Plate 59.—White Eggshell Porcelain Bowl with Imperial dragons faintly traced in white slip under the glaze.
Mark of the Yung Lo period (1403–1424) incised in the centre in archaic characters. 1. Exterior. 2. Interior view.
Diameter 8¾ inches.
British Museum.
It is wellnigh impossible to reproduce adequately these white porcelains, but Plate [59] illustrates the well-known example in the Franks Collection, which has long been accepted as a genuine Yung Lo specimen. It represents the ya shou pei in form, with wide mouth and small foot—the contracted waist of the Po wu yao lan; the foot rim is bare at the edge, but not otherwise sandy, and the base is glazed over, which may be the sense in which the word “polished”[12] is used in the Po wu yao lan. The ware is so thin and transparent that it seems to consist of glaze alone, as though the body had been pared away to vanishing point before the glaze was applied—in short, it is t’o t’ai or “bodiless.” When held to the light it has a greenish transparency and the colour of melting snow, and there is revealed on the sides a delicate but exquisitely drawn design of five-clawed Imperial dragons in white slip (not etched, as has too often been stated), showing up like the water-mark in paper. On the bottom inside is the date-mark of the period etched with a point in four archaic characters (see vol. i, p. [213]). A more refined and delicate ceramic work could hardly be imagined.
Close to this bowl in the Franks Collection there are two smaller bowls or, rather, cups which in many ways answer more nearly the description of the ya shou pei,[13] though they are thick in substance and of coarser make. They have straight spreading sides, wide at the mouth, with foliate rim, and contracted at the foot. The foot rim is bare of glaze, but the base is covered. They are of an impure white ware with surface rather pitted, and inside is a lotus design traced in white slip under the glaze and repeated in radiating compartments. These are perhaps a product of the private factories. The same form is observed among the blue and white porcelain in two small cups, which are painted in blue with a landscape on the exterior and with bands of curled scrolls inside and the Yung Lo mark in four characters. The base is unglazed, and though they are undoubtedly intended to represent a Yung Lo type, these not uncommon bowls can hardly be older than the last dynasty. Another blue and white bowl in the Franks Collection has the Yung Lo mark and the scroll decoration inside, and on the exterior a long poem by Su Shih, covering most of the surface. It is painted in a grey blue, and the ware, though coarse, has the appearance of Ming manufacture, perhaps one of the late Ming copies which are mentioned without honour in the Po wu yao lan. It is, however, of the ordinary rounded form.[14]
Hsiang Yüan-p’ien illustrates in his Album one Yung Lo specimen, a low cylindrical bowl of the “bodiless” kind, “thin as paper,” with a very delicate dragon and phœnix design, which is seen when the bowl is held to the light and carefully inspected. This style of ornament is described as an hua (secret decoration), but it is not stated whether, in this case, it was engraved in the paste or traced in white slip.
The mention of “fresh red” (hsien hung), which seems to have been used on the Yung Lo porcelain as well as in the succeeding Hsüan Tê period, brings to mind a familiar type of small bowl with slight designs in blue inside, often a figure of a boy at play, the exterior being coated with a fine coral red, over which are lotus scrolls in gold. There are several in the British Museum, and one, with a sixteenth-century silver mount, was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910.[15] The term hsien hung is certainly used for an underglaze copper red on the Hsüan Tê porcelain, and it is doubtful whether it can have been loosely applied to an overglaze iron red on the earlier ware. For the bowls to which I refer have an iron red decoration, though it is sometimes wonderfully translucent and, being heavily fluxed, looks like a red glaze instead of merely an overglaze enamel (see Plate [74]). Several of these red bowls have the Yung Lo mark, others have merely marks of commendation or good wish. Their form is characteristic of the Ming period, and the base is sometimes convex at the bottom, sometimes concave. They vary considerably in quality, the red in some cases being a translucent and rather pale coral tint, and in others a thick, opaque brick red. Probably they vary in date as well, the former type being the earlier and better. It is exemplified by an interesting specimen in the Franks Collection marked tan kuei (red cassia), which indicates its destination as a present to a literary aspirant, the red cassia being a symbol of literary success. This piece has, moreover, a stamped leather box of European—probably Venetian—make, which is not later than the sixteenth century. This, if any of these bowls, belongs to the Yung Lo period, but it will be seen presently that the iron red was used as an inferior but more workable substitute for the underglaze red in the later Ming reigns, and, it must be added, these bowls are strangely numerous for a fifteenth-century porcelain. That they are a Yung Lo type, however, there is little doubt, for this red and gold decoration (kinrande of the Japanese) is the adopted style which won for the clever Kioto potter, Zengoro Hozen, the art name Ei raku, i.e. Yung Lo in Japanese.