Page 24 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008
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                       modern war and foreign attempts to gain power through territorial, scientific, and

                       economic advantages in terms of production, trade, and goods: the Opium War of the


                       1850s, and the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895.  Yet, as the book’s publication history

                       shows, the subject matter of a book varies according to the different objectives of the key


                       people and institutions involved.  The original authors were themselves writing and

                       illustrating for their own purposes; the 1815 author, Zheng Tingui, reconfigured the text


                       and added images because he was responding to earlier texts and ideas about porcelain

                       that originated in the inner court of the Qing central government.  Thus, Jingdezhen Tao


                       lu’s history shows that porcelain was a site of negotiation and intellectual contestation,

                       that a book is not a one-dimensional channel of truth, and that the resultant images of


                       Jingdezhen sprung from the interaction between court initiatives and local activity.

                              The third chapter continues along this theme of court and local interactions, but

                       presents an extended discussion on the role of visual images in the understanding of


                       porcelain.  More importantly, it is an exploration of the nature of knowledge,

                       representation, and understanding itself.  The chapter analyzes the different types of


                       visual representations of porcelain and demonstrates the advent of porcelain production

                       images constructed as sequentially viewed painting sets made for the emperor.  By the


                       1730s there may have been as many as three separate imperial court albums depicting the

                       steps of porcelain manufacture in the form of ordered painting albums for the Qing court.


                       It was, however, a crucial Qianlong edict that instigated their textual annotation by Tang

                       Ying, a project completed in 1743 that directly influenced the writing of Jingdezhen Tao


                       lu and later translations and pictures of imperial kilns.   These porcelain manufacturing

                       albums not only exemplified the Qianlong emperor’s keen interest in the detail and
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