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that drew the Qing emperors to favor such an art form. If we are to accept Crossley’s

understanding of imperial power as dependent on a historicizing impulse premised on a

concept of time, then, in the grand scheme to construct an all-knowing, omniscient, and

historicizing emperor, sequential images were much more appropriate than those of the

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Tiangong kaiwu.

IV. Rhapsody on a Theme of Taoye tu: Creating A Global Visual Culture

Images of porcelain production circulated most widely after the publication of

Jingdezhen Tao lu within the boundaries of Qing territory and beyond through reprints

and translations after the mid-nineteenth century. Still, visual depictions of the

manufacturing process were already major exports items starting the mid-eighteenth

century; for example, watercolor export painting sets were produced in Canton for

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consumers in the United States, France, and Britain. Figure 8 depicts one ink-on-paper

set that is now a part of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The entire set depicts the

process on seventeen connected ink drawings, and dates to between 1840 and 1860. The

two leaves shown portray scenes of collecting the clay material and pounding the clay in

preparation for making the porcelain body material. Close inspection of the frayed edges

of the background paper indicate that the set was taped and displayed as wallpaper in the

interior of English homes. Export watercolors have been the object of study for art

historians and curators writing in the English language. Both Carl Crossman and Craig

Clunas have argued that the export paintings, characterized by idealized idyllic settings in

which diligent workers crafted objects of trade such as porcelain or tea en masse, fulfilled

wishful fantasies for a peaceful industrial production process. Crossman and Clunas