Edward Dillon - Porcelain

IT was in the course of the three centuries during which the Ming dynasty ruled in China that the greatest advance was made in the manufacture of porcelain. When, however, we come to look a little more closely, we find that this long period may be shortened by nearly a hundred years. Before the accession of Yung-lo (1402), and after the death of Wanli (1619), the times were little favourable to the arts of peace, and even in this shorter period of two centuries there were intervals, indeed whole reigns, of which there is little to report.

The points of chief importance to remember in connection with this dynasty are—1. That not later than the beginning of the fifteenth century the employment of the oxides of copper and cobalt for decoration under the glaze was coming into general use. To this, or perhaps to an earlier date, we must assign the beginnings of the ware that we in England are wont to consider the most important of all, the great family of ‘blue and white’ porcelain. 2. That probably about the same time, or soon after, the ‘painted glazes,’ as we have called them, were introduced. In this ware the colours required for the decoration—the palette was a very restricted one—were painted directly on the biscuit, the piece having been previously fired; it was then re-fired at a moderate heat. 3. That at a later period, probably about the middle of the sixteenth century, the employment of enamel colours above the glaze was introduced, probably under European influence.

It is the blue and white that we are above all accustomed to associate with the Ming period. But this is not the Chinese point of view. If we consult the Bushell manuscript (see chap. v.) we find that Tzu-ching, towards the end of the sixteenth century, had in his collection thirty-nine pieces which he attributed to the reigning dynasty, but of these only five or six would be classed by us as ‘blue and white’; at least equal importance was given to those decorated with copper-red under the glaze, and even more specimens belong to the class of painted glazes. These latter are chiefly little objects—pen-rests, rouge-pots, and small wine-jars moulded to represent plant and animal forms, the gourd or again the persimmon being great favourites. We must not confuse these early specimens, dating mostly from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the somewhat similar objects so much sought after by the French collectors in the eighteenth century, which belong for the most part to the contemporary famille verte ; on these the decoration is given for the most part by enamels painted over the glaze . Still it is from some of these little magots that we can perhaps form the best idea of the coloured porcelain so prized by Tzu-ching, but of which we are unable to point to any specimens in our collections.

In connection with these painted glazes—for it undoubtedly belongs to this class—it may be well to say something of a very decorative ware of which the origin is probably to be placed in early Ming times. The colours are distinctly those of the demi grand feu , and in this ware we have the earliest instance of the use of these colours. This porcelain occurs most frequently in the shape of vases of baluster outline with contracted necks and small mouths, or sometimes of the more ordinary oil-jar shape, with wide mouths. We may distinguish two types of this ware. In the first the decoration is given by means of a low relief of beads and of ribs surrounding countersunk cloisons . The field between these cloisons is of a deep blue passing into a blue-black, and the cloisons themselves are filled with a wash of turquoise or straw-yellow. Chains of pearls in festoon surround the neck, and from these hang pendeloques of various Buddhist emblems. On the body of these vases the decoration often consists of lotus-plants arising from conventional waves. 40In the second type the turquoise blue predominates, an impure pale manganese is added, and the jars are often built up of an open-work trellis of bars. Both the turquoise and aubergine purple porcelain of the Kang-he period, as well as the Japanese Kishiu ware, may possibly be traced back to a Ming porcelain of this class. There are specimens of all these wares in the British Museum and at South Kensington. In the Salting collection is a jar of the cloisonné type, the blue-black ground covered with a skin of thin glaze of a dull surface. This jar was formerly the property of a Japanese collector ( Pl. ii.). 41

The colours applied under the glaze are confined to cobalt blue and copper red. The latter when fine in tint was greatly prized by the Chinese, and we are informed that in the most brilliant specimens the colour was given by ‘powdered rubies from the West.’ It was, however, a treacherous colour to use, and after the period of Hsuan-te (1425-1435), which was famous for its ruby-red, it fell into comparative disuse and was displaced in a measure at a later date by a more manageable iron red. The use of the copper sub-oxide to obtain a red, sous couverte , was, however, revived in the time of Kang-he. On examples in European collections this red, when used alone or in connection with blue, is generally of a rather poor maroon colour, and it has not found much favour with us. The colour was often thus applied to the painting of fish, floating, it may be, among blue water-weeds. We see it at its best as a monochrome on some little bowls, enlivened with a floral design in gold, in the British Museum. These cups and some similar ones at Dresden undoubtedly date from Ming times; the ruby tint seen through a brilliant glaze has never been equalled in later days. With these we may compare certain little apple-green bowls similarly decorated with gold. One of these in a silver-gilt mounting of the early sixteenth century is in the Gold Room at the British Museum ( Pl. v.).

PLATE V. CHINESE

What we somewhat vaguely call ‘blue and white,’ that is porcelain decorated under the glaze with designs painted with cobalt blue, has always formed the most important class in the eyes of European collectors, at least of those of England and Holland. This preference has been even more marked with the people of India and Persia, and no wonder, for no combination of colour more suggestive of coolness could be imagined. It has thus come about that this class of ware, more than any other, has been made with the direct object of exportation. This blue and white porcelain of China and Japan, which has found its way into so many lands both of Europe and Asia, has for centuries had the profoundest influence upon the native wares of these countries, whether of porcelain or of fayence.

In China, by the introduction of this process of freely painting with a brush upon the surface of the paste, the potters art was for the first time brought into contact with that of the painter, and thus fell under new influences. The artists of China at that time were divided into many schools, but what we may call the literary or dilettante influence was predominant, and this influence is reflected in the subjects treated on Ming porcelain—subjects which, as usual in China, were handed on to the ceramic artists of the next dynasty. The earliest decoration in blue and white in no way followed, as far as we know, the hierated types of the old bronze ware. Such motifs we do indeed sometimes see repeated on porcelain, but only on pieces that may safely be attributed to a much later date, especially to the pseudo-archaic revival of Yung-cheng’s time (1722-35).

There is no class of Chinese porcelain to which it is more difficult to assign even an approximate date than to this blue and white ware. We may say at once that the nien-hao , or the characters giving the name of the dynasty and the emperor, so often found inscribed on the base, are in the vast majority of cases of no value for fixing the date, and this is especially true when the name of a Ming emperor is thus found. What is more, these marks, as far as we can judge (from the knowledge we now possess derived from other sources), do not, as we might have expected, even help us in giving hints of the style prevailing at the period indicated by the date. To take but one example, the reign-mark of Cheng-hua (1464-87) is the one most frequently found on the finest pieces of blue and white (in the Salting collection, for instance), but by far the greater number of the pieces so marked undoubtedly date from the beginning of the eighteenth century. On the other hand, the Chinese books all agree in telling us that this Cheng-hua period was noted for a decline in the excellence of the blue, but on the other hand was pre-eminent for its coloured decoration. It was rather the earlier Hsuan-te period (1425-35) that was renowned for the brilliancy of its blue. These statements of the Chinese authorities are confirmed by an analysis of the Ming specimens illustrated in the Bushell manuscript. The Japanese, perhaps a little more rationally, give the preference to the reigns of Hsuan-te and Yung-lo (1402-24), for the date-marks of these emperors (‘Sentoku’ and ‘Yeiraku’ in the Japanese reading) are to be read on the commonest modern blue and white in domestic use in that country.