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the wellspring of Chinese-language scholarship on ceramics appeared: Tao Ya (1910),
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Tao Shuo (1774), and Jingdezhen Tao lu (1815). Tao Ya was already an influential text
in the first half of the twentieth century. By 1925 four separate editions had already been
published, including the first edition. The 1918 edition was printed by a private publisher
with a title page displaying a calligraphic inscription by Zhu DeyiႣᅃ彜 (1871-1942), a
stele researcher and calligrapher active in the early twentieth century trained in the
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epigraphic, seal-script style (Figure 1). Around the same time another edition appeared
with a title also inscribed in an epigraphic calligraphic style (Figure 2) by Liu Jiaxi, a
calligrapher. His script was rather free-flowing. Even more demonstrative of Tao Ya’s
importance in the ceramics and antiques arena is the 1923 edition printed with stone
lithographic technology and commissioned by the Shanghai Society for Research on
Antique Porcelain (Guci yanjiu hui) (Figure 3). Along with another study of porcelain
written by a Cantonese connoisseur, Xu Zhiheng, entitled Yinliuzhai shuoci, Chen Liu’s
Tao Ya was again printed in 1925 by the publisher Zhaoji shuzhuang in Shanghai
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(Figures 4a and 4b). As mentioned, this publishing house was the same printing
company that published Jingdezhen Tao lu in the mid-1920s.
Besides attracting the attention of connoisseurs, Jingdezhen researchers and
general ceramic historians also used Tao Ya as a reference book to write modern histories
of porcelain. In 1936 it was a primary source for History of Chinese Ceramics
(Zhongguo taoci shi), one of the first Chinese-language ceramic textbooks to be included
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in the Ministry of Education’s vocational curriculum. Published by the Commercial
Press, the principal author was a Japan-educated ceramicist, Wu Renjing, who also
worked as principal of the Art Institute of Eastern Art (Jingdezhen dongfang yishu
