Page 66 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008

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Ying’s records of Jingdezhen porcelain management and manufacture, a manuscript now

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in the Liaoning library.

His time spent as an imperial porcelain supervisor must have been influential in

Guo Baochang’s life, not only for exposure and training in porcelain production but also

for his confidence in his own abilities to authenticate, and perhaps even fabricate,

porcelain. Porcelain styles were, after all, reproduced. After his job in the Yuan Shikai

administration ended, he moved back to Beijing, whereupon he resumed his activities in

the art and antiques markets. During this time, he specialized in dealing and brokering

for foreigners. His grandson recalled Guo saying that he was willing to make money

from selling porcelain objects to foreigners but he could not bear to “rip-off Chinese

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people” (keng Zhongguo renѦʕ਷ɛ).

In 1925, Guo was appointed to the Palace Museum staff to serve as a member of

the research staff on porcelain housed in its collections. That same year was also the

inaugural year of the opening of the Palace Museum, which was, only a few decades

earlier, the housing complex of the emperor’s family. John Ferguson, an advisor to the

Republican Government and at this point in time a permanent resident in Beijing, also

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assisted the Palace Museum staff in cataloguing an inventory of “Chinese art.” The

1920s and 1930s then saw a flourishing of collaborative relationship between them: Guo

and Ferguson worked jointly on many art deals, whereby profits made on sales of

paintings and porcelain to American collectors was said to be equally divided between

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Guo Baochang and John Ferguson. Together, they annotated a famous catalogue

describing the porcelain objects in the collection of a Ming literati, Xiang Yuanbian who

lived between 1525 and 1590. Guo’s private lithographic printing press published 600