Page 21 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008

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century, these volumes continued to receive much attention in the growing scientific,

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industrial and artistic quest for knowledge about Jingdezhen porcelain. For example, the

British school administrator, historian of science, and amateur potter Simeon Shaw

mentioned Father d’Entrecolle’s trip and findings in his influential chemical analysis of

porcelain in 1837. Shaw established nineteenth century pottery institutes in England and

was active in promoting the craft of porcelain. He also wrote a history of the famous

Staffordshire pottery factories founded by Josiah Wedgewood in the second half of the

eighteenth century in industrializing Manchester. During the latter half of the nineteenth

century, Stephen Bushell included a reprint of d’Entrecolles’ reports as an appendix to his

1890s translation of a late eighteenth century Chinese language monograph on

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porcelain.

People living in Europe were not the only ones interested in porcelain production.

Nor were missionaries from France the only writers who produced knowledge about

porcelain manufacture. Indeed, while Pere d’Entrecolles did not cite references in his

letters, he supplemented his first-hand observations with information gleaned from

Chinese-language sources and images, including a Yuan dynasty literati account of

porcelain that was recorded in several Qing dynasty versions of Fuliang county

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gazetteers. In fact, as this dissertation will show, Qing emperors were also eager to
learn about the making of products integral to the territory they controlled, including

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porcelain, rice, and silk. Moreover, imperial curiosity actually materialized in visual

and textual form, contributing to, and in some cases encouraging, the networks of

exchange in porcelain knowledge.