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based research into the relationship between the Jingdezhen export wares and overseas

collectors has yet to be undertaken. Still, the date of such wares coincides with the rise of

a type of export wares collected and used in households in Southeast Asia. These wares,

now collected in museums such as the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore, were

produced in a similar fashion as that described by Cantonese writer and collector Liu

Zifen in the early 1920s: porcelain bodies made in Jingdezhen and transported to Canton

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for polychrome glaze decoration before overseas export. Finer wares tended to go to
European and Japanese markets and courser ones to Southeast Asia. Commonly referred

to as “kitchen ch’ing” so as to mirror their status as crude objects, these porcelains

pointed to a growing market influenced by the overseas Chinese communities in

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Southeast Asia. Their absence in Tao Ya’s narrative, however, reflect how the early

twentieth century narrative of porcelain history paralleled the hardening of nationalizing

political boundaries alongside an increasingly fluid movement of populations and goods

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across those boundaries. The same political and cultural forces that favored
fragmentation into nations and races, as well as perceptions of distinct cultural regions as

developed or under-developed, also operated in the valuation of certain types of porcelain

that warranted scholarly attention. As inclusive as Tao Ya aspired to be, it ultimately

excluded certain kinds of porcelain as well.

IV. Acquiring Porcelain Knowledge through Objects, Loot, and the Market

Perhaps the most vexing aspect of Chen Liu’s writing is his assumption of

objectivity when assessing declining aesthetic standards. The entire text relies on various

methods to reinforce the gravity and authoritativeness of its scholarship. The author was