Porcelain for the Emperor aims to elucidate the lineaments of a “technocratic culture” (15) that first appeared in China's historical record during the 1720s and that was epitomized, in particular, by a “polymath bannerman” (9) named Tang Ying (1682–1756). Tang descended from a bondservant family attached to the Imperial Household Department (Neiwufu), an inner-court organization whose raison d’être was not simply to provide for the most basic and daily needs of the royal family, but also to maintain the ruling house's political and economic predominance, especially vis à vis the administrative state apparatus. In short, the Imperial Household Department operated as an instrument of patrimonial domination and, as such, developed into an important training ground for politically reliable “bannerman technocrats” who “combined technological expertise and managerial power” in spheres such as “manufacture, finance, and intelligence” (3).
The Imperial Household Department supervised “a cluster of handicraft workshops” in the Forbidden City known as the Imperial Workshops (Zaobanchu), which were “responsible for the large-scale production of artifacts” (6) for use at court. And it was here that bannermen such as Tang Ying cultivated and internalized what the author dubs “a technocratic approach to statecraft” (9) which distinguished them from members of the civil examination elite who staffed the bureaucracy. According to Chen, this “technocratic approach” was “essential for accomplishing imperial tasks” of empire building (9) and encompassed at least three distinct attributes: a) “an archivist disposition in collecting local intelligence from all over the empire for the court” (7), b) “quasi-ethnographic methods that bannermen developed in their mediation between the court and regional bureaus on practical projects,” and c) highly “experimental ways of making and knowing” (8).
Chapter 1 explores the socio-historical and institutional contexts that gave shape and substance to Tang Ying's emergence and subsequent trajectory. He served initially as a young guard in the Kangxi emperor's retinue (ca. 1697–1720s); then as a novice pattern painter, low-ranking production supervisor (ca. 1723–24), and vice director of a bureau (ca. 1725–27) in the Imperial Workshops; and finally as the superintendent of the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory in Jingdezhen (Jiangxi province) (ca. 1728–56).
Chapter 2 focuses on a “new knowledge culture” associated with a set of design practices and protocols revolving around the formulation and deployment of yang, which might be best understood as “the models circulated among workshops during the production process,” regardless of whether these models took the form of sketches and drawings, or three-dimensional prototypes at scale or in full-size (45). This design system predated the establishment of the Qing and its Imperial Workshops in Beijing; however, as the author notes, “the systematic training and employment of a network of technocrats had never been recorded in previous dynasties” (52). Formal and comparative analyses of surviving illustrations and porcelain artifacts illustrate how bannerman porcelain supervisors like Tang Ying departed from the design principles and practices of Chinese literati and even exhibited a distinctive “technocratic style” in the production of objects outside of formal imperial commissions. One “distinct part” of this “technocratic craft” was “painting skill—or, more precisely, the capacity for pictorial extraction of information,” and as the author shows, “[s]upervisor-designers were expected to be able to lift an image from one medium and rework it in another to fit the imperial order and budget” (58).
In Chapter 3 Chen deepens his exploration of “the ethnographic and archivist approaches common to the technocratic way of making knowledge” (97) by engaging in formal analyses as well as close and comparative readings of Tang Ying's well-known and imperially commissioned treatise on regional ceramic manufacturing (Illustrated Manual of Ceramic Production, ca. 1740–43) and his literary writings (especially theatrical works composed from the 1740s onward). This chapter underscores Tang Ying's role in the appropriation of regional and local knowledge in both theater and porcelain making. Indeed, as the author argues, “Tang Ying's archivist accumulation of regional musical tunes and arias, as well as his experimental initiative using them in compositions, exhibits a technocratic approach similar to the one he used for gathering and organizing regional ceramic knowledge, as revealed in his illustrated treatise,” which “is like a work of theater in its staging of the scenes of porcelain production through painting and text” (76).
Chapter 4 highlights the experimental facet of the “technocratic approach” as evidenced by Tang Ying's employment of innovative techniques—such as falang and “foreign-colored” (yangcai) enameling, revolving and openwork vessel forms, and new hues of monochromatic glazing—even as he attempted to reproduce established styles at the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory. Indeed, as this chapter demonstrates, “the need to restore, replicate and even improve extant styles … forced the technocrats to conduct experiments on technical details and … channel technological knowledge from the local artisan community for imperial use” (124). As emphasized throughout, Tang Ying's “embodied knowledge” of porcelain making, gained through three-years’ worth of practical apprenticeship, was critical.
Readers will find much to appreciate here, although more rigorous or precise contextualization might have bolstered the general argument in certain places. For example, the author notes that the Imperial Household Department and its various bureaus frequently “intervened in many financial and manufacturing affairs crucial to the state” (6). Indeed, the Yongzheng emperor, as part of his broader effort at fiscal reform and centralization, began in the late 1720s to appoint bondservants from the Imperial Household Department as customs superintendents and salt commissioners throughout the empire. Upon ascending the throne, the Qianlong emperor continued this precedent throughout the 1730s, 1740s, and 1750s. Thus was the throne able to gradually strengthen its control over major revenue streams—namely the salt gabelle, and maritime and inland customs duties—which were growing in tandem with the commercial economy of the eighteenth century. Chen only hints, however, at the extent to which these broader developments might be related to the appointment of bannermen technocrats like Nian Xiyao and Tang Ying—both as superintendents of the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory in Jingdezhen and (sometimes concurrently) as customs superintendents in Huai'an and Jiujiang. The relation of fiscal control to the employment of bannermen rather than civil officials remains a potentially fruitful avenue for future research. Khubilai Khan's patronage and regulation of ceramic production as well as the influence of Mongol rule upon developments in popular theater (as discussed by Morris Rossabi in Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times, 1988) offer additional points of historical comparison.
Porcelain for the Emperor is a truly admirable example of interdisciplinary scholarship. Drawing upon concepts and methods from the fields of science and technology studies, literary criticism, and art history, it illuminates the heretofore neglected contributions of bannermen technocrats to the Qing imperial project. This compact and handsomely produced monograph will interest not only art historians, porcelain connoisseurs, and museum curators, but also students of early modern material and political cultures, court history, and imperial state-formations.
