CHAPTER V
WAN LI
(1573–1619) AND OTHER REIGNS
The long reign of Wan Li, the last important period of the Ming dynasty, is certainly the best represented in European collections, a circumstance due to the ceramic activity of the time not less than to its nearness to our own age. In the first year of the reign orders were given that one of the sub-prefects of Jao-chou Fu should be permanently stationed at Ching-tê Chên to supervise the Imperial factory. It appears that he proved a stern taskmaster, and at the same time that the potters were severely burdened by excessive demands from the palace. The picture drawn by the censor in the previous reign of the afflicted condition of the potters, and the story told elsewhere[146] how they had made intercession daily in the temple of the god that the Imperial orders might be merciful, are fitting preface to the tale of the dragon bowls told as follows by T’ang Ying,[147] the director of the factory in the first half of the eighteenth century.
“By the west wall of the Ancestral-tablet Hall of the spirit who protects the potters is a dragon fish bowl (lung kang). It is three feet in diameter and two feet high, with a fierce frieze of dragons in blue and a wave pattern below. The sides and the mouth are perfect, but the bottom is wanting. It was made in the Wan Li period of the Ming. Previously these fish bowls had presented great difficulty in the making, and had not succeeded, and the superintendent had increased his severity. Thereupon the divine T’ung took pity on his fellow potters, and served them by alone laying down his life. He plunged into the fire, and the bowls came out perfect. This fish bowl was damaged after it had been finished and selected (for palace use), and for a long time it remained abandoned in a corner of the office. But when I saw it I sent a double-yoked cart and men to lift it, and it was brought to the side of the Ancestral-tablet Hall of the god, where it adorns a high platform, and sacrifice is offered. The vessel’s perfect glaze is the god’s fat and blood; the body material is the god’s body and flesh; and the blue of the decoration, with the brilliant lustre of gems, is the essence of the god’s pure spirit.”
The deification of T’ung was a simple matter to the Chinese, who habitually worship before the tablets of their ancestors; but he seems to have become the genius of the place, and in this capacity to have superseded another canonised potter named Chao,[148] who had been worshipped at Ching-tê Chên since 1425.
To add to the difficulties experienced by the potters in satisfactorily fulfilling the Imperial demands, it had been reported in 1583 that the supplies of earth from Ma-ts’ang were practically worked out, and though good material was found at Wu-mên-t’o, which is also in the district of Fu-liang, the distance for transport was greater, and as the price was not correspondingly raised the supply from this source was difficult to maintain. Consequently we are not surprised to learn that in this same year another memorial was forwarded to the emperor by one of the supervising censors, Wang Ching-min, asking for alleviation of the palace orders, and protesting specifically against the demands for candlesticks, screens, brush handles, and chess apparatus as unnecessarily extravagant. It was urged at the same time that blue decoration should be substituted for polychrome, and that pierced work (ling lung) should not be required, the objection to both these processes being that they were difficult to execute and meretricious in effect.
It is stated in the T’ao lu[149] that the supply of Mohammedan blue had ceased completely in the reign of Wan Li, and that on the other hand the chi hung or underglaze copper red was made, though it was not equal in quality to the hsien hung or pao shih hung[150] of the earlier periods. Both these assertions are based on the somewhat uncertain authority of the T’ang shih ssŭ k’ao, and though the truth of the second is shown by existing specimens, the first is only partially true, for there are marked examples of Mohammedan blue in the British Museum and probably elsewhere. Either there were supplies of the Mohammedan material in hand at the beginning of the reign, or they continued to arrive for part at least of the period.
The lists of porcelain supplied to the Court of Wan Li may be consulted with advantage, and the extracts from those of the previous reigns may be supplemented by the following, which, though not necessarily new forms and designs, do not appear in the Chia Ching and Lung Ch’ing records:—