Thank you for the beautiful dialogue explanation and the one that porcelain can bring to the comprehension of a change of power so as to the associations once created.
I wonder how these got into private hands?? These belonged in the forbidden palace or the Summer Palace (Yuan Ming Yuan). The providence of these Chinese royal objects is evident!
They went from belonging to the imperial family to belongings to the communist government of China who sold them to the highest bidder. Mao hated all the trappings of imperial wealth and got rid of boat loads of it.
Chinese Imperial history is something many Chinese take great pride. Unfortunately in the 19th century the last Imperial Dynasty demonstrated its incompetence by forfeiting vast territory to Imperial Romanov Russia, Great Britain, and Imperial Japan. Dowager Empress Cixi represents the incompetence of absolute power when she used funds to modernize her Imperial Chinese Navy to renovate her Imperial Summer Palace Gardens. Much praise have been given to her by this advertising video. What Cixi represents is absolute power corrupts absolutely. Yes, the Qing Imperial Palace has been looted by invading foreign armies. But the inability to establish a modern republic is China’s real weakness.
Obviously, these were items robbed and stolen blatantly - like the invading American and U.K. military forces to Iraqi imperial palaces and national museums during the Iraq War in 2000’s - during the invasion of the Chinese imperial court in Beijing in the late 19th century, from which the extremely stupid, corrupt and cowardly Cixi fled westward in China, by the evil Western alliances, including the U.K. and the U.S., who later set fire to most of the architecture and imperial gardens.
Funny a woman having 'to go bigger' and tripling the size of objects, seems quite ironic. As much as I love Chinese porcelain as well there can be a lack of originality where future emperors just mimic what has already been done previously, the whole Guangxu period is Kangxi in style, although some of the Cixi designs have a little originality.
