Edward Dillon - Porcelain

This is a point that cannot be too strongly dwelt upon. Perhaps if a little more of the care and research that have been devoted to the reading of these nien-hao and other inscriptions on Chinese porcelain had been earlier directed to a careful examination of the glazes and enamels, and to questions of technique generally, the misconceptions that so long prevailed as to the dating and classification of Oriental porcelain would have been sooner dispelled.

But what means have we then for settling the date of a piece of Chinese blue and white ware? What criterion is there for distinguishing between specimens of early Ming, late Ming, or Manchu times?—or indeed between those of Chinese and Japanese origin? That we even now possess no very exact criterion is shown by the wide difference of opinion so often found in individual cases. If we are to form our judgment from the rare extant pieces of blue and white known to have been imported into Europe in the sixteenth century, we must regard the Ming ware as distinguished by a certain irregularity of surface, seen best by side-reflected lights; the pieces are generally moulded, and the marks of the lines of junction of the moulds are often to be traced on the surface; the paste, too, is generally very thick, and sometimes shows gaping fissures at the margin. The drawing of the design is somewhat hasty and summary, although at times distinguished by a freshness of handling and by a certain caligraphic freedom. But we must not draw too hasty an inference from the few specimens in our European collections, many of which must have been made, as we shall see later on, at a period of temporary decline; nor are we justified in regarding mere articles of commerce, as most of these specimens undoubtedly were, as representative of the higher artistic products of the time.

The blue in these early pieces is generally of a full tint but not of any remarkable quality. There are, however, to be found a few specimens, heavily moulded indeed and of irregular contour, decorated with cobalt blue of a full sapphire tint. Of this class there are one or two brilliant specimens both in the British Museum and at South Kensington. In these and in other Ming wares the surface of the glaze is often dulled, and this is not always the result of minute scratches, for sometimes a process of devitrification appears to have set in. 42Another class of Ming ware is distinguished by a decoration delicately painted in a pale blue tint, and it was this style that was copied by the Japanese in their Mikawaji ware of the seventeenth century.

It is to later Ming times that we must attribute the bulk of the rough heavy ware of which so much is found in India. 43These are generally large plates and bowls, often discoloured from having been used for cooking purposes. The decoration is hastily executed in a dull indigo blue (derived of course from cobalt, as in other cases), and the outlines are often accentuated by black lines. Many fine specimens of this picturesque ware, from the collection of Mrs. Halsey, were shown in the exhibition of blue and white ware at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1895. It was claimed for one large vase that it came from the palace of the Moguls at Agra, and that it had been presented to Jehangir by the Chinese emperor Wan-li (1572-1619). It is often stated that this class of ware was made at some factory in the south of China, probably in the neighbourhood of Canton, the port from which doubtless most of it was exported. As yet, however, no evidence, as far as I am aware, for such a factory has been brought forward, and no definite locality indicated. The statement made by the Abbé Raynal, about a factory at Shao-king Fu, rests probably upon a misconception.

PLATE VI. CHINESE, BLUE AND WHITE WARE

There are several specimens of blue and white in England, the metal mountings of which date from the early seventeenth or even from the sixteenth century. Of these the most famous are the four pieces from Burleigh House (now belonging to Mr. Pierpont Morgan), which are believed to have been in the possession of the Cecil family from the time of Queen Elizabeth. One of these bears the date-mark of Wan-li, the contemporary of that queen. This ware is not particularly fine, the surfaces are irregular, and all the pieces are apparently moulded ( Pl. xxviii.).

This subject, however, of the early presence of Chinese porcelain in other lands we shall return to in a later chapter.

So far, then, with such imperfect lights as are at our command, we have attempted to follow up the history of porcelain, and so far, say up to the middle of the sixteenth century, China is practically the only country with which we are concerned. Some fair imitations of celadon, the martabani of Oriental commerce, had probably by this time been made in Siam and perhaps elsewhere, and the Japanese were already in a sporadic way experimenting with imported and native clays. But up to the sixteenth century the Chinese had practically the monopoly of the art, and as we have seen they had at that time the command of three processes of decoration—that is by monochrome glazes, by painting with glazes of a few simple colours on the biscuit, and finally by means of cobalt blues and copper reds painted on the surface of the raw paste.

Not but that some attempts may have already been made to apply coloured decoration over the glaze—the next and final step in the history of porcelain. There are some passages in contemporary Chinese books, giving descriptions of elaborate subjects painted in many colours on porcelain of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which it would be difficult to apply to our class of painted glazes. Thus—to take a pronounced instance from an unexceptionable source—the miniature wine-cups, No. 59 of the Bushell manuscript, are attributed by Tzu-ching to the reign of Cheng-hua (1464-87), and he describes them thus—‘They are painted in enamel colours’ (so Dr. Bushell translates the original) ‘with flowers and insects; … the cockscomb, the narcissus and other flowers, the flying dragon-fly and crawling mantis are minutely painted after life in green, yellow, and crimson enamel.’ (This, by the way, is a combination of colours which it must have been difficult to apply at one firing with the pigments known at that time.) And yet in the absence of any specimen of enamelled ware (using the word enamel in its restricted sense for a decoration applied over the glaze) that can with certainty be attributed to so early a period, it will be safer to postpone the date of the introduction of this decoration, sur couverte , for another hundred years.

It will be remembered that the distinctive feature of this decoration with enamels is the use of an easily fusible silicate, containing much lead—in fact a kind of flint glass. A glass of this description is capable of being stained by the addition of small quantities of certain metallic oxides, some of which would not stand the heat requisite for the firing of the porcelain. This, in fact, is the application to porcelain of the arts of the glass-stainer and of the enameller, arts already at this time fully developed in the West. For once the Chinese authorities all agree in finding in an exotic and indeed Western art the origin of their enamelled porcelain. When, however, we attempt to interpret their statements we are landed in an even more than customary chaos—so many are the different readings for the names of foreign countries and for technical processes.

Let us then consider for a moment what the materials were that the Chinese had to draw from—whether from Arab or other sources.

Putting aside the application of stained glass to windows, for specimens of this art are not easily exported, these may be summed up as, first, the enamelled glass of the Saracens, and secondly, the cloisonnés and champlevés enamels of the Byzantines and other Western nations.