PLATE 73
Two Bowls with the Chia Ching mark (1522–1566), with designs outlined in brown and washed in with colours in monochrome grounds.
Fig. 1 with peach sprays in a yellow ground. Diameter 8 inches. Alexander Collection.
Fig. 2 with phœnixes (fêng-huang) flying among scrolls of mu-tan peony. Diameter 7 inches. Cumberbatch Collection.
The combination of enamel colours with underglaze blue, which was so largely used in the Wan Li period as to be generally known by the name Wan li wu ts’ai (Wan Li polychrome), is not unknown on Chia Ching wares. The wide-mouthed jar, for instance, from the collection of Mr. S. E. Kennedy[135] (Plate [69], Fig. 2) is decorated with a design of fish among water plants in deep Chia Ching blue combined with green, yellow and iron red enamels; and a small bottle-shaped vase in the British Museum has the same blue combined with on-glaze red, green, yellow and aubergine, the design being fish, waves, and water plants. The greens of this and the Wan Li period include various shades—bright leaf green, pale emerald, and a bluish green[136] which seems to be peculiar to the late Ming period.
A box in the collection of Dr. C. Seligmann has a dragon design reserved in a blue ground and washed over with yellow enamel, on which in turn are details traced in iron red; and another peculiar type of Chia Ching polychrome in the Pierpont Morgan Collection (Cat. No. 882) is a tea cup with blue Imperial dragons inside, “on the outside deep yellow glaze with decoration in brownish red of intensely luminous tone, derived from iron, lightly brushed on the yellow ground: the decoration consists of a procession of boys carrying vases of flowers round the sides of the cup with addition of a scroll of foliage encircling the rim.” Both these specimens have the Chia Ching mark.
Allusion has already been made (p. [6]) to a type of bowl which belongs to the Ming period, though opinions differ as to the exact part of that dynasty to which it should be assigned. The bowls vary slightly in form, but the most usual kind is that shown on Plate [74] with well rounded sides. A common feature, which does not appear in the photograph, is a convex centre. Others, again, are shallow with concave base, but no foot rim. The decoration of those in the British Museum includes (1) a coral red exterior with gilt designs as described on p. [6], combined with slight underglaze blue interior ornament, (2) a beautiful pale emerald green exterior similarly gilt, with or without blue ornament inside, and (3) a single specimen with white slip traceries in faint relief under the glaze inside, the outside enamelled with turquoise blue medallions and set with cabochon jewels in Persia or India. There are similar bowls in the Dresden collection, with pale sky blue glaze on the exterior. As already noted, one or two of the red bowls have the Yung Lo mark, but, as a rule, they are marked with phrases of commendation or good wish,[137] such as tan kuei (red cassia, emblem of literary success), wan fu yu t’ung (may infinite happiness embrace all your affairs!) Two of them are known to have sixteenth-century European mounts, viz. the red bowl mentioned on p. [6], and a green specimen in the British Museum.[138] Without denying the possibility of some of the red examples dating back to the Yung Lo period, the conclusion is almost irresistible that we have here in one case the fan hung decoration which replaced the hsien hung in the Chia Ching period, and in another the ts’ui lü (emerald green), named among the colours of the Imperial Chia Ching porcelains.
The Chia Ching monochromes already mentioned include white, blue, sky blue, lustrous brown, turquoise, green, yellow, and aubergine, with or without designs engraved in the paste (an hua). None of these call for any further comment, unless it be the distinction between blue and sky blue of the Imperial wares. The former, no doubt, resulted from the Mohammedan blue (blended with native cobalt) mixed with the glaze, and must have been a fine blue of slightly violet tone: the latter was apparently the lavender-tinted blue which goes by the name of sky blue on the more modern porcelains.
We read in more than one passage in the Chinese works that the imitation of the classical porcelains of Hsüan Tê and Ch’êng Hua was practised in the Chia Ching period, and the name of a private potter who excelled in this kind of work has been preserved. A note on this artist, given in the T’ao lu[139] under the heading Ts’ui kung[140] yao, or Wares of Mr. Ts’ui, may be rendered as follows:—