Chinese pottery and porcelain; vol. 2. Ming and Ch'ing Porcelain

by R. L. Hobson

We shall have occasion later on to discuss more fully another kind of blue and white porcelain for which the Chinese and American collectors show a marked partiality, and which has received the unfortunate title, “soft paste,” from the latter. It has an opaque body, often of earthy appearance, and a glaze which looks soft and is usually crackled, and the ware is usually of small dimensions, such as the Chinese literatus delighted to see in his study, and beautifully painted with miniature-like touches, every stroke of the brush clear and distinct. Ming marks—Hsüan Tê, Ch’êng Hua, etc.—are not uncommon on this ware, and there is no doubt that it was in use from the early reigns of the dynasty, but the style has been so faithfully preserved by the potters of the eighteenth century that it is wellnigh impossible to distinguish the different periods. A dainty specimen with the Wan Li mark illustrated in Fig. 2 of Plate [93] will serve to show the delicacy and refinement of this exquisite porcelain. At the same time it should be mentioned that the imitation Ting wares described on p. [96], vol. i., when painted in blue, are included in this group.

Plate 78.—Porcelain with pierced (ling lung) designs and biscuit reliefs. Late Ming.

Fig. 1.—Bowl with Eight Immortals and pierced swastika fret. Diameter 3¾ inches. S. E. Kennedy Collection.

Fig. 2.—Bowl with blue phœnix medallions, pierced trellis work and characters. Wan Li mark. Height 2¼ inches. Hippisley Collection.

Fig 3.—Covered Bowl with blue and white landscapes and biscuit reliefs of Eight Immortals. Height 6½ inches. Grandidier Collection.

Two interesting kinds of decoration mentioned in the Wan Li list[182] are frequently found in combination with blue and white; these are relief (ting chuang or tui hua) and pierced work (ling lung). Though both have been seen in various forms on the earlier wares, they occur at this period in a fashion which challenges special attention. I allude particularly to the small bowls with or without covers, decorated on the sides with unglazed (or “biscuit”) figures in detached relief, or with delicately perforated fretwork, or with a combination of both. The catalogue[183] of the Pierpont Morgan Collection illustrates two covered bowls of the first type with the Eight Immortals in four pairs symmetrically arranged on the sides, and a “biscuit” lion on the cover doing duty for a handle. A similar bowl, formerly in the Nightingale Collection, had the same relief decoration and painted designs in the typical grey blue of the Wan Li period; and Fig. 3 of Plate [78] represents an excellent example from the Grandidier collection. The Chinese were in the habit of daubing these biscuit reliefs (just as they did the unglazed details of statuettes) with a red pigment which served as a medium for oil gilding, but as neither of these coatings was fired they have worn away or been cleaned off in the majority of cases. In the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, is a picture[184] by Van Streeck (1632–1678), which shows one of these covered bowls with the biscuit reliefs coloured red, and Mr. Perzynski[185] alludes to another in a still-life by Willem Kalf (1630–1693) in the Kaiser Frederick Museum, Berlin, with the figures both coloured[186] and gilt. An excellent example of the second kind of decoration is illustrated by Fig. 2 of Plate [78], one of a set of four bowls in the Hippisley Collection, with phœnix medallions and other decoration in a fine grey blue, the spaces filled with perforated designs of the utmost delicacy, veritable “devil’s work,” to borrow a Chinese term for workmanship which shows almost superhuman skill. The small pierced medallions contain the characters fu, shou, k’ang, ning[187] (happiness, longevity, peace, and tranquillity), and under the base are the six characters of the Wan Li mark. A line cut in the glaze (before firing) at the lip and on the base-rim seems to have been designed to give a firm hold to a metal mount, a use to which it has been actually put in one case; and in another the glazing of the mark under the base has been omitted with the result that it has come from the kiln black instead of blue. The third kind which combines the reliefs and the pierced ornament is illustrated by Fig. 1 of Plate [78]. The reliefs of these medallions are small and very delicately modelled, and the subjects are various, including human and animal figures, birds and floral compositions; the borders are often traced in liquid clay, which is left in unglazed relief. An example in the British Museum has an interior lining washed with blue to serve as a backing for the pierced work, and it is painted inside with dragon designs in Wan Li grey blue. It bears a mark which occurs on other late Ming porcelains, yü tang chia ch’i (beautiful vessel for the Jade Hall).[188] Examples of this same pierced and relief work in white, without the supplementary blue designs, though rare, are yet to be seen in several collections. If marked at all they usually bear the apocryphal date of Ch’êng Hua, but an example in the Marsden Perry collection, Providence, U.S.A., has the T’ien Ch’i (1621–1627) date under the base, which no doubt represents the true period of its manufacture. This intricate ling lung work, which the Wan Li censor deprecated as too difficult and elaborate, has been perpetuated, though it was probably never more beautifully executed than in the late Ming period. The later examples are mostly characterised by larger perforations, which were easier to manage. There are several references to the pierced and relief decorations in the lists of porcelain supplied to the Court of Wan Li, e.g. “brush rests with sea waves and three dragons in relief over pierced designs, and landscapes,” “landscape medallions among pierced work,” and “sacred fungus carved in openwork, and figures of ancient cash.” In the finer examples of pierced work the most frequent design is the fret or key pattern often interwoven with the four-legged symbol known as the swastika, which commonly serves in Chinese for the character wan (ten thousand), carrying a suggested wish for “long life,” as expressed in the phrase wan sui (Jap. banzai), ten thousand years. The pierced patterns are carved out of the porcelain body when the ware has been dried to a “leather-tough” consistency, and the manipulative skill exercised in the cutting and handling of the still plastic material is almost superhuman. Similar tours de force distinguish the Japanese Hirado porcelain, and Owen’s work in our own Worcester ware exhibits extraordinary skill, but I doubt if anything finer in this style has ever been made than the ling lung bowls of the late Ming potters.

Another form of decoration which, if not actually included in the ling lung category, is at any rate closely allied to it, is the fretwork cut deeply into the body of the ware without actually perforating it, the hollows of the pattern being generally left without glaze. This ornament is used in borders or to fill the spaces between blue and white medallions after the manner of the pierced fretwork, and it was evidently contemporaneous with the latter, viz. dating from the late Ming period onwards (Plate [68], Fig. 3).

It will be convenient here to consider another type of decoration which was probably in use in the early periods of the Ming dynasty, certainly in the reign of Wan Li, and which has continued to modern times. This is the decoration in white clay varying in thickness from substantial reliefs to translucent brush work in thin slip or liquid clay, which allows the colour of the background to appear through it. The designs are painted or modelled in white against dark or light-coloured grounds of various shades—lustrous coffee brown (tzŭ chin), deep blue, slaty blue, lavender, celadon, plain white, and crackled creamy white—and they are usually slight and artistically executed. The process, which is the same in principle as in the modern pâte sur pâte, consisted of first covering the ground with colouring matter, then tracing the design in white slip (i.e. liquid clay) or building it up with strips of clay modelled with a wet brush, and finally covering it with a colourless glaze. In this case the white design has a covering of glaze. When a celadon green ground is used the design is applied direct to the biscuit and the celadon glaze covers the whole, but being quite transparent it does not obscure the white slip beneath. Sometimes, however, as in Fig. 3 of Plate [75], the design is unglazed and stands out in a dry white “biscuit.” Elaborate and beautiful examples of slip decoration were made in the K’ang Hsi and later periods, and Pére d’Entrecolles, writing in 1722, describes their manufacture, stating that steatite and gypsum were used to form the white slip.[189] The Ming specimens are usually of heavier make and less graceful form, and distinguished by simplicity and strength of design, the backgrounds being usually lustrous brown or different shades of blue. They consist commonly of bottles, jars, flower pots, bulb bowls, dishes, and narghili bowls, and many of them were clearly made for export to Persia and India, where they are still to be found. On rare examples the slip decoration is combined with passages of blue and white.

There is little to guide us to the dating of these wares, and marks are exceptional.[190] There is, however, a flower pot in the British Museum with white design of ch’i-lin on a brown ground which has the late Ming mark yü t’ang chia ch’i[191]; and a specimen with an Elizabethan metal mount was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910.[192] These are, no doubt, of Ching-tê Chên make; but there is a curious specimen in the British Museum which seems to be of provincial manufacture. It is a dish with slaty blue ground and plant designs with curious feathery foliage traced with considerable delicacy. The border of running floral scroll has the flowers outlined in dots, and the whole execution of the piece is as distinctive as the strange coarse base which shows a brown-red biscuit and heavy accretions of sand and grit at the foot rim. The same base and the same peculiarities of design appeared on a similar dish with celadon glaze exhibited by Mrs. Halsey at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910,[193] and in the British Museum there are other dishes clearly of the same make, but with (1) crackled grey white glaze and coarsely painted blue decoration, and (2) with greenish white glaze and enamelled designs in iron red and the Ming blue green. It is clear that we have to deal here with the productions of one factory, and though we have no direct clue to its identity, it certainly catered for the export trade to India and the islands; for the enamelled dishes of this type have been found in Sumatra. Mrs. Halsey’s dish came from India, and fragments of the blue and enamelled types were found in the ruins of the palace at Bijapur,[194] which was destroyed by Aurungzebe in 1686. Probably the factory was situated in Fukien or Kuangtung, where it would be in direct touch with the southern export trade, and the style of the existing specimens points to the late Ming as the period of its activity.