British Museum.
As to the other types of Hsüan ware named in the Po wu yao lan, with one exception I can find no exact counterpart of them in existing specimens, though parts of the descriptions are illustrated by examples of apparently later date. Thus the form of the white tea cups, “with rounded body, convex base, and thread-like foot,” is seen in such bowls as Fig. 1 of Plate [74], which is proved by its mount to be not later than the sixteenth century. Other examples of these bowls will be discussed later. They are characterised by a convexity in the centre which cannot be shown in reproductions.
The secret decoration (an hua) consists of designs faintly traced usually with a sharp-pointed instrument in the body and under the glaze. There is an excellent example of this in a high-footed cup in the Franks Collection which has the Hsüan Tê mark, the usual faintly greenish glaze, beneath which is a delicately etched lotus scroll so fine that it might easily be overlooked and is quite impossible to reproduce by photographic methods. It is, no doubt, an early eighteenth-century copy of Hsüan ware.
The one exception mentioned above is the type represented by the “barrel-shaped seats.” The description of these leaves no room for doubt that they belonged to a fairly familiar class of Ming ware, whose strength and solidity has preserved it in considerable quantity where the more delicate porcelains have disappeared. Plate [62] gives a good idea of the Ming barrel-shaped garden seat, “with solid ground filled in with colours in engraved floral designs.” The other kind, “with openwork ground, the designs filled in with colours (wu ts’ai), gorgeous as cloud brocades,” must have been in the style of Plate [61]. These styles of decoration are more familiar to us on potiche-shaped wine jars and high-shouldered vases than on garden seats, but the type is one and the same. Quite a series of these vessels was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910, and they are fully described in the catalogue. Some had an outer casing in openwork; others had the designs outlined in raised threads of clay, which contained the colours like the ribbons of cloisonné enamel[40]; in others, again, the patterns were incised with a point. The common feature of all of them was that the details of the pattern were defined by some emphatic method of outlining which served at the same time to limit the flow of the colours. The colours themselves consist of glazes containing a considerable proportion of lead, and tinted in the usual fashion with metallic oxides. They include a deep violet blue (sometimes varying to black or brown), leaf green, turquoise, yellow,[41] and a colourless glaze or a white slip which served as white colour, though at times the white was represented merely by leaving the unglazed body or biscuit to appear. These coloured glazes differ from the on-glaze painted enamels in that they are applied direct to the body of the ware, and are fired at a relatively high temperature in the cooler parts of the great kiln, a circumstance expressed by the French in the concise phrase, couleurs de demi-grand feu.[42]
The central ornament consisted chiefly of figures of sages or deities in rocky landscape, or seated under pine trees amid clouds, dragons in clouds, or beautiful lotus designs; and these were contained by various borders, such as floral scrolls, gadroons, ju-i head patterns, fungus scrolls, and symbols hanging in jewelled pendants. As a rule, the larger areas of these vases are invested with a ground colour and the design filled in with contrasting tints. Sometimes the scheme of decoration includes several bands of ornament, and in this case—as on Plate [62]—more than one ground colour is used. The Po wu yao lan speaks of green (ch’ing) and dark blue (lan) grounds, and existing specimens indicate that the dark violet blue was the commonest ground colour. Next to this, turquoise blue is the most frequently seen; but besides these there is a dark variety of the violet which is almost black, and another which is dark brown, both of which colours are based on cobaltiferous oxide of manganese. It has already been observed that this type of decoration was frequently used on a pottery body as well as on porcelain.
The question of the antiquity of the above method of polychrome decoration is complicated by the contradictory accounts which Dr. Bushell has given of a very celebrated example, the statuette of the goddess Kuan-yin in the temple named Pao kuo ssŭ at Peking. The following reference to this image occurs in the T’ung ya, published in the reign of Ch’ung Chêng (1625–1643): “The Chün Chou transmutation wares (yao pien) are not uncommon to-day. The Kuan-yin in the Pao kuo ssŭ is a yao pien.” Dr. Bushell, who visited the temple several times, gives a minute description of the image, which contains the following passage[43]: “The figure is loosely wrapped in flowing drapery of purest and bluest turquoise tint, with the wide sleeves of the robe bordered with black and turned back in front to show the yellow lining; the upper part of the cloak is extended up behind over the head in the form of a plaited hood, which is also lined with canary yellow.” To the ordinary reader, such a description would be conclusive. A fine example of Ming porcelain, he would say, decorated with the typical coloured glazes on the biscuit. Bushell’s comment, however, is that the “colours are of the same type as those of the finest flower pots and saucers of the Chün Chou porcelain of the Sung dynasty.” It should be said that the temple bonzes insist that they can trace the origin of the image back to the thirteenth century. If these are indeed the typical Chün Chou glazes, then all our previous information on that factory, including Bushell’s own contributions, is worthless. In another work,[44] however, the same writer states that it (the image in question) is “really enamelled in 'five colours’—turquoise, yellow, crimson, red brown and black.” This is precisely what we should have expected, and it can only be imagined that Bushell in the other passage was influenced by the statement in the T’ung ya that it was a furnace transmutation piece, a statement probably based on the superstition that it was a miraculous likeness of the goddess, who herself descended into the kiln and moulded its features. As to the other temple tradition, that it was made in the thirteenth century, it is not necessary to take that any more seriously than the myth concerning its miraculous origin, which derives from the same source.
It is hardly necessary to state that all the existing specimens of this class (and they are fairly numerous) do not belong to the Hsüan Tê period. Indeed, it is unlikely that more than a very small percentage of them were made in this short reign. Whether the style survived the Ming dynasty is an open question; but it is safe to assume that it was largely used in the sixteenth century.
The discussion of this group of polychrome porcelain leads naturally to the vexed question of the introduction of enamel painting over the glaze. By the latter I mean the painting of designs on the finished white glaze in vitrifiable enamels, which were subsequently fixed in the gentle heat of the muffle kiln (lu)—couleurs de petit feu, as the French have named them. No help can be got from the phraseology of the Chinese, for they use wu ts’ai or wu sê (lit. five colours) indifferently for all kinds of polychrome decoration, regardless of the number of colours involved or the mode of application. There is, however, no room for doubt that the delicate enamel painting, for which the reign of Ch’êng Hua (1465–1487) was celebrated, was executed with the brush over the fired glaze. It is inconceivable that the small, eggshell wine cups with peony flowers and a hen and chicken “instinct with life and movement” could have been limned by any other method. If this is the case, then what could the Chinese writers mean when they contrasted the wu ts’ai ornament of the Hsüan Tê and Ch’êng Hua periods, but that the same process of painting was in use in both reigns? The Ch’êng Hua colours were more artistic because they were thin and delicately graded, while the Hsüan Tê wu ts’ai were too thickly applied.[45] For this reason, if for no other, we may rightly infer that painting in on-glaze enamels was practised in the Hsüan Tê period, if, indeed, it had not been long in use.[46]
There is another and an intermediate method of polychrome decoration in which the low-fired enamels (de petit feu) are applied direct to the biscuit, as in the case of the demi-grand feu colours, but with the difference that they are fixed in the muffle kiln. This method was much employed on the late Ming and early Ch’ing porcelains, and it will be discussed later; but it is mentioned here because there are several apparent examples of it in Hsiang’s Album, one[47] of which is dated Hsüan Tê. The example in question is a model of the celebrated Nanking pagoda, and it is described as wu ts’ai, the structure being white, the roofs green, the rails red, and the doors yellow, while the date is painted in blue. I have hesitated to assume that this is intended to represent an on-glaze painted piece, though there is much in the description to indicate such a conclusion; but it is certainly either this or a member of the class under discussion, viz. decorated in enamels of the muffle kiln applied to the biscuit.[48] In either case it proves the knowledge of vitrifiable enamels at this period to all who accept the evidence of Hsiang’s Album.
Examples of Hsüan Tê polychrome porcelain enumerated in the T’ao shuo included wine pots in the form of peaches, pomegranates, double gourds, a pair of mandarin ducks and geese; washing dishes (for brushes) of “gong-shaped outline,” with moulded fish and water-weeds, with sunflowers and with lizards; and lamp brackets, “rain-lamps,” vessels for holding bird’s food, and cricket[49] pots (see vol. i, p. [188]).