words be written in an elegant manner and in

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parallel structure form, permitting a leeway of ten or so words. The emperor

furthermore specified that Tang Ying should chronicle even the place names in the

Jingdezhen environs where raw materials such as porcelain clay (gaoling tu), stone

(petuntse or baidunzi) and water could be found. Finally, the edict dictated that Tang

Ying should order the paintings and explanations in a correct sequence before presenting

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the paintings to Qianlong Emperor. The edict refers to this album with the terms Taoye
tu ௗзྡ, from which the conventional genre’s name is derived. The ye з in the

album’s name connotes a meaning of cultivation, both in character and care, effectively