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

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Ebook has 2275 lines and 130604 words, and 46 pages

Flowers of the four seasons .

Flowering and other plants .

The myriad-flowering wistaria .

The water chestnut .

The pine, bamboo, and plum.

Floral medallions .

Indian lotus .

Knots of lotus .

Interlacing sprays of lotus supporting the Eight Precious Symbols or the Eight Buddhist Emblems.

Lotus flowers, fishes, and water weeds.

Floral arabesques .

Flowers of Paradise .

Dragons of antique form. These are the lizard-like creatures with bifid tail which occur so often in old bronzes and jades.

Dragon medallions .

Nine dragons and flowers.

Dragons and phoenixes moving through flowers.

Dragon, and phoenixes with other birds.

Phoenixes flying through flowers.

A pair of phoenixes.

Lions rolling balls of brocade.

Flying lions.

Hoary lions and dragons.

Storks in clouds.

Birds flying in clouds.

Fish and water weeds.

Four fishes.

Children playing.

Three divine beings compounding the elixir of Immortality.

Two or four Immortals.

The Eight Immortals crossing the sea; or paying court to the god of Longevity , or congratulating him .

A group of divine beings paying court to the god of Longevity.

Two designs of doubtful meaning may be added here:

Heaven and Earth, and the six cardinal points , or "emblems of the six cardinal points of the Universe."

These are eight combinations of triple lines. In the first the lines are unbroken, and in the last they are all divided at the centre, the intermediate figures consisting of different permutations of broken and unbroken lines . These eight diagrams, by which certain Chinese philosophers explained all the phenomena of Nature, are supposed to have been constructed by the legendary Emperor Fu Hsi from a plan revealed to him on the back of the "dragon horse" which rose from the Yellow River. Among other things, they are used to designate the points of the compass, one arrangement making the first figure represent the South , and the last figure the North , the remaining figures representing South-West, West, North-West, North-East, East, and South-East.

These are usually represented by a sphere or jewel, which seems to have originally been the sun disc; a circle enclosing a square, which suggests the copper coin called a "cash"; an open lozenge, symbol of victory or success; a musical stone ; a pair of books; a pair of rhinoceros horns ; a lozenge-shaped picture ; a leaf of the artemisia, a plant of good omen, which dispels sickness.

These symbols, which appeared among the auspicious signs on the foot of Buddha, comprise the wheel , which is sometimes replaced by the hanging bell; the shell trumpet of Victory; the umbrella of state; the canopy; the lotus flower; the vase; the pair of fish, emblems of fertility; the angular knot , symbol of longevity.

Close ground patterns of propitious clouds .

Cloud designs are propitious because they symbolise the fertilising rain, and they are commonly represented by conventional scrolls as well as by the more obvious cloud patterns.

Crested sea waves .

A blue and white vase with these characters in medallions framed by cloud scrolls on the shoulders is shown on Plate 68.

The waterfalls of Pa Shan in the province of Szechuan.

Gold weighing-scales .

The mark of the Chia Ching period, though not so freely used as those of Hs?an T? and Ch'?ng Hua, has been a favourite with Japanese copyists, whose imitations have often proved dangerously clever. Still, there are enough genuine specimens in public and private collections in England to provide a fair representation of the ware. In studying these the blue and white will be found to vary widely, both in body material and in the colour of the blue, according to the quality of the objects.

On the other hand, a large double-gourd vase in the British Museum, heavily made , is painted with the eighteen Arhats, or Buddhist apostles, in a dull greyish blue, which would certainly have been assigned to the Wan Li period were it not for the Chia Ching mark. This is, no doubt, the native cobalt without any admixture of Mohammedan blue.

The body material in these specimens varies scarcely less than the blue. In the colour stand on Plate 77 the ware is a pure clean white, both in body and glaze. On other specimens--particularly the large, heavily built jars and vases made for export to India and Persia--the ware is of coarser grain, and the glaze of grey or greenish tone. The tendency of the Ming biscuit to assume a reddish tinge where exposed to the fire is exaggerated on some of these large jars, so that the exposed parts at the base and foot rim are sometimes a dark reddish brown. Doubtless the clay from different mines varied considerably, and the less pure materials would be used on these relatively coarse productions. On the other hand, the better class of dish and bowl made for service at the table is usually of clean white ware, potted thin and neatly finished, and differing but little in refinement from the choice porcelains of the eighteenth century. Such are the dragon dish described on p. 32 and the polychrome saucers which will be mentioned presently.

An interesting series of Ming blue and white export wares collected in India was lent to the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910 by Mrs. Halsey. It included a few Chia Ching specimens, and among them a melon-shaped jar with lotus scrolls in the dark blue of the period. This melon form has been popular with the Chinese potters from T'ang times, and it occurs fairly often in the Ming export porcelains. A companion piece, for instance, at the same exhibition was decorated with handsome pine, bamboo, and plum designs. Others, again, are appropriately ornamented with a melon vine pattern, a gourd vine, or a grape vine with a squirrel-like animal on the branches. The drawing of these pieces is usually rough but vigorous, the form is good, and the blue as a rule soft and pleasing; and though entirely wanting in the superfine finish of the choice K'ang Hsi blue and white, they have a decorative value which has been sadly underrated.

Two interesting ewers in the Dresden collection probably belong to this period, or at any rate to the sixteenth century. They are fantastically shaped to represent a phoenix and a lobster, and are decorated with green, yellow, aubergine and a little turquoise applied direct to the biscuit. Parts of the surface have been lightly coated with gilding, which has almost entirely disappeared. These pieces are mentioned in an inventory of 1640, and a lobster ewer precisely similar was included in the collection made by Philipp Hainhofer in the early years of the seventeenth century.

Among the examples of on-glaze enamels of this period are those in which the coral red derived from iron oxide is the most conspicuous colour. This red is often highly iridescent, displaying soft ruby reflections like Persian lustre; at other times it is richly fluxed, and has a peculiarly vitreous and almost sticky appearance. The former effect is well seen in a small saucer in the British Museum, which has a wide border of deep lustrous red surrounding a medallion with lions and a brocade ball in green. The latter is seen on a square, covered vase in the same case, decorated on each side with full-faced dragons in red and the usual cloud accessories in inconspicuous touches of green and yellow. The yellow enamel of the period is often of an impure, brownish tint and rather thickly applied, but these peculiarities of both yellow and red continued in the Wan Li period.

A box in the collection of Dr. C. Seligmann has a dragon design reserved in a blue ground and washed over with yellow enamel, on which in turn are details traced in iron red; and another peculiar type of Chia Ching polychrome in the Pierpont Morgan Collection is a tea cup with blue Imperial dragons inside, "on the outside deep yellow glaze with decoration in brownish red of intensely luminous tone, derived from iron, lightly brushed on the yellow ground: the decoration consists of a procession of boys carrying vases of flowers round the sides of the cup with addition of a scroll of foliage encircling the rim." Both these specimens have the Chia Ching mark.

The Chia Ching monochromes already mentioned include white, blue, sky blue, lustrous brown, turquoise, green, yellow, and aubergine, with or without designs engraved in the paste . None of these call for any further comment, unless it be the distinction between blue and sky blue of the Imperial wares. The former, no doubt, resulted from the Mohammedan blue mixed with the glaze, and must have been a fine blue of slightly violet tone: the latter was apparently the lavender-tinted blue which goes by the name of sky blue on the more modern porcelains.

"In the Chia Ching and Lung Ch'ing periods there lived a man who was clever at making porcelain . He was famed for imitations of the wares in the traditional style and make of the Hs?an T? and Ch'?ng Hua periods, and in his time he enjoyed the highest reputation. The name given to his wares was Mr. Ts'ui's porcelain , and they were eagerly sought in all parts of the empire. As for the shape of his cups , when compared with the Hs?an and Ch'?ng specimens they differed in size but displayed the same skill and perfection of design. In the blue and polychrome wares his colours were all like the originals. His were, in fact, the cream of the porcelains made in the private factories ."

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