Page 217 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008

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Chen Liu might even have written the entire text while drinking away his later years of

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near retirement.

According to the author, Tao Ya was the first study to examine Qing period

porcelain aesthetics and techniques. The two specific works to which Chen contrasted

the uniqueness of Tao Ya were the (purported) illustrated book by the sixteenth-century

collector Xiang Yuanbian (1525-1590) entitled Lidai mingci tupu ዝ˾Τନྡᗅ

(Illustrated Catalogue of Porcelains of Successive Dynasties) and Zhu Yan’s 1774

monograph Tao Shuo. While Chen’s Tao Ya refers to and even relies upon many other

disparate writings on objects, only these two were singled out as worthy predecessors.

Regarding Zhu and Xiang’s books on porcelain, Chen felt that, due to their dates of

publication and authors’ lifespan, they were not capable of discussing the porcelain of

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this dynasty (benchao). Chen is correct in describing Zhu Yan’s Tao Shuo and the

Xiang Yuanbian illustrated catalogue as focusing on the pre-Qing history of ceramics.

However, his claim that no other works investigate the porcelain of the Qing period is

misleading since he disdainfully refused to note contemporary accounts of Qing-era

porcelain in Jingdezhen Tao lu. Apparently, the Jingdezhen Tao lu, which actually does

discuss the production of wares and styles extant through the late eighteenth century and

the end of the Qianlong reign, was so worthless to Chen that he did not even bother to

acknowledge the book in Tao Ya’s preface.

A survey of the twentieth-century literature on porcelain reveals that Tao Ya was

one of two sources written during the Qing dynasty that reconstructed knowledge about

Qing period porcelain, the other being the Jingdezhen Tao lu. Even in recent times,

ceramic scholars acknowledge that the Qing dynasty was the crucial period during which