Porcelain

If we examine the colours found on both the wares to which we have tentatively traced back the enamelled porcelain of the Chinese—the enamels on glass on the one hand, and those on metal on the other—taking in each case the earlier specimens as examples, we find on the mosque lamps from Cairo little except a deep blue generally used as a ground for a design which is outlined in an opaque iron red. On the famous flask from Würzburg, now in the British Museum, for which a ‘Mesopotamian’ origin of the thirteenth century is claimed, a turquoise blue relieved by gilding is the predominant note; there is also a sparing use of yellow, of an opaque white, and, what is especially interesting, of a fine pinkish red, which is possibly obtained from gold. (The way in which this colour is shaded into the opaque white reminds us of the similar use of the rouge d’or in later times in China.)

If, on the other hand, we turn to the earlier Chinese enamels on metal, the so-called Ching-tai vases, attributed to the fifteenth century, we find among the colours used an opaque iron red, a yellow, an opaque white, and finally two kinds of blue, a turquoise and a full deep blue that looks like a cobalt colour.46

Some time, then, during the sixteenth century, whether before or after the accession of Wan-li (1572), the Chinese began to decorate the surface of their porcelain with jewel-like enamels appliqués to the glaze. At first, apparently, these colours were confined to three: a copper green, a yellow generally of a buff tint, probably containing antimony as well as iron, and a purple derived from manganese. These are the San-tsai or three colours of the Chinese writers, and it will be seen that they differ from the colour triad of our ‘painted glazes’ (painted, that is, on biscuit and reheated in the demi grand feu) in that the copper silicate is of a turquoise blue in the latter, and in the former of a full leafy green. The Chinese authorities further tell us that a second scheme of decoration was given by the Wu-tsai or the five colours which were made up by the three already mentioned, with the addition of an opaque red derived from the sesqui-oxide of iron (otherwise known as hæmatite, bole or red ochre),47 and finally of a cobalt blue, sous couverte, surviving as it were from the earlier blue and white ware, for, as we have mentioned, the use of the blue as an enamel over the glaze belongs to a later period.

So much for the teaching of the Chinese books; but when, attacking the subject from the other side, we examine the specimens of enamelled ware which for one reason or another—the coarseness and thickness of the paste, the moulded form, and the irregular surface—we should be inclined to attribute to the Ming dynasty, we are led to classify these earlier examples somewhat as follows:—

1. On a white ground a design, often, it would seem, of textile origin, roughly painted in an opaque red (like sealing-wax), with the addition of a leafy green and very rarely of a little yellow. This is a class of decoration much imitated in Japan at a later date, especially by the artist potters of Kioto and at Inuyama.

2. The same colours with the addition of blue, sous couverte. The design often takes the form of figures in a landscape, the whole broadly treated. The earliest type of the Imari ware (apart from the Kakiyemon) seems to be based on this scheme of decoration.

Both these classes are distinguished by the white ground, the sparing use of yellow, and the almost complete absence of manganese purple and turquoise blue.

3. A transparent enamel of leafy green, yellow and manganese purple painted on in washes so as to cover the whole ground. When with these colours we find the outline drawn in black, we have the basis of a large part of the famille verte. On the other hand, it is this class of decoration which probably carries on the tradition of the early Ming ware, sometimes described as ‘enamelled,’ but more probably all of it painted on the biscuit and fired in the demi grand feu.

In China it would seem that these enamelled wares were at first treated with a certain disfavour, if not with contempt, at least by the more cultivated classes. During Ming times, though porcelain thus decorated was doubtless made at King-te-chen, it was, at least up to the latter part of the reign of Wan-li, chiefly made in private factories. In fact we find a censor, in the reign of that emperor, protesting against the use of enamel colours (the wu-tsai) in the porcelain supplied to the palace (Bushell, p. 241).

PLATE VII. CHINESE

We have now sketched out a description of the various kinds of porcelain made during the course of the Ming dynasty, and before going on at once to an account of the period associated with King-te-chen and the great rulers of the Manchu dynasty, it will be well to extract a few notes on points that may interest us from the somewhat voluminous records and descriptions of the porcelain of Ming times found in the books of the Chinese authorities.48

Yung-lo (1402-24).49—This great emperor, who sent out ships for conquest and for commerce as far as Ceylon, is for us especially associated with a white eggshell porcelain of which there are two remarkable specimens in the British Museum (see above, p. 67). Bowls of this thinness must have been pared down on the lathe, after throwing on the wheel, in the manner described on p. 22, until a mere translucent ghost of the original body was left, so that the name to-t’ai or ‘bodiless,’ by which this ware is known to the Chinese, is not inappropriate. The earliest blue and white porcelain of which there is any definite record was made in this reign, but the evidence for this is, of course, purely ‘documentary.’ The quality of the blue is said to have been surpassed only by that of the Hsuan-te and Cheng-hua periods.

Hsuan-te (1425-35).—The short reign of this emperor is connected in the mind of the Chinese with the finest works both of the metal worker and the potter. This period gave its name to the famous pale bronze so admired in later days by the Japanese.50 The blue of the Hsuan-te period, unsurpassed in later times, we are told, was derived from Arab sources, for the famous Su-ni-po and Su-ma-li blues are first mentioned at this time. The word Su-ma-li has been compared with the low Latin Smaltum, the prepared silicate of cobalt used by the mediæval glass-stainers, but from the description of this substance in the Chinese books, it would seem rather to have been of the nature of a native ore. When, however, we read in the same books of the origin of the brilliant red for which this reign was equally famous, how it was prepared from ‘powdered rubies of the West,’ we see how little reliance we can place in their accounts. This red, derived of course from the sub-oxide of copper, was applied either to cover the whole surface, as in the little bowls mentioned on p. 81 (‘painted on the biscuit,’ says Dr. Bushell, but is this necessarily so?), or for the painting of a design in this case both alone and in combination with blue. We hear also of large jars and garden seats of a coarse porcelain, with dark blue and turquoise ground and decoration of ribbed cloisons, which were first made in this reign. Of this class we have spoken at length when treating of the ‘painted glazes.‘51 Of what nature the decoration in five colours, which is also referred to this reign, may have been, it is difficult to say—we have no specimen so painted that we can assign to so old a period, but in this connection we certainly must not think of enamels painted over the glaze.

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.52 This 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-ching54 or 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.55 On 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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1

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

2

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.

3

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.

4

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.

5

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.

6

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.

7

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.

8

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

9

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.

10

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.

11

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

12

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.

13

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

14

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

15

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.

16

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

17

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

18

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.

19

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

20

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.

21

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.).

22

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.

23

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

24

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.

25

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.

26

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

27

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.

28

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!

29

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

30

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.’

31

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.

32

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.

33

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

34

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.

35

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

36

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.

37

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

38

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.

39

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.

40

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.

41

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.

42

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).

43

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.

44

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.

45

See Bushell, p. 454.

46

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

47

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.