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- Beijing. This order seems to imply that there was very little jade material stored on hand at the palace.9
During the time of Yongzheng, most of the good jade carvers came from south China, especially Suzhou. The palace archives list several outstanding jade carv�ers of this era.10
In 1736 Qianlong ascended the throne and ruled for sixty years, at the end of which he abdicated in accordance with his vow that he would not outreign his grandfather, Kangxi. Qianlong�s reign was the most impressive of the Qing dynasty, and has often been treated as the most glorious reign in Chinese history.
Qianlong was a noted man of letters, calligrapher and poet. He was a devotee of the arts, and it seems that no artistic undertaking escaped his influence. In the first year of his reign, numerous skilled jade carvers were brought to the newly established Ruyi Guan (Hall) of the palace and the situation of the jade craft immediately took a turn for the better. Qianlong came to love jade with a devotion which was second only to his passion for European clocks. In fact, with regards to both quantity and quality of jade carvings, Qianlong�s period can brook no rival.
Qianlong took much pleasure in inspecting carved pieces of jade brought to him. If he felt it worthy of his imperial attention, he would often compose a poem, which was another of his passions. And if appropriate to the piece, the poem would be engraved on it with the date in the calligraphy style of the Emperor himself, and then gilded. In most cases, this event took place shortly after the specimen was carved, but in some instances Qianlong also had outstanding old pieces of jade in�scribed.
Qianlong was an enthusiastic collector-connoisseur of the arts of the past, which was reflected by his remarkable collection of antiquities of all kinds. Many pieces from this collection were sent to his workshops to be copied. He encour�aged his jade carvers to carve jade pieces in the archaic shapes of ancient bronze vessels, and to imitate ancient ceremonial jades. Sometimes he even ordered jade pieces to be boiled to give them an �antique� look (see Appendix II).
During the early part of Qianlong�s reign, there were several acknowledged jade craftsmen such as Yao Zongren, Bao Dewen and Li Shijin. Yao Zongren was not only a very talented designer of jade carvings, but was also capable of making ex�cellent imitations of ancient jades. He had a very close relationship with Qianlong, and they often discussed the jade craft. Yao Zongren also had much experience with authenticating old jade artifacts, and in 1753 he even corrected a mistake made by Qianlong, who had incorrectly attributed an early date to a jade object, which had actually been carved by Yao�s grandfather. It is recorded that Qianlong had such high respect for this jade craftsman, that he wanted to have an official biography compiled on him, an honour usually reserved for high civil and military officials.11
Despite all Qianlong�s adulation for jade, it still must be remembered that the quantity of jade material available for carving remained rather dismal during the first twenty-four years of his reign, until 1759 when the jade region in east Turkestan came under Manchu jurisdiction.12
Besides the objects produced at the imperial jade workshops in Beijing, there were a fair amount of jade objects being carved in Suzhou for the palace. In fact, the Imperial Silkworks in Suzhou became sort of an auxiliary jade workshop for the Bureau of Works in Beijing. The Bureau of Works would often assign jade carv�ing projects to Suzhou because their skilled jade craftsmen were capable of ca�tering to the high standards of imperial taste. The Bureau of Works would make a design for a jade object, sometimes in imitation of ancient shapes as found in the
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