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appropriation by national scholarship notwithstanding, Tao Ya was still a product of a

specific historical context and its prose allowed for a gamut of possible meanings that

slipped easily between empire and nation.

II. Timing Porcelain and Porcelain Knowledge

At the turn of the twentieth century, the wider world of porcelain collectors

regarded with contempt the state of expert knowledge about porcelain in the Chinese

language. In the 1896 preface to the monumental study by Stephen Bushell, Oriental

Ceramic Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art board member and art historian William

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Laffan impugned “Chinese texts” as “worthless.” Though totalizing and dismissive,

Laffan’s disparaging comments likely carried much weight. After all, he was a publicly-

acknowledged expert on porcelain and a prominent figure in the museum field.

To a certain extent, writers living in China held similar views of Chinese texts on

porcelain. Not the least of these writers was Chen Liu, the author of Tao Ya, who

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initially entitled his book Ci Xue. The combination of two terms in the original title,

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“porcelain” and “learning,” could be interpreted to mean “porcelain-ology.” To use Ci
Xue in effect elevated the subject of porcelain from simply a topic of leisure or technique

to an academic pursuit. There were three prefaces written for the text, all three of which

reveal the author’s motivations for writing Tao Ya. Chen stated that he saw an “utter lack

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of records.” Chen’s views indicate that he too felt that previous writings on porcelain
were inadequate. Thus, Tao Ya was intended to compensate for the gap in the written

record about porcelain. Specifically, Chen aimed to spread knowledge about Qing

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dynasty porcelain. In a sigh of great admiration, Chen wrote that the “[porcelain]