ch’ien k’un ch’ing t’ai, “Heaven and earth fair and fruitful!”
Monsters (shou) in sea waves.
Flying fish.
Historical scenes (ku shih), as well as genre subjects (jên wu).
Children playing with branches of flowers.
This last design occurs both in the form of belts of foliage scrolls, among which are semi-nude boys, and of medallions with a boy holding a branch, on blue and white and polychrome wares of the late Ming period. But it is a design of considerable antiquity, and it is found engraved on the early Corean bowls which, no doubt, borrowed from Sung originals.
Though all these designs are given under the general heading of blue and white, we may infer that the polychrome which is occasionally mentioned was used in combination with the blue. Thus the mention of “phœnixes in red clouds flying through flowers,” of “nine red dragons in blue waves,” and of “a pair of dragons in red clouds,” recalls actual specimens which I have seen of Lung Ch’ing and Wan Li boxes with designs of blue dragons moving through clouds touched in with iron red. Again, where the blue designs are supplemented with “curling waves and plum blossoms in polychrome (wu ts’ai),” one thinks of the well-known pattern of conventional waves on which blossom and symbols are floating, as on Plate [79]. Other types of decoration mentioned are yellow grounds and white glaze, both with dragon designs engraved under the glaze (an hua), peacocks and mu-tan peonies in gilding, and moulded ornament. A specific example of the last are the lions which served as knobs on the covers of the ovoid wine jars (t’an).
The author of the T’ao shuo pays a handsome tribute to the skill of the late Ming potters. “We find,” he says, “that the porcelain of the Ming dynasty daily increased in excellence till we come to the reigns of Lung Ch’ing and Wan Li, when there was nothing that could not be made.” At the same time he finds fault with a particular kind of decoration which was encouraged by the degraded and licentious tastes of the Emperor Lung Ch’ing, and seems to have only too frequently marred the porcelain of the period.[145]
The rare examples of marked Lung Ch’ing porcelain in our collections do not call for special comment, and the unmarked specimens will hardly be distinguished from the productions of the succeeding Wan Li period. There are, however, two boxes in the British Museum which may be regarded as characteristic specimens of the Imperial blue and white porcelains. Both are strongly made with thick but fine-grained body material and a glaze of slightly greenish tone; and the designs are boldly sketched in strong outline and washed in with a dark indigo blue. One is a square box with four compartments decorated with five-clawed dragons in cloud scrolls, extended or coiled in medallions according as space demanded; and the other is oblong and rectangular, and painted on the sides (the cover is missing) with scenes of family life (jên wu). In both cases the base is unglazed except for a sunk medallion in which the six characters of the Lung Ch’ing mark are finely painted in blue.