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o cial script, and thus rmly attributed to the Yuan dynasty, post himself. He was made Vice Director of the Yingshansuo, an
was included in the exhibition Two Thousand Years of Chinese o ce that formed part of the Ministry of Works [Gongbu], and
Lacquer, The Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong and the according to Jessica Harrison-Hall, the Guoyuanchang [Orchard
Art Gallery, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Factory], the imperial lacquer factory that began production
1993, cat. no. 34. after the move of the capital to Beijing, was established with
Zhang Degang as its head; it is this factory that among other
Although Zhang Cheng is generally regarded as a Yuan masterpieces produced the famous Xuande-marked lacquer
dynasty craftsman, he most likely lived well into the Hongwu table preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Clunas and
(1368-1398) and perhaps even the early Yongle period. The Harrison-Hall 2014, p. 107).
local gazetteer of Jiaxing of 1685 states that when the Yongle
Emperor heard of his work, he summoned him to the court, but It therefore seems that Zhang Cheng’s activity as one of
by that time Zhang Cheng was already dead. His son Zhang China’s foremost lacquer craftsmen extended well beyond the
Degang, who had followed him in business, thus answered the late Yuan dynasty, and that his son continued his style well into
call to the capital in place of his father, in order to take up the the Yongle or even the Xuande period. Such continuity would
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