Page 181 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008

164

the painting of the imperial album(s) is not explicitly stated in any known textual record.

Most scholars impute the motivation behind the imperial commission to Qianlong’s

interest in traditional knowledge and technique leaving us to concur with Bray’s rather

binarized construction of these images as offering the emperor’s view of “timeless

representation of idealized order” favored for their moral force rather than technical

51
information. However, this line of interpretation does not explain the frenzy of court

patronage of these albums as illustrated sequences, or the fact that Qianlong’s album

surpassed the illustrations of the Tiangong kaiwu in terms of visualization of technical

52
details and specific steps. Such an analysis considers only the graphic content and not

the form. True, Qianlong was interested in fashioning his imperial identity as a moral

emperor in the traditional sense. The concept of such a moral leader who oversaw his

subjects in useful and productive activity appeared in the Guanzi၍ɿ, a compilation of

philosophical treatises compiled in the Han dynasty circa 20 BC. In the Records of the

Grand Historian (Shiji ̦া: ʞ܎͉ߏ) there is an account of the mythical Emperor

Shun໬ഭ(circa 2300-2200 BC) making tao (ceramics) at a river bank (hebing ئᏵ), and,

53
as a result of his morality, created flawless ceramics(ئᏵኜޫʔ߮⦦). Thereafter, the

idea that flawless ceramics were made by a moral emperor appeared in the Tao ji, the

thirteenth century text on ceramic production, a text amply referenced by the Qing

dynasty porcelain specialists Tang Ying and Jingdezhen Tao lu’s authors Zheng Tinggui

and Lan Pu. Qianlong himself used this literary allusion many times in his various poems

exalting the porcelains of his own collection, such as the four poems Gutao guange ̚ௗ

ᜦဂ, Yonggu taoguan൘̚ௗᜦ, Yonggu qiping൘ௗኜଧ, Yong taoqi shouhuan hu൘ௗ