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study it on China’s own terms. To do so, however, would have necessitated less cultural

arrogance and more sensitivity to human voices and opinions from China.

Even more telling is the comparison of the porcelain sections of different versions

of the commemorative catalogues: the catalogues published by the Chinese Organizing

Committee included a prefatory piece on porcelain history by the early twentieth-century

porcelain commissioner at Jingdezhen, Guo Baochang. Guo’s introductory essay, “A

Brief Description of Porcelain” (Ciqi gaishuo ନኜ฿Ⴍ), completed on February 6, 1935,

was translated into English, and both versions were reprinted in various editions of the

Chinese Organizing Committee’s catalogue. Despite its availability in the English

language, the essay did not find an audience in Western-language scholarship and

collectors’ circles. Not one of the three editions of the London Exhibition catalogues

compiled by the Royal Academy of Arts included the essay. In fact, Guo himself sent an

inscribed copy printed by his personal printing press, Zhizhai shushe☊≫ࣣٟ (Figure 6),

to George Eumorfopoulos and Percival David, the two main British collectors and

exhibition organizers (Figures 7, 8). Further reflecting Guo’s status as an authority in

porcelain-related knowledge, a reprint of the essay occupied the entire last page of Da

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Gongbao newspaper’s special issue on the London Exhibition on April 6, 1935. The

sheer physical size of the reprint in some ways enhanced the great regard that some

people at the time might have held of the “Ciqi gaishuo” essay (the actual size of the

newspaper sheet was almost twenty inches in height). Ye Gongchuo’s praise of the

selection of porcelain objects as “complete,” which was credited to Guo’s presence on the

special committee in both Beijing and Shanghai meetings, clearly fell on deaf English

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ears. Even in Ferguson’s article, Ferguson enumerated a litany of objects for which the