(1736–1795)
The brief reign of Yung Chêng was followed by that of his son, who ruled under the title of Ch’ien Lung for a full cycle of sixty years, at the end of which he abdicated in accordance with his vow that he would not outreign his grandfather, K’ang Hsi. Ch’ien Lung was a devotee of the arts, and they flourished greatly under his long and peaceful sway. He was himself a collector, and the catalogue of the Imperial bronzes compiled under his orders is a classic work; but more than that, he was personally skilful in the art of calligraphy, which ranks in China as high as painting; and he was a voluminous poet. It is no uncommon thing to find his compositions engraved or painted on porcelain and other artistic materials. Bushell[429] quotes an example from a snuff bottle in the Walters Collection; there is a bowl for washing wine cups in the Eumorfopoulos Collection with a descriptive verse engraved underneath, and entitled, “Imperial Poem of Ch’ien Lung”; and a beautiful coral red bowl in the British Museum has a similar effusion pencilled in gold in the interior.
His interest in the ceramic art is further proved by the command given in 1743 to T’ang Ying to compose a description of the various processes of manufacture as a commentary on twenty pictures of the industry which belonged to the palace collections; and one of the earliest acts of his reign was to appoint the same celebrated ceramist in 1736 to succeed Nien Hsi-yao in the control of the customs at Huai-an Fu, a post which involved the supreme control of the Imperial porcelain manufacture.
There is little doubt that T’ang Ying[430] was the most distinguished of all the men who held this post. He is, at any rate, the one whose achievements have been most fully recorded. He was himself a prolific writer, and a volume of his collected works has been published with a preface by Li Chü-lai. His autobiography is incorporated in the Chiang hsi t’ung chih; his twenty descriptions of the processes of porcelain manufacture are quoted in the T’ao shuo and the T’ao lu, and in themselves form a valuable treatise on Chinese porcelain; and before taking up his post at Huai-an Fu in 1736 he collected together, for the benefit of his successors at Ching-tê Chên, the accumulated notes and memoranda of eight years. This last work is known as the T’ao ch’êng shih yu kao (“Draughts of Instructions on the Manufacture of Porcelain”), and the preface[431] quoted in the Annals of Fou-liang furnishes some interesting details concerning Tang’s labours. We learn, for instance, that when he was appointed to the factory at Ching-tê Chên in 1728, he was “unacquainted with the finer details of the porcelain manufacture in the province of Kiangsi,” having never been there before. He worked with heart and strength, however, sleeping and eating with the workmen during a voluntary apprenticeship of three years, until in 1731 “he had conquered his ignorance of the materials and processes of firing, and although he could not claim familiarity with all the laws of transformation, his knowledge was much increased.”
The commissionership of the customs was transferred in 1739 from Huai-an Fu to Kiu-kiang, which is close to the point of junction between the Po-yang Lake and the Yangtze, and considerably nearer to the Imperial factory at Ching-tê Chên, the control of which remained in T’ang’s hands until 1749.
The Ching-tê Chên T’ao lu[432] is almost verbose on the subject of T’ang’s achievements. He had a profound knowledge, it tells us, of the properties of the different kinds of clay and of the action of the fire upon them, and he took every care in the selection of proper materials, so that his wares were all exquisite, lustrous, and of perfect purity. In imitating the celebrated wares of antiquity he never failed to make an exact copy, and in the imitation of all sorts of famous glazes there were none which he could not cleverly reproduce. There was, in fact, nothing that he could not successfully accomplish. Furthermore, his novelties[433] included porcelains with the following glazes and colours: foreign purple (yang tzŭ), cloisonné blue (fa ch’ing), silvering (mo yin), painting in ink black (ts’ai shui mo), foreign black (yang wu chin), painting in the style of the enamels on copper (fa lang), foreign colouring in a black ground (yang ts’ai wu chin), white designs in a black ground (hei ti pai hua), gilding on a black ground (hei ti miao chin), sky blue (t’ien lan), and transmutation glazes (yao pien). The clay used was white, rich (jang) and refined, and the body of the porcelain, whether thick or thin, was always unctuous (ni). The Imperial wares attained their greatest perfection at this time.
The preface to T’ang’s collected works, which is quoted in the same passage, singles out as special triumphs of his genius the revival of the manufacture of the old dragon fish bowls (lung kang) and of the Chün yao, and the production of the turquoise and rose (mei kuei) colours in “new tints and rare beauty.” It is obvious from these passages that T’ang was responsible for many of the types enumerated in Hsieh Min’s list in the preceding chapter, not only among the reproductions of antiques but among the new inventions of the period, such as the cloisonné blue, foreign purple, silvering, painting in ink black, and foreign black. It follows, then, that these novelties could not have been made much before 1730, for T’ang was still at that time occupied chiefly with learning the potter’s art. It is equally certain that he continued to make a specialty of imitating the older wares during the reign of Ch’ien Lung, so that we may regard the best period of these reproductions as extending from 1730–1750.
In reading the list of T’ang’s innovations the reader will perhaps be puzzled by the varieties of black decoration which are included. Before attempting to explain them it will be best to review the different kinds of black found on Chinese porcelain of the Ch’ing dynasty. There is the high-fired black glaze, with hard shining surface likened to that of a mirror and usually enriched with gilt traceries. This is the original wu chin described by Père d’Entrecolles.[434] The other blacks are all low-fired colours of the muffle kiln applied over the glaze and ranking with the enamel colours. They include at least five varieties: (1) The dry black pigment, derived from cobaltiferous ore of manganese, applied like the iron red without any glassy flux. (2) The same pigment washed over with a transparent green enamel. This is the iridescent greenish black of the famille verte, and it continued in use along with the famille rose colours in the Yung Chêng and Ch’ien Lung periods and onwards to modern times. (3) A black enamel in which the same elements—manganese black and copper green—are compounded together. This is the modern wu chin, of which a sample in the Sèvres Museum (from the collection of M. Itier) was described by Julien[435] as “noir mat; minerai de manganese cobaltifère et oxyde de cuivre avec céruse.” It appears on modern Chinese porcelain as a sticky greenish black enamel, inferior in depth and softness to the old composite black of the famille verte; but for all that, this is the yang wu chin (foreign black) of the Yung Chêng and Ch’ien Lung periods. In the days of T’ang Ying it was a far superior colour. (4) A mottled greenish black occurs as a monochrome and as a ground colour with reserved discs enamelled with famille rose colours on the exterior of two bowls in the British Museum, both of which have the cyclical date, wu ch’ên, under the base, indicating the year 1748 or 1808, probably the latter. (5) An enamel of similar texture but of a purplish black colour is used on a snuff bottle in the same collection to surround a figure design in underglaze blue. This piece has the Yung Chêng mark in red, but from its general character appears to be of later date.
In the list of T’ang’s innovations there is yang wu chin (foreign black), which is doubtless the same as the hsi yang wu chin (European black) of Hsieh Min’s list. It is clear that this is something different from the old green black of the famille verte porcelain, and we can hardly be wrong in identifying it with the wu chin enamel described above in No. 3. Compared with the original mirror black wu chin glaze this enamel has a dull surface, and we can only infer that the term wu chin had already lost its special sense of metallic black, and was now used merely as a general term for black.
Assuming this inference to be correct, the term yang ts’ai wu chin (foreign painting in a black ground) should mean simply famille rose colours surrounded by a black enamel ground of the type of either No. 2 or No. 3. It is, of course, possible that the wu chin here is the old mirror black glaze on which enamelling in famille rose colours would be perfectly feasible; but I do not know of any example, whereas there is no lack of choice porcelains answering to the alternative description.