Page 243 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008
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Again, the Xiang preface showed respect for researching and recording qualities
such as height, glaze qualities, kiln, and year of production. Tao Ya’s author was of
course aware of Bushell’s translation of the Xiang catalogue. As they were both living in
Beijing during the last few decade of the nineteenth century, they likely ran in the same
circles of antiques and art dealerships. It is striking to see divergence in Bushell and
Chen’s discussion of porcelain, which can only be described as speaking past each other.
Moreover, Chen Liu was probably familiar with the importance that Bushell and other
Western collectors attached to the Xiang catalogue: a representation of authentic and
native taste that would guide Westerners in their collecting decisions. Given that many of
the imperial objects were sold in the late 1890s and early 1900’s art market, Chen’s
project was to exalt aesthetic knowledge not the building of collections. After all, he
admitted that many of the precious objects were no longer to be seen: “Of the pieces
recorded by Mr. Zhu of Haiyan [the author of 1774 Tao Shuo], scarcely one in a hundred
can be obtained; what I have seen and written about are no longer able to be seen. Those
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who read my writings in the future will thus sigh with hopeless grief.” Chen stated
twice - once in the 1906 preface and once in his collection of poems about porcelain wine
vessels - that it was fruitless to compare possessions. The importance was not in having
objects but in knowing them.
Comparing the two contemporaneous ideas of “Chinese” porcelain
connoisseurship, we see that English collectors’ conceptions of the collector were based
essentialized notions of authenticity and Chen Liu’s exhortations was predicated upon a
globally significant and aesthetically informed connoisseur. The contrasting, yet
contemporaneous, opinions reveal the constructed-ness of the notion of Chinese taste and
