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contexts. Qianlong did in fact commission some paintings and kept them exclusively for

court use. The textual commentaries written in 1743 by Tang Ying that were supposed to

accompany the original paintings eventually circulated outside the court, and they in turn

spawned new images and the new commentaries not the least of which was the first

chapter of the Jingdezhen Tao lu. In other words, whereas the first set of images

conceived the texts, the extracted texts conceived images in another context. These

manuals were then used as the collector’s standard by which to enjoy and buy porcelain.

The fact that much knowledge about porcelain production originated in the Qing

court suggests the limitations of attributing such images and texts only to the growing

market for porcelain. The process I have delineated seems to point to the non-fixity of

meanings of porcelain in ways that cannot be reduced simply to the influence of the art

market or technological developments. The nineteenth century proliferation of ideas and

images of porcelain production shows the ways in which knowledge formation itself was

the product of interactions among various sectors. By mapping the flow of these images,

it is possible to see an inter-connected history of circulating knowledge about Jingdezhen

manufacturing processes linking export audiences, Jingdezhen residents, court painters,

and Qing emperors. Ultimately, in its varying contexts, Jingdezhen porcelain seemed to

escape definition, variously representing imperial use, local technique, or idealized

Chinese object created by means of mass production. Its potency and staying power as a

cultural icon might actually be a product of its diverse history of interchange and its

ability to defy definitive categories such as image/text, west/China, material/symbolic,

local/imperial center.