Percival David started collecting Chinese art some time around 1913, and he continued to do so until his death in 1964. He first visited China in 1923, and there he gained an appreciation of Chinese ceramics. In 1925 he helped finance and mount an exhibition of many of the best items of the imperial collection in the Forbidden City in Beijing. In 1927, he acquired some items that were originally from the Forbidden City when they came onto the market. Many of these items were sold off by members of the Imperial Household Department during the late Qing dynasty, and Empress Dowager Cixi allegedly used these items as collateral for loans from the Yuin Yeh Bank in 1901. David managed to buy some forty pieces one way or the other and export them to the United Kingdom. In 1930, he again returned to China and helped with various exhibitions and produced a series of catalogues of the pieces. However, much of the acquisition history of David's collection was unrecorded, but he may have acquired many of the items through various dealers, auctions and other collectors. The Yuan dynasty 'David Vases' in the collection were acquired from two separate sources. Many pieces were likely once owned by the Qing dynasty emperors, and several pieces have inscriptions added by the orders of the Qianlong Emperor (1736–95). The pieces assembled by Percival David form the most important single collection of Chinese ceramics outside of China and Taiwan.