VI
EARLY
HISTORY OF
PORCELAIN
CHAPTER VI
A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF PORCELAIN
Perhaps what we have said will inspire our readers with the desire to know something of the origin of the potter's art in China. This cannot be definitely fixed. It is lost in antiquity. Far back, centuries before the Christian era, possibly when Egyptian civilisation was at its height, legendary history refers to the invention of pottery and, indeed, places the invention of pottery thousands of years B.C. We have no definite information as to what was made, but we may fairly assume that in those remote times the vessels made were only course clay, rude in form, sun-dried or badly baked in an open fire. Then, possibly, the first efforts at glazing were produced and ornamented, the surface was decorated by drawings with a stick in transverse scratches or concentric rings, and simple bits of clay stuck on to the soft surface formed the first applied ornament, gradually developing, and ever far in advance of Western barbarism. The manufacture reaches the period where actual records were available during the Wei dynasty, 220 A.D., when two potteries were recorded as making porcelain for Imperial use. The string of dynasties which follows have but slight interest for the collector. The marks we give (see Marks) range from the Sung dynasty, 960 A.D., to the Tsing dynasty, which came into power in 1644 and continues to the present day. Though we read of porcelain blue as the sky, shining as the looking-glass, thin as paper, giving a sound like a musical stone, we could scarcely hope to find a specimen after the lapse of so many hundred years. Besides, if we did, the piece would be unique and even the experts would doubt its identity. Still, the tiny fragments of this precious ware are recognised in China, and are so valuable that the Chinese have them mounted as personal ornaments.
The first of the dynasties shown in our list has a real claim for consideration, that is, the Sung dynasty, which lasted from 960 to 1279 A.D. The Emperor Chin-tsung, who reigned from 954 to 1007 A.D., adopted as his title name, or nien hao, on coming to the throne, King-te, and he founded the royal manufactory at Chang-nan-Chin, henceforward known as King-te-chin. This city remained for many centuries the greatest manufactory of Chinese porcelain. Here, then, we have definite history of a city in the Chinese provinces of Kiang-si, with a present population of 500,000, in which porcelain has been manufactured for centuries, and where the manufacturing is still carried on, although, through wars and insurrections, the work has now and then been suspended for varying periods. There were numerous other factories in thirteen other provinces, notably in Ho-nan, which had no less than thirteen. Historical incidents occur which show that Oriental porcelain was by slow degrees making its way Westwards. Saladin (1137 to 1193), Sultan of Egypt and Syria, who defended Acre for two years against the Crusaders, sent forty pieces of finest porcelain to Nur-ed-din Mahmud, who recovered Syria from the Crusaders. That celebrated Venetian traveller and author, Marco Polo, writing in 1280, described a visit to a Chinese factory, and stated that the porcelain was exported all over the world. The Yuen dynasty (1279-1367) saw the advent of Roman Catholic missionaries and Florentine traders. They came to Pekin and Hang-chow; and far off Cathay, the land of mystery, romance, and poetry, first made acquaintance with the Western barbarians. We read of porcelain of this period having been moulded, modelled, and painted with flowers. The most noted potter, Pung, was not famous for his own individual work of designing new forms or inventing new colours, but for copying the older wares, and we shall never have an opportunity of seeing his work, which, though beautiful, was very thin and brittle.
VII
THE MING
DYNASTY
CHAPTER VII
THE MING DYNASTY (1368-1644) AND ITS PRODUCTS
The story of the overthrow of the Mongol dynasty by a rebellion headed by a native named Hung-woo, the son of a labouring man, introduces the great Ming dynasty. This man, a former Buddhist priest, captured Nankin in 1355, and thirteen years later he took the title of Emperor. During this dynasty, which lasted till 1644, the progress of the manufacture of porcelain was very marked; indeed, the Chinese themselves are keen collectors of the Ming products, considering them to be the finest ever made. They scarcely exist outside the treasures of the cabinets of princes or of the collections of mandarins. Whether this is due to the extreme devotion of the nation to past history and to their love of ancient relics more than their appreciation of what we consider beautiful, the fact remains that, in the early times, Ming porcelain was rarely exported, so that we have very little to guide us in determining what is or is not porcelain of the Ming period. True, there are the marks, but the marks were copied just as much as the forms and decorations were. The best periods of Ming porcelain arranged in order of merit, and not in order of date, were Suen-tih (1426-1436), Ching-hwa (1465-1488), Yung-lo (1403-1425), Kea-tsing (1522-1567). Ching-hwa is the first in order of reproduction; his mark is most frequently copied.
At about the period of Ching-hwa, Europeans were making efforts to reach the East by sea, and in 1498 Vasco de Gama sailed round the Cape of Good Hope, and thus made an opening, by which eventually trade was carried on by sea to China. The Portuguese were the first to settle in China in 1516. From their factory or settlement in Macco, or Macao, at the entrance to the Canton river, the first sea-borne pieces of Oriental porcelain were sent to Europe by way of the Cape. The conclusion, therefore, must be, in view of these dates, that the earliest pieces found in England and on the Continent were carried overland, by camels, thousands of miles over mountains and through deserts, till at last they reached their European owners. The earliest porcelain found in England—that is, a Celadon bowl presented to New College, Oxford, by Archbishop Warham, and the bowls of Oriental china given in 1506 by Philip of Austria to Sir Thomas Trenchard—came by land. The Portuguese vessels were not content to sail only to China and to exchange its products for those of Europe, for in 1542 they appeared in Japan. Fernam Mendez Pinto in his "Travels," published in 1545, states that he and his companions were cordially received by the Prince of Japan. Evidently, then, at the time when Queen Elizabeth was reigning in England the Portuguese were pushing their trade in the East as the Spaniards were in the West, and, as we have seen, the Portuguese, amongst other commodities, sent Oriental porcelain home, and brought European products back. They brought the Jesuits too. Christian teachers had been at work in China for long years before the Jesuits came, but the activity and knowledge of these gave them great influence amongst the reigning class practically from the close of the sixteenth to the beginning of the eighteenth century. It is said that they had much to do with the evolution of the beautiful enamel colours of the next dynasty, the "Tsing," though the evidence of this is of the slightest. On the contrary, the development appears to have had purely a native origin; an unusual step, it is true, to be taken by a nation which seemed all along the line to be reproducing earlier forms and earlier decoration. From the period when the vases of the Yung-lo period were in demand, painted as they were with lions rolling a ball, with birds or with dark blue or red flowers, we find progress being continually made.
Suen-tih, whose reign is the most celebrated for the production of Ming porcelain, produced very fine examples, with flowers in pale blue, having red fish moulded as handles. Then comes the fine colour paintings of Ching-hwa, through which we reach the perfection of the Kang-he in the Tsing dynasty. It is remarkable that only a few Ming specimens seem to have been identified with enamel colour decoration, though in recent, indeed, quite late times, authorities are ascribing many pieces with green and yellow enamel set in black outline to Ming, rather than to Kang-he. White, green, and crackle pieces are often mentioned in the historical records.