8 - Anxieties over Resources in Sixteenth-Century Jingdezhen

Summary

This chapter focuses on the question of resources. Who owned the wood required for firing the kilns, and who could set the price of that wood? Who had access to the equipment and tools that furnished the various workshops, and who controlled the expensive pigments required in the production of fine ceramics? Questions over ownership and price, access and control arose in all of the stages of the production process. For the representatives of the imperial administration, i.e. the officials who were posted in the local county capital, Fuliang, and had supervisory responsibilities over the production of the porcelains that would go on to make up the imperial tribute, there was most at stake. For these administrators, the fluidity that characterised the movement of resources amounted to a loss of control over the costs of production and thereby over the goods they needed to supply. The flows of natural resources brought about the desire of the administrators to stem those flows and assert their control over them, but ultimately, their control was entirely elusive.