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

by R. L. Hobson

The process of marbling or “graining” has been tried by potters all the world over, and the Chinese were no exceptions. The effect is produced either by slips of two or more coloured clays worked about on the surface, or by blending layers of clays in two or more colours (usually brown and white) in the actual body. Early examples of this marbling occur among the T’ang wares, and Mr. Eumorfopoulos has examples of the Ming and later periods. One of these, a figure with finely crackled buff glaze and passages of brown and white marbling in front and on the back, has an incised inscription, stating that it was modelled by Ch’ên Wên-ching in the year 1597.[195]

The use of underglaze red in the Wan Li period has already been mentioned (p. [59]), and though Chinese writers classed it as chi hung they would not admit it to an equality with the brilliant reds of the fifteenth century.[196] Where red is named in the lists of Imperial porcelains we are left in doubt as to its nature, whether under or over the glaze; but there are two little shallow bowls in the British Museum with a curious sponged blue associated with indifferent underglaze red painting, which bear the late Ming mark yü t’ang chia ch’i.[197] A bowl of lotus flower pattern, similar in form to that described on p. [66], but deeper, and painted with similar designs in pale underglaze red, though bearing the Ch’êng Hua mark, seems to belong to the late Ming period.

The Wan Li polychromes will naturally include continuations of the early Ming types, such as the large jars with decoration in raised outline, pierced or carved and filled in with glazes of the demi-grand feu—turquoise, violet purple, green and yellow—wares with flat washes of the same turquoise and purple, incised designs filled in with transparent glazes of the three colours (san ts’ai), green, yellow and aubergine, and, what is probably more truly characteristic of this period, combinations of the first and last styles. A good example of the transparent colours over incised designs is Fig. 1 of Plate [79], a vase of the form known as mei p’ing with green Imperial dragons in a yellow ground and the Wan Li mark. All three of the san ts’ai colours were also used separately as monochromes with or without engraved designs under the glaze, a striking example in the Pierpont Morgan Collection being a vase with dragon handles and engraved designs under a brilliant iridescent green glaze, “which appears like gold in the sunlight.”[198] But though these types persisted, they would no doubt be gradually superseded by simpler and more effective methods of pictorial decoration in painted outline on the biscuit, filled in with washes of transparent enamels in the same three colours. These softer enamels, which contained a high proportion of lead and could be fired at the relatively low temperature of the muffle kiln, must have been used to a considerable extent in the late Ming period, though their full development belongs to the reign of K’ang Hsi, and there will always be a difficulty in separating the examples of these two periods, whether the colours be laid on in broad undefined washes, as on certain figures and on the “tiger skin” bowls and dishes, or brushed over a design carefully outlined in brown or black pigment. There is one species of the latter family with a ground of formal wave pattern usually washed with green and studded with floating plum blossoms, in which are galloping sea horses or symbols, or both, reserved and washed with the remaining two colours, or with a faintly greenish flux, almost colourless, which does duty for white. This species is almost always described as Ming; and with some reason, for the sea wave and plum blossom pattern is mentioned in the Wan Li lists as in polychrome combined with blue decoration. But the danger of assuming a specimen to be Ming because it exhibits a design which occurred on Ming porcelain is shown by an ink pallet in the British Museum, which is dated in the thirty-first year of K’ang Hsi, i.e. 1692. This important piece (Plate [94], Fig. 2) is decorated in enamels on the biscuit over black outlines with the wave and plum blossom pattern, the same yellow trellis diaper which appears on the base of the vase in Plate [97], and other diaper patterns which occur on so many of the so-called Ming figures. This piece is, in fact, a standing rebuke to those careless classifiers who ascribe all on-biscuit enamel indiscriminately to the Ming period, and I am strongly of opinion that most of the dishes,[199] bowls, ewers, cups and saucers, and vases with the wave and plum blossom pattern and horses, etc., in which a strong green enamel gives the dominating tint, belong rather to the K’ang Hsi period. The same kind of decoration is sometimes found applied to glazed porcelain, as on Fig. 3 of Plate [79], a covered potiche-shaped vase in the British Museum with the design of “jewel mountains and sea waves,” with floating blossoms, and pa pao[200] symbols in green, yellow and white in an aubergine ground, supplemented by a few plain rings in underglaze blue. The style of this vase and the quality of the paste suggest that it really does belong to the late Ming period.

Plate 79.—Wan Li Polychrome Porcelain.

Fig. 1.—Vase (mei p’ing) with engraved design, green in a yellow ground, Imperial dragons in clouds, rock and wave border. Wan Li mark. Height 15 inches. British Museum.

Fig. 2.—Bottle with pierced casing, phœnix design, etc., painted in underglaze blue and enamels; cloisonné enamel neck. Height 23 inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Fig. 3.—Covered Jar, plum blossoms and symbols in a wave pattern ground, coloured enamels in an aubergine background. Height 15½ inches. British Museum.

The use of enamels over the glaze was greatly extended in the Wan Li period, though practically all the types in vogue at this time can be paralleled in the Chia Ching porcelain, and, indeed, have been discussed under that heading. There is the red family in which the dominant colour is an iron red, either of curiously sticky appearance and dark coral tint or with the surface dissolved in a lustrous iridescence. Yellow, usually a dark impure colour, though sometimes washed on extremely thin and consequently light and transparent, and transparent greens, which vary from leaf tint to emerald and bluish greens, occur in insignificant quantity. This red family is well illustrated by a splendid covered jar in the Salting Collection (Plate [80]), and by three marked specimens in the British Museum, an ink screen, a bowl, and a circular stand. It also occurs on another significant piece in the latter collection, a dish admirably copying the Ming style but marked Shên tê t’ang po ku chih[201] (antique made for the Shên-tê Hall), a palace mark of the Tao Kuang period (1821–1850). It should be added that this colour scheme[202] is frequently seen on the coarsely made and roughly decorated jars and dishes with designs of lions in peony scrolls, etc., no doubt made in large quantities for export to India and Persia. They are not uncommon to-day, and in spite of their obvious lack of finish they possess certain decorative qualities, due chiefly to the mellow red, which are not to be despised.

But the characteristic polychrome of the period, the Wan Li wu ts’ai, combines enamelled decoration with underglaze blue, and this again can be divided into two distinctive groups. One of these is exemplified by Plate [81], an Imperial vase shaped after a bronze model and of the same massive build as its fellow in blue and white, which was described on p. [67]. Here the underglaze blue is supplemented by the green, the impure yellow and the sticky coral red of the period, and the subject as on the blue and white example consists of dragons and phœnixes among floral scrolls with borders of rock and wave pattern. The object of the decorator seems to have been to distract the eye from the underlying ware, as if he were conscious of its relative inferiority, and the effect of this close design, evenly divided between the blue and the enamels, is rather checkered when viewed from a distance. But both form and decoration are characteristic of the Wan Li Imperial vases, as is shown by kindred specimens, notably by a tall vase in the Pierpont Morgan Collection, of which the design is similar and the form even more metal-like, having on the lower part the projecting dentate ribs seen on square bronze and cloisonné beakers of the Ming dynasty. Two other marked examples of this colour scheme, from which the absence of aubergine is noteworthy, are (1) a ewer in the British Museum with full-face dragons on the neck supporting the characters wan shou (endless longevity) and with floral sprays on a lobed body, and (2) a straight-sided box with moulded six-foil elevation, painted on each face with a screen before which is a fantastic animal on a stand, and a monkey, dog and cat in garden surroundings.