Edward Dillon - Porcelain

Cheng-tung reigned from 1435 to 1449; he was then captured by the Mongols, and during the five years of his imprisonment his brother Cheng-tai reigned in his stead. When Cheng-tung returned from his captivity he adopted a fresh name. 52This is the only instance of a double nien-hao in later Chinese history. We hear of Cheng-tai in connection with the introduction of enamels on metal, but for the history of porcelain both reigns are a blank.

Cheng-hua (1464-87).—This is a name familiar to collectors. It is found more frequently than any other on highly finished vases dating really from the eighteenth century. Strangely enough, this is the favourite mark on the finest blue and white of this later time, although, as we have already pointed out, the Chinese books tell us that, the sources of the foreign cobalt blue being in Cheng-hua’s time exhausted, more attention was given to coloured decoration. This was the time of the famous ‘chicken-cups,’ for which such fabulous sums were given. These cups are described as decorated with the wu-tsai or five colours; and the subject painted on them, a hen and chickens by the side of a flowering peony-bush, reminds one of the enamelled egg-shell cups of Kien-lung (1735-95). The Ming cups were copied, we are told, at that time; but it is difficult to connect this early ware, of which unfortunately we possess no specimen, with the delicate enamel decoration of the famille rose . 53

Hung-chi (1487-1505).—This name appears especially on the back of bowls in association with a yellow glaze of various shades, and, in agreement this time with the material evidence, the Chinese books mention this yellow as a speciality of the reign. Not that we can regard all yellow ware with this mark as even of this dynasty; like other Ming ware it was imitated in the eighteenth century. The yellow varies from the pale brown of the raw chestnut to a full gamboge tint. There is at South Kensington a dish or shallow bowl with a full yellow glaze; on the back beside the nien-hao of Hung-chi, a Persian inscription and a date corresponding to the sixteenth century has been cut in the paste.

Cheng-te (1505-21).—The decoration of blue on a white ground is said to have been revived in this reign. A new material, the hui-ching 54or Mohammedan blue, was obtained from Yun-nan. In connection with this, we can point to a curious collection of bronze and porcelain, with both Arabic and Chinese inscriptions, made probably for Mohammedan Chinese. These objects were obtained by the late Sir A. W. Franks from Pekin, and are now in the British Museum. Among them there are several pieces of blue and white with the Cheng-te year-mark. 55On one of these pieces the Persian word for ‘writing-case’ forms part of the decoration ( Pl. viii.). It is in this reign that we hear for the first time of the oppression exercised by the court officials upon the potters of King-te-chen, and now also we find the court eunuchs in the highest positions,—the great days of the Ming dynasty are already passed.

Kia-tsing (1521-66).—The name of this emperor is often found on blue and white porcelain, and it is a favourite one with the Japanese imitators. Some specimens in our collections, of a fine sapphire blue (the colour is indeed often inclined to run), may perhaps be referred to this reign. The demands for the court were very extensive, and if we are to trust the list of articles quoted by Dr. Bushell from the Fou-liang annals, the porcelain made for the palace during this period was, with the exception of a little of that with a brown ground, confined to blue and white ware.

PLATE VIII. CHINESE, BLUE AND WHITE WARE

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Some English porcelain is stated by Professor Church to have a hardness equal to that of quartz. See below, ‘Bristol Porcelain.’

We have thought it well, once for all, to treat briefly of the scientific aspect of our subject, but those who are not interested in this point of view may pass over the next few pages.

I shall return to this point in a later chapter. I lay the more stress on this fact, as it is often stated that the hard and slightly translucent stonewares, such as the Fulham ware of Dwight, which contains as much as eighty per cent. of silica, form one degree of a series of which true porcelain is the next term. The fact is, those who sought to make porcelain by a refinement in the manufacture of stoneware were as much astray as those who started from a fusible glass frit.

The china-stone of Cornwall might, in part at least, be claimed as an old volcanic rock, and that used in the Imari district of Japan is distinctly of volcanic origin. Both these rocks, however, consist essentially of a mixture of quartz and felspar.

For further details consult the authorities quoted in the Handbook of the Jermyn Street Collection, p. 5; for sections showing the relation of the beds of kaolin to the surrounding rock, see Brongniart’s Traité des Arts Céramiques , vol. i.

It is to the scattered notices and essays of Mr. William Burton that we must go for information in this country. In his new work on English Porcelain he does not treat upon this side of the subject.

The most complete work on the processes of manufacture is now Dubreuil’s La Porcelaine , Paris, 1885. It forms part forty-two in Fremy’s Encyclopédie Chimique . This volume brings up to date and replaces in some measure the great work of Alexandre Brongniart, the Traité des Arts Céramiques (two volumes, with a quarto volume of plates), Paris, 1844. M. Georges Vogt in La Porcelaine , Paris, 1893, gives valuable details of the processes employed at Sèvres.

The cailloux of the French. This material is often described as felspar, but I think that quartz can seldom be completely absent.

I should, however, be inclined to class not only much of the porcelain of Japan, but some of that made in Germany and in south-west France, rather in the ‘severe’ kaolinic than in the intermediary class of M. Vogt.

We can, however, distinguish, in the tomb paintings of the Middle Empire, an earlier form without the lower table. This earlier type, moved by hand from the upper table, was that used by the Greeks at least as late as the sixth century B.C., and a similar primitive wheel is still used in India. On later Egyptian monuments of Ptolemaic time, the potter is seen moving the wheel by pressing his foot on a second lower table, as now at Sèvres and elsewhere. Both forms of wheel appear to have been used by the Italian potters of the Renaissance.

This seam is often visible on vases of old Chinese porcelain, and may be taken as a sign that the object has been moulded.