Edward Dillon - Porcelain

The late M. Du Sartel gives in his work on Chinese porcelain good photographs of some jars of this class in his collection. He was one of the first to call attention to this ware.

This dull surface is especially noticeable in some of the specimens with Arabic inscriptions in the British Museum; these date from the Cheng-te period (1505-21).

In Persia, too, and in that country accompanied by many other varieties of Chinese porcelain. For examples of these wares see above all the collection at South Kensington.

Relations des Musulmans avec les Chinois. It is not impossible, however, that further research may bring to light some information on this subject. Since writing this I hear from Dr. Bushell that some specimens of Saracenic enamelled glass, presumably of the fourteenth century, have lately been purchased in Pekin. The Arab trade with China was probably never more active than in the first half of the fifteenth century. It is with the Memlook Sultans, then ruling a wide empire from Cairo, that we must associate most of this enamelled glass, and the Eastern trade was in their hands.

See Bushell, p. 454.

Note that cobalt as an enamel colour was not applied on porcelain during Ming times.

There is, however, a curious old bowl in the Salting collection with the nien-hao of Cheng-te (1505-21), on which a design of iron red, two shades of green, a brownish purple, and a cobalt blue of poor lavender tint, all these colours over the glaze , is combined with an underglaze decoration of fish, in a full copper red . Note also the early use of a cobalt blue enamel, sur couverte , in the Kakiyemon ware of Japan.

Much of this kind was translated by Julien, and a good summary may be found in Hippisley’s paper contributed to the Smithsonian Institute, but the information from the same and other sources is more accurately translated and critically analysed in the seventh and eighth chapters of Dr. Bushell’s great work.

Yung-lo, according to the Chinese reckoning, did not commence his reign until the new year’s day following the death of his predecessor (1403). I have, however, thought it better to adopt the European method of reckoning dates.

The name Sentoku that they give to it is the Japanese reading of the characters forming this emperor’s name.

We may mention that a pair of wide-mouthed vases of this ware, shown at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1896, bore the nien-hao of Kia-tsing (1521-66) inscribed round the mouth.

More properly a fresh name was given to the period , but for the sake of brevity we here as elsewhere identify the emperor’s name with that given to the nien-hao.

The Trenchard bowls, mentioned below, belong probably to this or to the following reign.

But this name is also applied by some to the older Su-ma-li blue.

Perhaps the earliest nien-hao on a piece of blue and white in which we can place any confidence.