Fig. 1.—Box with incised Imperial dragons and lotus scrolls; turquoise and dark violet glazes on the biscuit. Diameter 9½ inches. V. & A. Museum.
Fig. 2.—Vase with Imperial dragons in clouds, painted in yellow in an iron red ground. Height 8½ inches. Cologne Museum.
Plate 71.—Sixteenth Century Porcelain.
Figs. 1 and 2.—Two Ewers in the Dresden Collection, with transparent green, aubergine and turquoise glazes on the biscuit, traces of gilding. In form of a phœnix (height 11 inches), and of a crayfish (height 8¼ inches).
Fig. 3.—Bowl with flight of storks in a lotus scroll, enamels on the biscuit, green, aubergine and white in a yellow ground. Chia Ching mark. Diameter 7 inches. Alexander Collection.
Emblematic Motives.
Heaven and Earth, and the six cardinal points (ch’ien k’un liu ho[129]), or “emblems of the six cardinal points of the Universe.”
Ch’ien and k’un are the male and female principles which are represented by Heaven and Earth, and together make up the Universe. The identification of these emblems is obscure. They might simply be the Eight Trigrams (pa kua), which are explained next, for two of these are known as ch’ien and k’un, and together with the remaining six they are arranged so as to make up eight points of the compass. But in that case, why not simply say pa kua as elsewhere?
On the other hand, we know that certain emblems were used in the Chou dynasty[130] in the worship of the six points of the Universe, viz. a round tablet with pierced centre (pi) of bluish jade for Heaven; a yellow jade tube with square exterior (ts’ung) for Earth; a green tablet (kuei), oblong with pointed top, for the East; a red tablet (chang), oblong and knife-shaped, for the South; a white tablet, in the shape of a tiger (hu), for the West; and a black jade piece of flat semicircular form (huang) for the North. All these objects are illustrated in Laufer’s Jade, but as they have not, to my knowledge, appeared together in porcelain decoration, the question must for the present be left open.