The Pleasures of Collecting

by Gardner C. Teall

The white bowls of Hsing-chou in Chihli and the blue bowls of Yuen-chou in Che-kiang were highly esteemed and celebrated in song and story. Their resonance of tone was such that musicians were said to have utilized them.

The Arabs and Chinese were conducting a flourishing trade during the eighth and ninth centuries. To Soleyman, one of the early Arabian traders who wrote an account of his journeyings, we owe the first mention of China in the literature of the world outside the empire. “In China,” said he, “they have a very fine clay which they manufacture vases from, as transparent as glass; water is seen through them.” Bushell (“Chinese Art,” vol. II) tells us that in the time of the Emperor Shi Tsung (954-959) of the brief Posterior Chou dynasty established at K’ai-fêng-fu prior to the Sung dynasty, an imperial rescript ordered porcelain “as blue as the sky, as clear as a mirror, as thin as paper and as resonant as a musical stone of jade.”

All the porcelains of the times we have referred to seem long since to have disappeared and the only knowledge of them which we have to-day is through the literature of their contemporary writers. The Sung dynasty (960-1280), the Yuan dynasty (1280-1367), and the Ming dynasty (1368-1643) open up to us surer knowledge as specimens of the time are available to students. The porcelains of the Sung and Yuan dynasties may be classed together. The ceramic production (yao) made in the province of Honan in the town now called Ju-chou-fu—a Sung dynasty porcelain therefore designated as Ju-Yao—stands famous for the qualities of its blues, which Chinese poets assure us rival the blue blossoms of the Vitex incisa, the Chinese “Sky Blue Flower.”

The imperial ware of the Sung dynasty was the Kuan Yao (two Chinese words signifying “official ceramic kiln”). Then there was the Yo Yao porcelain, the early crackled ware; and the Ting Yao, a porcelain having a delicate resonant body. This seems to be the most commonly met with among the wares of the Sung period. The Lung-ch’üan Yao of the Sung wares is the famed Celadon ware made in the province of Che-kiang. The Celadon ware of this dynasty is distinguished by its onion-sprout green color. The Celadon wares of later periods turn more either to greyish greens or to sea-green hues.

The Chün yao faience was the product of Chün-chou, now Yü-chou, a town of the province of Honan. Marvelous indeed were its glazes of unsurpassed brilliancy and beauty of color. The transmutation flambés were especially notable.

In the reign of Yung Cheng (1723) the emperor sent a list of Chün-chou pieces to be reproduced by the imperial potteries in Chung-te-chen, from which (record of this being extant) we are able to glean some knowledge of the great variety of glaze colors of the earlier period. In this list appeared crimson-rose, japonica-pink, sky-blue, plum-color, dark purple, millet-yellow, flambés, etc. Early in the eighteenth century all these glazes and colors were reproduced with marvelous skill, but the new white body was probably infinitely superior to the early body.

The Chien Yao Ware of the Sung dynasty was produced in Fu-kien province, where lustrous black-enameled tea ceremonial cups were manufactured. These were dappled with specks of white resembling the effect of hare’s fur and partridge breasts. The Japanese treasure these pieces, to which they have given the name “Hare-fur Cups,” above almost any other varieties of Chinese porcelain.

We now come to the Ming dynasty, and in the reign of Wan-li (1573-1619) the art of making and decorating porcelain had so advanced that native contemporaries were fond of declaring there was nothing that could not be made of the porcelain. The cobalt blues came into favor in this period, and it is also the time of the famed “Mohammedan blue.” European and American collectors have given a great deal of attention to the blue-and-white porcelains that came in with the close of the Ming dynasty. It was between 1662 and 1722, however, that the very flower of the blue-and-white porcelain was produced. This marks the reign of K’ang Hsi.

The K’ang Hsi period (1662-1722) was the culminating one of Chinese ceramic art. Of this porcelain, Bushell says:

The brilliant renaissance of the art which distinguishes the reign of K’ang Hsi is shown in every class; in the single-colored glazes, la qualité maîtresse de la céramique; in the painted decorations of the grand feu, of the jewel-like enamels of the muffle-kiln, and of their manifold combinations; in the pulsating vigour of every shade of blue in the inimitable “blue and white.”