Edward Dillon - Porcelain

Porcelain in China followed, as we shall see, in the wake of the more early developed arts of the bronze-caster and the jade-carver. Hence the prevalence in the early wares of shapes unsuitable to the wheel.

I think that this is a more practical division than the one made by M. Vogt and adopted by Dr. Bushell.

An important exception is to be noted in the case of the firing of large vases in China.

A good instance of the first case is the finding of crow-claws in the rubbish-heaps of Fostât or Old Cairo. As to the method of support indicating the place of origin, see what is said below about the celadon ware of Siam.

There is only one exception of any importance—the porcelain of Chantilly, much of which has an opaque stanniferous glaze.

So we can infer from the magnificent wall decoration of the Achæmenian period brought home from Susa by M. Dieulafoi.

A glaze of this nature was in the Saracenic East applied to a layer of fine white slip, which itself formed a coating on the coarse paste. Such a combination, often very difficult to distinguish from a tin enamel, we find on the wall-tiles of Persia and Damascus.

Metallic gold has, of course, been applied to the decoration of porcelain in all countries.

The colour of the ruby glass in our thirteenth century windows has a very similar origin. In this case the art was lost and only in a measure recovered at a later period. As in the case of the Chinese glaze, the point was to seize the moment when the copper was first reduced and, in a minute state of division, was suspended in floccular masses in the glass.

With these colours a dark blue is sometimes associated. Is this derived like the turquoise from copper? It is a curious fact that we have here exactly the same range of colours that we find in the little glass bottles of Phœnician or Egyptian origin, with zig-zag patterns (1500-400 B.C.).

See Vogt, La Porcelaine , p. 219. The problem is really more complicated. For simplicity’s sake we have ignored the changes that take place in the glaze that lies between the enamels and the paste.

The same result may be obtained by painting one colour over the other, as we find in the black ground of the famille verte .

In Persia, where for three centuries at least the Chinese wares have been known and imitated, the word chini has almost the same connotation. See below for a discussion of the route by which this word reached England.

During the eighteenth century, however, the French missionaries remained in friendly relation with the Chinese court, especially with the Emperor Kien-lung, a man of culture and a poet. The Père Amiot sent home not only letters with valuable information, but from time to time presents of porcelain from the emperor. He was in correspondence with the minister Bertin, who was himself a keen collector of porcelain. See the notes in the Catalogue of Bertin’s sale, Paris, 1815.

Thanks to the industry of the present curator, Herr Zimmermann, the same may now be said of the great collection at Dresden.

For a discussion, and for many illustrations of the art of these early dynasties which survives chiefly in objects of jade or bronze, see Paléologue, Art Chinois , Paris, 1887.

The wild statements as to the transparency, above all, of the Sung and even the Tang porcelain may, however, appear to receive some confirmation from the reports of the old Arab travellers. But how much credence we can give to these authorities may be gleaned from a description of the fayence of Egypt, by a Persian traveller of the eleventh century. ‘This ware of Misr,’ he says, ‘is so fine and diaphanous that the hand may be seen through it when it is applied to the side of the vessel.’ He is speaking not of porcelain, but of a silicious glazed earthenware!

Pekin Oriental Society , 1886; see also Bushell’s Ceramic Art , p. 132 seq.

See the passage in his History (chapter ix.) where this stern censor, referring to the passion for collecting china, rebukes the ‘frivolous and inelegant fashion’ for ‘these grotesque baubles.’

The name Céladon first occurs in the Astrée , the once famous novel of Honoré D’Urfé. When later in the seventeenth century Céladon, the courtier-shepherd, was introduced on the stage, he appeared in a costume of greyish green, which became the fashionable colour of the time, and his name was transferred to the Chinese porcelain with a glaze of very similar colour, which was first introduced into France about that period.

Julien translated the word ching as blue, an unfortunate rendering in this case, which has been the cause of much confusion. He was so far justified in this, in that the same word is used by the Chinese for the cobalt blue of our ‘blue and white,’ while it was not applied by them to a pronounced green tint.

I shall return to this point when treating of English porcelain.

Somewhat later the Chinese were for a time neighbours of the Sassanian empire, where the arts of glazing pottery and making glass were highly developed. Sassanian bronzes, and probably textiles, have found their way to Japan.

The salt-glazed ware of Europe seems to be the only important exception to this perhaps rather sweeping generalisation.

It is possible, however, that some of the various tints of brown used from early Ming times, especially that known to the Chinese as ‘old gold,’ may have been suggested by this copper lustre. The ground on which this lustre is superimposed in some old Persian wares is of a very similar shade. Dr. Bushell mentions a tradition that the old potters tried to produce a yellow colour by adding metallic gold to their glaze, but that the gold all disappeared in the heat of the grand feu . They had therefore to fall back upon the or bruni .

Consult for this ware the beautifully illustrated monographs of Mr. Henry Wallis on early Persian ceramics.

The cobalt pigment itself, when not of native origin, was known to the Chinese in Ming times as Hui-hui ch’ing or ‘Mohammedan blue.’ The other names for the material, sunipo and sumali , probably point in the same direction.

A little white oval vase, in the Treasury of St. Mark’s, at Venice, may possibly be of this old Ting ware. The decoration is in low relief, and four little rings for suspension surround the mouth. In any case this is the only piece in this famous collection that has any claim to be classed as porcelain.

The style of this cloisonné decoration is almost identical with that seen in the two magnificent lacquer screens with landscapes and Buddhist emblems at South Kensington. The chains of pearls and pendeloques are characteristic of a style of painting often found on the beams and ceilings of the old Buddhist temples of Japan. This is, I think, a motif not found elsewhere on Chinese porcelain.