Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art
Chinese Porcelain of The Kang H’si Period, 1662-1723
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Jar, Famille Rose Vase, Famille Noire | Jar, Blue Hawthorn Vase, Celadon |
I do not forget that in almost every art and craft, as also in music, there exists in Hindustan a complete and friendly fusion of the two cultures. The non-sectarian character of the styles of Indian art has indeed always been conspicuous; so that it is often only by special details that one can distinguish Jain from Buddhist stupas, Buddhist from Hindu sculpture, or the Hindu from the Mussulman minor crafts. The one great distinction of Mughal from Hindu art is not so much racial as social; the former is an art of courts and connoisseurs, owing much to individual patronage; the latter belongs as much to the folk as to the kings.
The alluring arts of the East are well worth one’s study, well deserving of one’s enthusiasm. Perhaps the illustrations of some of the antiques of Persia and of India here reproduced from photographs of some of the fine examples to be found will awaken an interest in the subject in some who chance upon them. I only hope the world holds more Major Kyttyles of revered memory, and that you, too, may have the good fortune to be brought into communion with such treasures as made the major’s home vie with our conceptions of the palace of Aladdin, treasures which in time brought even the Pickhams to forgive the major his diaphanous-tailed goldfish, to feel no longer the sting of the insignificance of their poor little gilded minnows.
CHAPTER XXIX
CHINESE PORCELAINS
NOT to know something of Chinese porcelains, their history and their periods, is to be denied a pleasurable interest. The old porcelains of China are the ancestors of all china-wares of the world, and never have the finest antique fabriques of the Celestial Kingdom been surpassed or even equaled in beauty and texture.
The potter’s craft, as we all know, had its origin in the dim ages of the past. Even the discovery of true porcelain must be dated so far back that we have no authentic record of the era of its origin.
The literature of China ascribes the invention of true porcelain to some twenty-five hundred years before Christ, but we cannot be certain that the art of porcelain-making was known and practised until, perhaps, after the seventh century. While Chinese literature of the early periods abounds in references to porcelain, we have not a single authentic dated piece of the very early dynasties. It seems plausible to advance the theory that true porcelain was an invention or discovery of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.). The Japanese writer Okakura-Kakuzo has suggested that to the alchemists of the Han dynasty came accidentally the discovery of the wonderful porcelain glaze. The literature by Chinese authors of the T’ang dynasty is rich in references to porcelain. The poet Tu (803-852), for instance, says:
The porcelain of the Ta-yi kilns is light yet strong,
It rings with a low jade note and is famed throughout the city.
The fine white bowls surpass hoar frost and snow.