Porcelain

There remains, then, the bowl of pale sea-green celadon, mounted in silver gilt, preserved at New College, Oxford. This is known as the cup of Archbishop Warham (1504-32): it is said to have been presented to the college by that prelate, and the early date is confirmed by the style of the mounting. It is at least a curious coincidence that this celadon cup, the doyen, it would seem, of all the Chinese porcelain in Europe, should prove to be a specimen of the ware first exported from China.133

M. de Laborde, in his glossary, quotes from the inventory of the goods of Margaret of Austria, the Regent of the Low Countries during the minority of her nephew, the future Emperor Charles v., the following items among others: Un beau grand pot de pourcelaine bleue à deux agneaux d’argent. Deux autres esguières d’une sorte de porcelayne bleue. Ung beau gobelet de porcelayne blanche, à couvercle, painct à l’entour de personnaiges d’hommes et femmes.’

An additional interest is given to this inventory of the possessions of the Regent Margaret when we remember that it was of her brother that the following story is told:—In the spring of 1506 Philip started from the Netherlands for Spain, along with his wife Joanna, to claim for the latter the crown of Castile, vacant by the death of the great Queen Isabella. Driven by a storm into Weymouth Harbour, the pair were entertained by Sir Thomas Trenchard, the High Sheriff of the county, at his house not far from Dorchester. On leaving, Philip gave to his host some bowls of Oriental porcelain. Two of these bowls of blue and white ware remain in the possession of the representatives of the Trenchard family. One of them is set in a silver gilt mounting of about 1550, with a London hall-mark on the inside. On the outside of the bowl is a bold floral decoration, and inside some quaint archaic fish, similar to those on the Cheng-te bowl in the Salting collection. They have been lately described by Mr. Winthrop in Gulland’s Oriental China, vol. ii.

We have now come to a time when a new channel was opened by which the porcelain and other produce of the Far East could reach Europe. In the year 1517 Fernando Perez D’Andrada sailed from Malacca to the roads of Canton, and the Portuguese not long after established some kind of understanding with the Chinese, which permitted them to trade at that port and at Ningpo. This arrangement, however, lasted but for a short time. Some aggressive proceedings on the part of a new admiral sent out from Portugal aroused the latent hostility of the Ming Government, and the newcomers were before long confined to that ambiguous position at Macao that they occupy to the present day. There does not seem to be any direct evidence that porcelain formed part of the merchandise that they at that time—I mean during the sixteenth century—sent back to Europe; but after the end of the century, when Portugal and her colonies were for a time absorbed in the vast empire ruled by Philip ii. of Spain, a considerable amount of the Oriental ware reached the Peninsula by way of ‘the Indies.’ Specimens of this old porcelain, chiefly of the plain white that the Spanish have always preferred, may still be found, it is said, in some of the royal palaces.

The Portuguese in some measure took the place of the Arabs, whose shipping they had driven out from the Indian seas, and it was now in their ships that the Chinese porcelain was carried to the markets of India and Persia. But by the end of the sixteenth century the Portuguese, now sailing under the Spanish flag, began to feel the rivalry of a new power that was destined before long to monopolise nearly the whole trade of the Far East. In 1604, three ships bearing an ambassador and his suite arrived at Canton. The Chinese were alarmed at the singular aspect of these new people, ‘with blue eyes, red hair, and feet one cubit and two-tenths long.’ The Dutch, however—for such these newcomers were—effected little by this embassy, and it is indeed difficult to understand, when we read of the troubled relations of foreign nations with the fast sinking Ming rulers in those stormy days, in what manner and by what route the porcelain that was now reaching the markets of India, Persia, and somewhat later, of Europe, in such large quantities, found its way out from China. After the establishment of the new Manchu dynasty in 1644, the three southern provinces, including the ports of the Canton river and of the Fukien coast, long remained in the hands of the native Chinese admiral or pirate, so well known to Europeans as Coxinga, and it was not till some years after the accession of Kang-he that the imperial authority was established in these parts, and the trade road re-opened with the newly rebuilt kilns of King-te-chen.134

The English at that time had not much direct intercourse with China. What little reached us from that country seems to have been obtained rather by piracy than by trade. In the days of Elizabeth, when a Spanish merchantman or carrack was captured, next to the bullion there was nothing that was more eagerly sought for than porcelain, both that which might form part of the cargo and any pieces in use at the officers’ table. As late as the year 1637, it was through the medium of the Portuguese that the bulk of the English trade with China was carried on. Meantime, however, we had established ourselves in the Persian Gulf, and in the year 1623 we assisted Shah Abbas in driving the Portuguese out of Hormus. We had at that time comparatively close relations with Persia, and there was more than one English adventurer in the service of the great Shah. There is some reason to believe that it was by way of our factories or depôts on the Persian Gulf (especially the new establishment at Gombroon,135 on the mainland, opposite the island of Hormus or Ormuz), as well as by those on the coast of India, that the porcelain of China and Japan first reached England in any quantity. In these commercial relations we may no doubt find one of the causes of the confusion that so long existed with us between the wares of Persia, India, and China.

But Chinese porcelain, as well as Persian fayence, must have reached England by another route—by way of Venice—and this at a somewhat earlier date. To this connection of ‘china-ware’ with Venice there is frequent reference in our Elizabethan literature. Florio in his Italian Dictionary (1598) interprets the word ‘china’ as ‘a Venus basin,’ and ‘china metal’ is explained by Minsheu in his Spanish Dialogues (1599) as ‘the fine dishes of earth painted such as are brought from Venice.’ Here the reference probably is to Italian or Persian fayence—in fact the tendency seems rather to have been to use the word ‘china’ for these latter wares and to reserve the term ‘purslane’ or ‘porcelaine’ for the true porcelain of the Far East.

Indeed there is every likelihood that we may find the origin of our term ‘china,’ used vaguely for the better kinds of glazed ceramic wares,136 in the Persian word chini, which has long been employed for Chinese porcelain and for the finer kinds of fayence, both in Persia and in India. The point to bear in mind is that with our ancestors this word had no direct connection with the Chinese empire, but rather with Venice and with Persia. On the other hand, the special ware known as ‘purslane,’ as we have said, was by them connected especially with that vague country known as ‘the East Indies.’

At the New Year, 1587-88, Elizabeth received from Burleigh a porringer ‘of white porselyn’ garnished with gold, and from Mr. Robert Cecil ‘a cup of grene pursselyne.’ It was not until the beginning of the next century, apparently, that porcelain, decorated with blue under the glaze, was imported in any quantity. To this time we must assign the four pieces of this ‘blue and white’ ware (one bearing the mark of Wan-li) (Pl. xxviii.) long preserved at Burleigh House, the old home of the senior branch of the Cecil family (see page 85).

By the middle of the seventeenth century Oriental porcelain had already become an important article of commerce. At that time by far the larger quantity was imported by the Dutch, and was distributed by them over France and Germany. There is, however, some reason to believe that the Portuguese continued to import certain classes of ware, but it is difficult to find any direct evidence of this commerce.137 As for the English trade, porcelain is mentioned among the goods imported by the East India Company as early as 1631.

PLATE XXVIII. CHINESE

For the most part this porcelain exported from Canton or from Nagasaki was not carried directly to Europe, but found its way first to various intermediate entrepôts of trade: in the case of the Dutch, to Batavia; with us, to certain Indian ports, or perhaps to Gombroon. This was one cause of the strange names by which the products of China and Japan were known, and of the confusion between the wares of the two countries, which has only been cleared up of late years. We hear of Batavian porcelain, and of East Indian or porcelaine des Indes.138 No doubt this ambiguity of origin was encouraged by the rival traders, who were not eager to make too public the source of their goods.

As to the composition of the ‘purslayne’ brought from the Indies, the wildest stories were current. Whether it was even of the same nature as other kinds of pottery was disputed. Even so well-informed a man as Sir Thomas Browne had his doubts. ‘We are not thoroughly resolved,’ he says, ‘concerning porcellane or china dishes, that according to common belief they are made of earth.’ The quaint story of the clay being preserved for long ages before it was fit for use, we find for the first time apparently in some of the late versions of Marco Polo’s travels. From Marryat, who collected a wealth of quotations139 referring to porcelain from writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we take as an example the following (it is from a book written by Guido Pancirolli, a learned jurisconsult and antiquary of Padua, who died in 1599):—‘In former ages, porcelains were never seen. Now they are a certain mass composed of gypsum, bruised eggs, the shell of the marine locust [perhaps the Langusta or Mediterranean lobster], and other substances; and this, being well tempered and thickened, is hidden underground in a secret place, which the father points out to his children, etc.’ He then goes on to speak of the transparency of this ware, and of its property of breaking when any poisonous substance was placed in it.

We must remember that by this time attempts had already been made in Italy, both in Tuscany and probably still earlier in Venice, to imitate the porcelain of China. These experiments were soon abandoned, but the more practical Dutch, not long after this time, succeeded in making with their enamelled earthenware an imitation of the finer Chinese blue and white, closer to the original, as far as external aspect is concerned, than anything that has been produced in Europe since that time in ware of any description. The name of Albregt de Keizer (circa 1661) it would seem is to be associated with these excellent copies. There are some brilliant specimens of this seventeenth century delft at South Kensington, both in the Keramic Gallery and in the Salting collection.

Early in the reign of Charles ii., the fashion of drinking tea and chocolate became fashionable, if not general, in England. Coffee had been introduced somewhat earlier—it came from Turkey by way of Venice. Along with these new infusions came the demand for the little cups from which they were to be drunk, and for the pots in which to brew them. The form and fashion of these came to us not from China but from Venice, from Constantinople, and perhaps ultimately from Persia. One consequence of this was that the confusion between the wares of the East and of the Far East became for the time even greater. In the drinking-song quoted on page 243, we find ‘tea-cups and coffee’ associated with ‘the Turk and the Sophi,’ while not a word is said of China.

At the same time larger pieces, garnitures de cheminée, pots pourris, and fish-bowls began to find a place in the decoration of a nobleman’s house. Before the end of the century there came in a rage for quaint monsters and figures of Chinese gods, at first chiefly in white porcelain. Many such pieces may still be found on the mantels and in the china-closets of our country houses, but unfortunately we have in few cases any record of the date of acquisition or of the provenance of ware of this kind.

At Hampton Court there is a quantity of old china now well displayed in the rooms shown to the public. This is a collection that well repays a close examination. Let us see first what it does not contain. The famille rose is unrepresented. I do not think that the rouge d’or enamel is to be found on a single specimen. The ‘Old Japan’ or Imari is not found, at least not in characteristic specimens. On the other hand there are many interesting examples of Chinese enamelled ware which we may class with the five-colour group (the blue of course under the glaze). They are roughly painted with figures in Ming costume, but in these pieces the green is scarcely prominent enough to allow of our placing them among the famille verte. They belong rather to that class of late Wan-li or early Kang-he enamels which formed the starting-point of the earliest enamelled wares of Imari and Kutani. Of the three-colour glazes of the demi grand feu, I would point to two interesting vases, about twelve inches in height, with a mottled decoration of green and dark purple, and with yellow handles. There are quite a number of large fish-bowls of blue and white, but these pieces are not remarkable either for colour or design. Of more interest are two cylindrical vases decorated, sous couverte, with blue and pale copper red, and a curious vase of Persian shape covered with flowers in white slip over a café au lait ground. Again, the plain white figures of Quanyin, with the ‘Maintenon’ coif, and in some cases with the boy patron of learning at the side, are here as abundant relatively as at Dresden, and there is finally a well-executed figure of a Buddhist ascetic in white biscuit. Unless it be by the blue and white, Japan is represented solely by the ‘Kakiyemon’ enamelled ware, with the blue over the glaze.

But we must not pass over the little glazed cabinet filled with quaint pieces of Chinese porcelain. The contents of this cabinet have, it is said, remained untouched since the day, more than two hundred years ago, when they were arranged by Queen Mary. Among many curious pieces on its shelves may be seen two buffaloes of a pale celadon ware, four vases of ‘hookah-base’ form, with strange-shaped spouts, and some censers in the form of kilins.

The general impression, we may finally say, given by a somewhat close inspection of the porcelain at Hampton Court, confirms the little we know of the date of its origin. It represents a period anterior to the great renaissance at King-te-chen at the end of the seventeenth century, but only just anterior to that time, and it is the absence of the finer and more brilliant wares made subsequently to this renaissance, examples of which we are accustomed to see in our modern collections, that gives a certain air of poverty to this porcelain collected by our ancestors.

In some of the palaces and castles of Germany may still be seen collections of china made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, crowded together in the porcelain cabinet. Of these the best known, perhaps, is that at the ‘Favorite,’ near Baden, but there are others in the castle of the Waldstein family at Dux in Bohemia, and in Hungary in the castle of Prince Esterhazy. Many of these collections have remained unaltered since the time when they were first brought together, and it is in this fact that their principal interest lies.

These china-cabinets are, of course, all eclipsed by the vast collection brought together, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, by Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and (at intervals) King of Poland. But this collection has undergone many vicissitudes since the time when it was first established in the handsome palace in the Neustadt at Dresden. It escaped, indeed, with little damage from the Prussian cannons during the Seven Years’ War; at the end of the century, however, it was removed to a gloomy basement, but so carelessly was this done that we hear of whole chests packed with broken fragments. In this ill-arranged and dark room the collection remained for nearly a century, until at last it has found a home in the well-lit galleries of the Johanneum. Here it is now seen to full advantage, thanks to an arrangement which combines historical sequence with a regard to general effect.

Augustus the Strong died in 1733, and it is doubtful whether his successor, August ii. (August iii. of Poland), who was above all a collector of pictures, added to the collection.140 There were, it would seem, some examples of porcelain in the electoral collection at a much earlier date.141 In an inventory of 1640 several pieces of porcelain are mentioned, and these are said to have been presented by the Herzog von Florentz in the year 1590. Among them (they cannot now be identified) we find a vase of porcelain (ein Pokal von Porcellana), blue and red with gilding, in the form of a crab; another in the form of a dragon, coloured green and blue; a lantern of porcelain, green and gold, adorned at the top with a standing figure; a small ‘pokal,’ gilt and painted with all kinds of colours; and finally some large eight-sided dishes decorated with blue. We should have expected to find some examples of the new Medici porcelain along with these, but in the inventory in question there is no mention of anything of the kind.

Augustus the Strong obtained most of his porcelain from Dutch dealers—a certain Le Roy at Amsterdam is specially mentioned. Already in 1709 we find him lending eight statuettes of white Chinese ware to Böttger, then engaged with his experiments on the Königstein. In the year 1717 he received from the King of Prussia nearly a hundred important vases and dishes. In return for these, it is said, the king obtained a regiment (or company) of tall dragoons, but this part of the bargain is not mentioned in the official receipt for the porcelain, which has been preserved.

I have more than once referred to individual specimens in this famous collection, and I shall not attempt to describe it now. Suffice to say that the general impression given is that it is of a somewhat later date than that at Hampton Court. Apart from a few early pieces which have been already mentioned, and from some specimens of the famille rose (and on these the new rouge d’or is for the most part sparingly and, as it were, tentatively applied), the coloured enamel ware in the Dresden collection belongs in the bulk to the famille verte, and upon intrinsic evidence might be attributed to the later years of Kang-he and to the reign of his successor Yung-ching, say from 1690 to 1730. On the Japanese side, we notice a number of dishes and vases in blue and white, rather in the style of the later Ming ware exported to India and Persia, a few choice specimens of the enamelled ‘Kakiyemon,’ and then the vast series of ‘Old Japan’ or Imari porcelain—plates, vases, and bowls, many of large size. Much of this last class was made to order, and this part reflects the bad taste of the day. We find tall vases ‘adorned’ with figures and flowers modelled in full relief in a kind of stucco and gaudily painted with some oil medium or varnish. Some are converted into cages for birds or squirrels by an external railing of brass rods.

With the exception of a few fine garnitures in blue and white in ‘’t Huis ten Bosch’ at the Hague, there appear to be no public collections in Holland dating from the eighteenth century. But in spite of the repeated razzias of dealers, both native and foreign, many old families still retain collections of Chinese porcelain (of blue and white especially), some of which may date from the latter part of the seventeenth century, and many a rough-looking farmer, in country districts, prides himself on the china-cabinet that he has inherited from his ancestors.

Francis i. of France and his son Henri ii. were, as is well known, great collectors of works of art, and their collections at Fontainebleau may be regarded as the foundation of the national museums of France. The Rev. Père Dan, who described these collections at a later date, in his Trésors des Merveilles de Fontainebleau (1640) says—‘La étoient aussi des vases et vaisselles en porcelaines de la Chine,’ and in an eighteenth century notice we hear of a ‘vase de porcelaine de première qualité ancienne de la Chine,’ which is said to have come from the collection of Sully, the minister of Henri iv. In the second half of the seventeenth century, at the great yearly fairs held in the neighbourhood of Paris, Portuguese travelling merchants set up their stalls for the sale of les besognes de Chine.142 In 1678 the Duchess of Cleveland’s porcelain was sold at the fair of St. Laurent. The Mercure of the day gives a list of the figures and mounted pieces. Louis xiv., we are told, was surprised at the knowledge of Oriental porcelain shown by James ii.

At the end of the seventeenth century it became the fashion among the grands Seigneurs of the court of Louis xiv. to collect the porcelaine des Indes, the Dauphin and the Duke of Orleans leading the way, and through the agency of the short-lived Compagnie de la Chine143 (1685-1719) the latter prince was able to obtain from the East vases decorated with his arms,144 while of the Dauphin we hear that he arranged his collection of blue and white in cabinets constructed by the famous ebonist Boule. Unfortunately the gallery at Versailles where they were placed was burned down soon afterwards (Du Sartel, La Porcelaine de la Chine, p. 121). The porcelain of these princely collectors was sold at a later time, and most of it passed into the hands of the Vicomte de Fonspertuis; it was again dispersed when the works of art in that famous collection were sold by auction in 1747. The catalogue on this occasion was prepared by Gersaint,145 the great dealer of the day, for whose shop on the Pont Notre-Dame Watteau painted his famous Enseigne. The notes in this catalogue are of some interest, in that they are, perhaps, the earliest attempt, at least from a Western point of view, at a critical description of Oriental porcelain. We can only call attention to the remarks of Gersaint on the new enamel colours, which in opposition to the blue and white ‘on voit seulement depuis quelques années’; on the white ware with its ‘ton velouté, doux et mat,’ which he tells us Spanish collectors prefer to all others, and on the figures, animals, and ornaments which the Dutch ‘souvent mal à propos’ painted over the beautiful white ware of China. Gersaint ridicules also the fashion that will have nothing to say to any piece without the brown line upon the lip or edge, so characteristic of the porcelain imported about this time, and finally he calls attention to the excellent imitation of the ‘Ancien Japon,’ made some time since at Dresden. A few specimens of this Saxon ware are the only examples of European pottery in this extensive and varied collection.

Some twenty years later the collections of another friend and patron of Watteau, M. de Jullienne, were sold by auction in the Salon Carré of the Louvre, and a detailed catalogue of the Oriental ware was drawn up by the dealer Julliot. But for a more detailed account of the French collections and collectors of the eighteenth century, we must refer the reader to the chapter on this subject in M. Du Sartel’s already quoted work.

In the lengthy treatise of the Abbé Raynal on the history of the Commerce des Européens dans les Deux Indes, there is an interesting section treating of the porcelain of China and Japan, and of the relation of these Oriental wares to the porcelain of Saxony and France. The work was first published in 1770, but the remarks on porcelain were probably written several years earlier. We have already noticed the six classes into which he divides the wares imported from the East. We can only note here that Raynal distinguishes the two classes of porcelaine blanche—one of creamy tint, and the other cold and bluish. This ware, he says, was imitated at Saint-Cloud, but with ‘frit’ and lead glaze. His sympathies are all for the true porcelain of Dresden, and for the ware lately made in France by the Count Lauraguais.