Page 65 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008
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1916, one hundred were the raised painted enameled porcelain, and they were
manufactured specifically for the purpose of the coronation ceremony rituals, including
gifts to officials. In order to produce these, Guo even went to Beijing sometime in 1915
in order to obtain samples of enameled porcelain from the former Imperial Palace.
Actually, falang porcelain objects were not always considered purely Jingdezhen-
produced, as indicated by their categorization as “foreign transmitted wares” (waiyi yao
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̮ᙇᇉ) in Jingdezhen Tao lu of 1815. After all, the painting of the enamels onto the
porcelain body occurred at the workshops located in the palaces in Beijing, not at the
workshops and factories at Jingdezhen. Nevertheless, the enameled porcelain produced
by Guo Baochang were produced and decorated completely at Jingdezhen by a group of
Jingdezhen-based porcelain painters and potters who gained fame in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth-centuries as the Eight Friends of Pearl Mountain (Zhushan ba youम
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ʆɞʾ). The entire project cost 140,000 yuan.
As is well-known, Yuan Shikai’s emperorship lasted only eighty-three days and
faced heated opposition. After his own self-demotion, Yuan died in humiliation and as a
national traitor on June 6, 1916, leaving Guo Baochang without a job since the end of a
reign signaled the demise of any need for imperial kilns. During his short stay of not
more than six months at Jingdezhen as the resident kiln official, Guo produced porcelain
objects and learned much about the production process at Jingdezhen and its history.
Guo even dug into old documents and records about Jingdezhen porcelain production that
were written during the early and mid-eighteenth century. Guo transcribed by hand Tang