Authenticated Chinese Porcelain For Sale
Almost all Chinese Porcelain was - and still are - made in the town of Jingdezhen on the banks of the Chang river in the southern Chinese province of Jiangxi.
At the height of the China trade, thousands of kilns and workshops turned out millions of pieces of porcelain each year. All work was done in an assembly line way where each worker performed a simple, yet specialized task. Père d'Entrecolles, Jesuit missionary to China, remarked that one piece of porcelain could pass through the hands of as many as seventy craftsmen. Even when decorating the porcelain each craftsman specialized in a specific element in the design "and human subjects was often treated the worst", he wrote.
One of the most important texts there is, on the manufacture of porcelain, is the Twenty Illustrations of the Manufacture of Porcelain. It was written by Tang Ying, the celebrated superintendent of the porcelain manufacture in the province of Jiangxi during 1736-1753. It is widely reprinted and the "most authentic" version seems to be the one in the official annals of the province of Jiangxi, Book XCIII, Folio 19-23.
The original translation of the Chinese text is made by S.W. Bushell in 1899 and has been carefully edited here.
The first draft seems to date from 1735 and the text was on Imperial command in 1743 added to a set of "twenty illustrations of the manufacture of porcelain". The actual illustrations have never been identified. Today, porcelain is still made in Jingdezhen using basically the same manufacturing processes as described by Tang Ying more than 250 years ago. In 1991 and 1992 I had the privilege to spend a few weeks in Jingdezhen together with Professor Bo Gyllensvärd and some collector friends. The pictures illustrating Tang Yings text here, is taken by me during these visits.
Jan-Erik Nilsson
Text © Jan-Erik Nilsson
The Manufacture of Porcelain, 1743
This text
The pictures