Page 64 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008

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traveled to the historical site of the Linru kilns in southern Zhili province, located in

present-day Henan, in order to study the techniques behind the pale, sky-blue colored

porcelains known as Ru wares (ϧᇉ). Just as Guo and his potters were to begin the

production of imitation Ru wares at the Jingdezhen kiln center, an advisor in the Yuan

Shikai administration, Yang Du, suggested that they instead reproduce the Guyue xuan ̚

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˜৐ (Pavilion of the Old Moon) porcelains for the coronation porcelain. The reason

for such a choice was Yang’s historical conception of Ru porcelain as originating from a

weak dynasty. Since Ru wares date to a production period during the waning years of the

Northern Song Dynasty that ultimately fell to the conquest of the Mongols, to choose Ru

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porcelains would connote a meaning of a weak dynasty to the Yuan Shikai reign. As a
result, Yang and Guo opted to reproduce the wares of the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and

Qianlong emperors’ eras, widely regarded as the country’s glorious years. They

determined the proper porcelains to be Guyue xuan porcelains, decorated with raised

painted enamels, a type of porcelain decoration belonging to a new art form that first

appeared with the creation of a special enamel workshop in the fourteenth year of

Kangxi’s court (1693). The appearance of enameled decoration on porcelain followed

the influence of European enamel painting on metal that had been transmitted to the court

in the 1680s by missionaries. The difference between the European enamels and the ones

produced for the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors was the media on which

enamel was decoratively applied. Among some of the media were glass and porcelain

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bodies from Jingdezhen. As imperial workshop archive records indicate, the name of
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the workshop was falang ೗๻, or cloisonné. Thus, of the 40,000 pieces produced in