Description of Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The translation of the Tao Shuo, now for the first time published in its entirety, was completed by Dr. Bushell in 1891, and has been printed with little alteration from the MS. as he then left it. Of the twenty-one figures with which he contemplated illustrating the work, eighteen were to be taken (see pp. xi, xvii) from the sixteenth-century Manuscript Catalogue of porcelain by Hsiang Yuan-P'ien. This work was published by Dr. Bushell in 1908 (Chinese Porcelain of Different Dynasties: eighty-three plates in colour by W. Griggs, with the Chinese text reproduced by line-blocks, and an introduction, translation, and commentary: Clarendon Press).

It may be mentioned that a set of Chinese illustrations of the manufacture of porcelain similar in style to those described on pp. 7-30 is reproduced in Stanislas Julien's Histoire et Fabrication de la Porcelaine Chinoise, Paris, 1856. They are only fourteen in number instead of the twenty described in the text of T'ao Shuo, those wanting being Nos. 3, 8, 12 (which bears the same title as 7), 14, 19 and 20. Two of the remaining three have been reproduced in Cosmo Monkhouse's History and Description of Chinese Porcelain, 1901, and in Dr. Bushell's South Kensington Museum Handbook, Chinese Art, 1906.

The Lettres du Pere d'Entrecolles mentioned on p. ix have been added in an Appendix. The text has been printed, practically without alteration, from a copy of the Lettres Edifiantes in the British Museum.