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seminal essay and his selection of porcelain objects might not have received immediate

acknowledgment, by the 1940s, the exhibition’s porcelain exhibit had already influenced

museum researchers and ceramic-studies experts. As W.B. Honey, Keeper of the

Department of Ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1938 until 1950, noted

in a foreword, the “great Chinese Exhibition of 1935-1936 went a long way toward

supplying the answer [to the question of what was true Chinese art], while confirming the

view that the popular famille verte and the rest were largely ‘export wares.’ A new

discrimination was thenceforward called for, distinguishing from the latter the imperial

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and other wares in true Chinese taste.” The exhibition shed new light on porcelain and

specifically on the types of porcelain produced during the Qing dynasty. Despite being

only a sample of Jingdezhen’s output, porcelains formerly displayed in the court was

deemed “true Chinese taste,” a general if vague term used by Western observers.

The responsibility for the creation of this porcelain exhibition and its historical

context belonged in the hands of Guo Baochang. He not only had a role in selecting

objects for the exhibit but he also played a part in developing public understanding of

porcelain history. One of the exhibition’s aims, after all, was didactic. In England,

lectures even accompanied the exhibition (Figure 9). Guo’s history is difficult to track

down and this part of the chapter attempts to create an account of his life and influence

on Jingdezhen porcelain knowledge from the scattered writings and multitudinous

international relationships he developed with collectors and politicians. As will be shown,

he was intimately linked to the production of Jingdezhen porcelain wares in the early

twentieth century and to the production of knowledge about porcelain. While he was

personally in touch with seminal collectors and English-speaking scholars of Chinese art,