Advancing to the sixteenth century and the reigns of Chêng Tê, Chia Ching, and Wan Li, we find surviving “blue and white” specimens by no means rare. To the first reign are attributed certain objects made for Mohammedan use, as shown by the occurrence upon them of Arabic inscriptions, and some large globular jars with conventional lotus designs under a glaze usually of pronounced bluish tone. The Chia Ching period is characterised particularly by a blue of great intensity, sometimes verging upon violet; it is seen in several large jars at South Kensington in which the strong painting harmonises with the massiveness of the form.
The bowl figuring in [Plate 3] shows that a more refined style was also in vogue at the same time. It is fashioned with the utmost delicacy and painted in a free manner, but with unerring sureness of hand. On the outside are seen the mythical fêng huang, or phœnix, of Buddhist lore, and other smaller birds flying amid bamboos; on the bamboo stems grows the sacred fungus or ling-chih, like the bamboo itself an emblem of longevity. In the medallion at the bottom inside is an exquisite drawing of a song-bird perched on the branch of a blossoming tree. The bowl is marked underneath with the words Ta Ming Chia Ching nien chih (“Made in the Chia Ching period of the great Ming dynasty”). The soft grey-blue recalls the bowl of the Hsüan Tê period to which reference has already been made. Form and painting alike are executed with spontaneity and directness, qualities as attractive as the technical finish of later periods, when a loss of sincerity was the inevitable price paid for exactness of workmanship. This difference of quality may be well appreciated by a comparison of the bowl with the “egg-shell” plate of the Yung Chêng period reproduced in the same drawing, to which reference will again be made.
Another drawing ([Plate 4]) shows a typical example, formerly in Sir Charles Robinson’s collection, of the better kind of “blue and white” produced during the reign of Wan Li, who was contemporary with our own Queen Elizabeth. That this elegant wine-pot found its way to Europe at no long interval after it was made is proved by the bronze mounting, which happily accentuates its gracefulness of contour. The domed cover of ogee outline and the crested borders indicate that the mounting is of German origin, and was done probably at Augsburg in the early years of the seventeenth century. The six sides of the body form panels filled in with a variety of flowers, among which may be distinguished such oft-recurring emblems of longevity as the lotus and the ling-chih or miraculous fungus; the slender neck is painted with conventional flames. In the hollow beneath the foot is the word fu (“longevity”), written in seal character.
This piece belongs to the same class of finer porcelain made under Wan Li as a melon-shaped wine-pot, mounted in silver-gilt, bearing the London hall-mark for 1585–86, and the well-known set of bowls, also with Elizabethan silver-gilt mounting, which were formerly in the possession of the Cecil family at Burghley House. In addition to this finer porcelain, vast quantities of “blue and white” ware of inferior quality were made for export. It went eastwards to Japan, where it provided patterns for some of the porcelain turned out from the kilns of the province of Hizen, and westwards to Persia, to be imitated in earthenware by the native potters of the time of the great Shah Abbas II. The decoration, rough and careless as it often is, has generally a certain attractiveness on account of its freedom from the fault of over-refinement. Roughly-sketched landscapes with deer, hares or birds in shaped panels are frequent motives.
A dish at South Kensington, probably of the Wan Li period, is doubly interesting. Its decoration of floral ornament on scrolled stems is identical with a design not uncommon on Damascus earthenware of the sixteenth century. The back exhibits an unglazed surface of deep reddish-yellow, and bears, sharply cut into the paste, the Persian word naranji (“orange-coloured”) and a Persian name, probably that of a former owner.
The next illustration ([Plate 1]) stands for another process of decoration invented in the Ming period, which opened the way to wonderful developments in later times. This new method consisted in painting over the glaze in enamel colours, necessitating a second firing at a lower temperature than that required for fusing the glaze. The colours employed are a dry scarlet obtained from oxide of iron, green, yellow of straw-coloured tone, and manganese-violet, which, together with underglaze cobalt, constitute the scheme known as the “five colour” decoration. In some cases only two or three of these colours are used, but generally the predominant notes are given by red and green. This style anticipates the famille verte order of the time of K’ang Hsi; it is specially associated with the Wan Li period, when it came into general vogue, but instances of it occur dating from the reign of Chia Ching, and in these the red is of a more neutral tone sometimes verging on orange.
The jar figuring in [Plate 1] is altogether exceptional by reason of the manganese-purple ground on which the ornament is painted. The predominance of this colour gives a splendour of effect which is accentuated by the points of bright red and green distributed with such sureness of judgment over the surface. The powers of the Ming dynasty potter are here displayed at their best. Scattered flowers of the winter plum, one of the numerous emblems of long life, are interspersed among the “Eight Precious Things” (Pa Pao), tokens to the Buddhist of all that goes to make up mortal felicity. Visible in the drawing are the pair of books strung together, standing for literary accomplishments; the open lozenge, a symbol of victory or success; and the pearl or jewel of the law. The remaining five objects, not appearing in the view of the vase shown in the illustration, are the “cash,” figuring as a square enclosed by a circle, for pecuniary wealth; the painting, representative of the arts; the ch’ing or musical stone, a kind of gong considered lucky on account of the identity of its name with the word for “prosperity”; the pair of rhinoceros-horn cups paralleled by the classical “horn of plenty”; and the leaf of the artemisia, a fragrant plant believed to be efficacious as an antidote against harmful influences. Below these symbols are waves of the sea, tossing in green foam against jagged rocks; spiral eddies painted in black outline under a wash of transparent purple form the background to the composition. The jar was bought in Persia, and is mounted with a brass neck and domed cover of Persian workmanship, chased with arabesques and pierced with grotesque figures in a row of medallions.
Mention has already been made of the celadon-glazed wares made from the Sung period onwards in imitation of green jade, which are perhaps the most widely distributed of all the wares produced in China for export. To this category belong the great rice-dishes and jars for storing grain, often of extraordinary weight in proportion to their size, frequently met with in India and Persia, and everywhere along the shores and islands of the Indian Ocean. This class of porcelain was known to the Arab traders of the Middle Ages as “Martabani,” from the name of the Burmese port which was one of the centres for its distribution. This nomenclature finds its parallel in the name “Gombroon ware,” by which it was called in England in the seventeenth century; the establishment of the East India Company’s factory at Gombroon on the Straits of Ormuz first opened the way for its importation in any considerable quantity into this country.
PLATE 11
Bowl, Italian, dated 1638, probably made at Pisa, the design on the exterior borrowed from Turkish earthenware. Height, 2½ in. Willett Collection.