Read Ebook: Chinese pottery and porcelain; vol. 2. Ming and Ch'ing Porcelain by Hobson R L Robert Lockhart

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Fig. 1.--"Seven border" Plate.

Fig. 2.--Eggshell Cup and Saucer with painter's marks.

Fig. 3.--Eggshell Plate with vine border.

Fig. 4.--Armorial Plate with arms of Leake Okeover. Transition enamels, about 1723.

Fig. 1.--Brush Pot of enamelled Ku-y?eh-hs?an glass. Ch'ien Lung mark.

Fig. 2.--Bottle, porcelain painted in Ku-y?eh style, after a picture by the Ch'ing artist Wang Shih-mei.

Fig. 4.--Medallion Vase, brocade ground with bats in clouds, etc. Ch'ien Lung mark.

Fig. 1.--Vase with "rice grain" ground and blue and white design.

Fig. 2.--Vase with "lacework" designs. Ch'ien Lung mark.

Fig. 4.--Vase with "robin's egg" glaze.

Fig. 1.--Subject from the drama, black ground. Yung Ch?ng mark.

Fig. 3.--Blue and white "steatitic" ware.

Fig. 5.--"Steatitic" ware with Hundred Antiques design in coloured relief. Chia Ch'ing mark.

CHINESE POTTERY AND PORCELAIN

THE MING DYNASTY, 1368-1644 A.D.

As we have already discussed, so far as our imperfect knowledge permits, the various potteries which are scattered over the length and breadth of China, we can now concentrate our attention on the rising importance of Ching-t? Ch?n. From the beginning of the Ming dynasty, Ching-t? Ch?n may be said to have become the ceramic metropolis of the empire, all the other potteries sinking to provincial status. So far as Western collections, at any rate, are concerned, it is not too much to say that 90 per cent. of the post-Y?an porcelains were made in this great pottery town.

From this time onward there is no lack of information on the nature of the Imperial wares made during the various reigns, but it must be remembered that the Chinese descriptions are in almost every case confined to the Imperial porcelains, and we are left to assume that the productions of the numerous private kilns followed the same lines, though in the earlier periods, at any rate, we are told that they were inferior in quality and finish.

As may be imagined, Yung Lo porcelain is not common to-day, and the few specimens which exist in our collections are not enough to make us realise the full import of these descriptions. There are, however, several types which bear closely on the subject, some being actually of the period and others in the Yung Lo style. A fair sample of the ordinary body and glaze of the time is seen in the white porcelain bricks of which the lower story of the famous Nanking pagoda was built. Several of these are in the British Museum, and they show a white compact body of close but granular fracture; the glazed face is a pure, solid-looking white, and the unglazed sides show a smooth, fine-grained ware which has assumed a pinkish red tinge in the firing. The coarser porcelains of the period would, no doubt, have similar characteristics in body and glaze. The finer wares are exemplified by the white bowls, of wonderful thinness and transparency, with decoration engraved in the body or traced in delicate white slip under the glaze and scarcely visible except as a transparency. Considering the fragility of these delicate wares and the distant date of the Yung Lo period, it is surprising how many are to be seen in Western collections. Indeed, it is hard to believe that more than a very few of these can be genuine Yung Lo productions, and as we know that the fine white "egg shell" porcelain was made throughout the Ming period and copied with great skill in the earlier reigns of the last dynasty, it is not necessary to assume that every bowl of the Yung Lo type dates back to the first decades of the fifteenth century.

HS?AN T?

Another surface peculiarity shared by the Hs?an T? and Yung Lo wares was "palm eye" markings, which Bushell explains as holes in the glaze due to air bubbles. It is hard to see how these can have been other than a defect. Probably both these and the orange peel effects were purely fortuitous at this time.

Of the various types which we have enumerated, the white wares need little comment. The glaze was no doubt thick and lustrous like mutton fat jade, and though Hsiang in his Album usually describes the white of his examples as "white like driven snow," it is worthy of note that in good imitations of the ware particular care seems to have been given to impart a distinct greenish tint to the glaze.

The Hs?an T? period extended only to ten years, and specimens of Hs?an red are excessively rare to-day, even in China. It is doubtful if a genuine specimen exists outside the Middle Kingdom, but with the help of the old Chinese descriptions and the clever imitations of a later date, there is no difficulty in imagining the vivid splendours of the "precious stone red" of this brilliant period.

Authentic specimens of Hs?an T? blue and white are virtually unknown, but the mark of the period is one of the commonest on Chinese porcelain of relatively modern date. In most cases this spurious dating means nothing more than that the period named was one of high repute; but there is a type of blue and white, usually bearing the period mark of Hs?an T?, which is so mannered and characteristic that one feels the certainty that this really represents one kind at least of the Hs?an porcelain. It is usually decorated in close floral scrolls, and the blue is light dappled with darker shades, which are often literally "heaped and piled" over the paler substratum.

The impression conveyed by all these examples is that they represent a type quite different from that described as "heaped and piled," a type in which delicate pencilling was the desideratum, the designs being slight and giving full play to the white porcelain ground. It is, in fact, far closer in style to the delicately painted Japanese Hirado porcelain than to the familiar Chinese blue and white of the K'ang Hsi period.

The secret decoration consists of designs faintly traced usually with a sharp-pointed instrument in the body and under the glaze. There is an excellent example of this in a high-footed cup in the Franks Collection which has the Hs?an T? mark, the usual faintly greenish glaze, beneath which is a delicately etched lotus scroll so fine that it might easily be overlooked and is quite impossible to reproduce by photographic methods. It is, no doubt, an early eighteenth-century copy of Hs?an ware.

It is hardly necessary to state that all the existing specimens of this class do not belong to the Hs?an T? period. Indeed, it is unlikely that more than a very small percentage of them were made in this short reign. Whether the style survived the Ming dynasty is an open question; but it is safe to assume that it was largely used in the sixteenth century.

Specimens of on-glaze painted porcelain with the Hs?an T? mark are common enough, but I have not yet seen one which could be accepted without reserve. Perhaps the nearest to the period is a specimen in the Franks Collection, a box made of the lower part of a square vase which had been broken and cut down. It was fitted with a finely designed bronze cover in Japan, and it is strongly painted in underglaze blue and the usual green, yellow, red and purple on-glaze enamels. The mark is in a fine dark blue, and the porcelain has all the character of a Ming specimen.

CH'?NG HUA AND OTHER REIGNS

An illustration in Hsiang's Album gives a poor idea of one of these porcelain gems, which is described as having the sides thin as a cicada's wing, and so translucent that the fingernail could be seen through them. The design, a hen and chicken beside a cock's-comb plant growing near a rock, is said to have been in the style of a celebrated Sung artist. The painting is in "applied colours , thick and thin," and apparently yellow, green, aubergine and brown. Like that of the grape-vine cup, it is evidently in enamels on the glaze.

The following designs are enumerated and explained by Kao Chiang-ts'un in the valuable commentary which has already been mentioned:--

The swings, we are told, represent men and women playing with swings : the dragon boats represent the dragon boat races; the famous scholar cups have on one side Chou Mao-shu, lover of the lotus, and on the other T'ao Y?an-ming sitting before a chrysanthemum plant; the children consist of five small children playing together.

Though the Ch'?ng Hua mark is one of the commonest on Chinese porcelain, genuine examples of Ch'?ng Hua porcelain are virtually unknown in Western collections. The Imperial wares of the period were rare and highly valued in China in the sixteenth century, and we can hardly hope to obtain them in Europe to-day; but there must be many survivors from the wares produced by the private kilns at the time, and possibly some few examples are awaiting identification in our collections. Unfortunately, the promiscuous use of the mark on later wares, the confused accounts of the blue in the "blue and white," and the conflicting theories on the polychrome decoration, have all helped to render identifications difficult to make and easy to dispute. The covered cake box in the Bushell collection, figured by Cosmo Monkhouse as a Ch'?ng Hua specimen, is closely paralleled in make and style of decoration by a beaker-shaped brush pot in the Franks Collection. Both are delicately pencilled in pale blue; both have a peculiar brown staining in parts of the glaze and a slight warp in the foot rim. In the British Museum piece, however, the foot rim is grooved at the sides to fit a wooden stand, a feature which was not usual before the K'ang Hsi period, and something in the style of the drawing is rather suggestive of Japanese work. There is, however, another specimen in the Franks Collection which is certainly Chinese of the Ming dynasty, and possibly of the Ch'?ng Hua period, of which it bears the mark. It is a vase of baluster form, thick and strongly built, with great weight of clay at the foot, and unfortunately, like so many of the early polychrome vases which have come from China in recent years, it is cut down at the neck. It has a greyish crackled glaze, painted with a floral scroll design, outlined in brown black pigment and washed in with leaf green, yellow, manganese purple and bluish green enamels, which are supplemented by a little underglaze blue, and the mark is in four characters in blue in a sunk panel under the base.

Though the fifteenth century was distinguished by two brilliant periods, there are considerable gaps in the ceramic annals of the time. The reign of the Emperor Ch?ng T'ung, who succeeded to the throne in 1436, was troubled by wars, and in his first year the directorate of the Imperial factory was abolished; and, as soldiers had to be levied, relief was given by stopping the manufacture of porcelain for the palace. In 1449 this emperor was actually taken captive by the Mongols, and his brother, who took his place from 1450 to 1456 under the title of Ching T'ai, reduced the customary supplies of palace wares in 1454 by one third. The reign of Ching T'ai is celebrated for cloisonn? enamel on metal.

In 1457, when Ch?ng T'ung was released and returned to the throne under the title of T'ien Shun , the Imperial factory was re-established, and the care of it again entrusted to a palace eunuch. There are no records, however, of the wares made in these periods, though we may assume that the private factories continued in operation even when work at the Imperial pottery was suspended. The directorship was again abolished in 1486, and porcelain is not mentioned in the official records until the end of the reign of Hung Chih .

In Hsiang's Album we are told that the pale yellow of the Hung Chih period was highly prized, and that the polychrome wares vied with those of the reign of Ch'?ng Hua. Four examples are given: an incense burner, a cup moulded in sunflower design, and a spirit jar , besides a gourd-shaped wine pot with yellow ground and accessories in green and brown, apparently coloured glazes or enamels applied to the biscuit. The yellow glazes are described as pale yellow , and likened to the colour of steamed chestnuts or the sunflower .

Marked examples, purporting to be Hung Chih yellow, are occasionally seen, but the most convincing specimen is a saucer dish in the Victoria and Albert Museum, of good quality porcelain, with a soft rich yellow glaze and the Hung Chih mark under the base in blue. Part of its existence was spent in Persia, where it was inscribed in Arabic with the date 1021 A.H., which corresponds to 1611 A.D.

A beautiful seated figure of the goddess Kuan-yin in the Pierpont Morgan Collection, not unlike Plate 65, Fig. 2, but smaller, is decorated with yellow, green and aubergine glazes on the biscuit, and bears a date in the Hung Chih period which corresponds to 1502.

Some account has already been given of this material and its use in combination with the commoner native mineral blue. It was, no doubt, the blue used on Persian, Syrian and Egyptian pottery of the period exported by the Arab traders. One of the oldest routes followed by Western traders with China was by river from the coast of Pegu, reaching Yung-ch'ang, in Yunnan, and so into China proper. This will explain the opportunities enjoyed by the viceroy of Yunnan. There were, of course, other lines of communication between China and Western Asia by sea and land, and a considerable interchange of ideas had passed between China and Persia for several centuries, so that reflex influences are traceable in the pottery of both countries. Painting in still black under a turquoise blue glaze is one of the oldest Persian methods of ceramic decoration, and we have seen that it was closely paralleled on the Tz'? Chou wares .

Another blue and white example with Ch?ng T? mark in the British Museum is of thinner make and finer grain; but, as it is a saucer-dish, this refinement was only to be expected. It is painted in a fine bold style, worthy of the best Ming traditions, with dragons in lotus scrolls, but the blue is duller and greyer in tone than on the pieces just described.

Two specimens of Ch?ng T? ware are figured in Hsiang's Album, one a tripod libation cup of bronze form and the other a lamp supported by a tortoise, and the glaze of both is "deep yellow, like steamed chestnuts."

CHIA CHING AND LUNG CH'ING

The sacrificial vessels of the period included tazza-shaped bowls and dishes , large wine jars , with swelling body and monster masks for handles, "rhinoceros" jars in the form of a rhinoceros carrying a vase on its back, besides various dishes, plates, cups, and bowls of undefined form.

The decorations are grouped in six headings:--

Blue and white , which is by far the largest.

Blue ware, which included blue bowls , sky-blue bowls , and turquoise bowls . In some cases the ware is described as plain blue monochrome, and in one item it is "best blue monochrome" , while in others there are designs engraved under the glaze . In others, again, ornament such as dragons and sea waves is mentioned without specifying how it was executed. Such ornament may have been etched with a point in the blue surface, or pencilled in darker blue on a blue background or reserved in white in a blue ground. Another kind is more fully described as "round dishes of pure blue with dragons and sea waves inside, and on the exterior a background of dense cloud scrolls with a gilt decoration of three lions and dragons." Bushell speaks of the "beautiful mottled blue ground for which this reign is also remarkable," and which, he says, was produced by the usual blend of Mohammedan and native blue suspended in water.

Wares which were white inside and blue outside.

White ware, plain or with engraved designs under the glaze .

Ware with mixed colours , which included bowls and dishes decorated in iron red instead of the "fresh red" ; others with emerald green colour ; bowls with phoenixes and flowers of Paradise in yellow in a blue ground; cups with blue cloud and dragon designs in a yellow ground; boxes with dragon and phoenix designs engraved under a yellow glaze; dishes with design of a pair of dragons and clouds in yellow within a golden brown ground; and globular bowls with embossed ornament in a single-coloured ground.

To these types Bushell adds from other similar lists crackled ware , tea cups of "greenish white porcelain" , which seems to be a pale celadon, and large fish bowls with pea green glaze.

The following analysis of the designs named in the Chia Ching lists will show that the blue and white painters of the period took their inspiration from the same source:--

Flowers of the four seasons .

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