As for the shape of the various Ming wares, much has already been said in reference to the various lists of Imperial porcelains, more particularly with regard to the household wares such as dishes, bowls, wine pots, boxes, etc. No precise description, however, is given in these lists of the actual forms of the vases, and we have to look elsewhere for these. There are, however, extracts from books on vases[221] and on the implements of the scholar’s table in the T’ao shuo and the T’ao lu, in which a large number of shapes are enumerated. Observation of actual specimens shows that bronze and metal work supplied the models for the more elaborate forms which would be made, partly or wholly, in moulds. These metallic forms, so much affected by the Chinese literatus, though displaying great cleverness in workmanship and elaboration of detail, are not so pleasing to the unprejudiced Western eye as the simple wheel-made forms of which the Chinese potter was a perfect master. Of the latter, the most common in Ming porcelains are the potiche-shaped covered jar (Plate [80]) and the high-shouldered baluster vase with small neck and narrow mouth (Plate [84]), which was known as mei p’ing or prunus jar from its suitability for holding a flowering branch of that decorative flower. Next to these, the most familiar Ming forms are the massive and often clumsy vases of double gourd shape, or with a square body and gourd-shaped neck, bottles with tapering neck and globular body, ovoid jars, melon-shaped pots with lobed sides, jars with rounded body and short narrow neck, all of which occur in the export wares. These are, as a rule, strongly built and of good white material, and if the shoulders are contracted (as is nearly always the case) they are made in two sections, or more in the case of the double forms, with no pains taken to conceal the seam. Indeed, elaborate finish had no part in the construction of these strong, rugged forms, which are matched by the bold design and free drawing of the decoration. I may add that sets of vases hardly come within the Ming period. They are an un-Chinese idea, and evolved in response to European demands. The mantelpiece sets of five (three covered jars and two beakers) are a development of the mid-seventeenth century when the Dutch traders commanded the market. The Chinese altar-set of five ritual utensils is the nearest approach to a uniform set, consisting as it did of an incense burner, two flower vases, and two pricket candlesticks, often with the same decoration throughout.
The Ming bowls vary considerably in form, from the wide-mouthed, small-footed bowl (p’ieh) of the early period to the rounded forms, such as Fig. 1 of Plate [74]. In some cases the sides are moulded in compartments, and the rims sharply everted. Others again are very shallow, with hollow base and no foot rim; others follow the shape of the Buddhist alms bowl with rounded sides and contracted mouth; and there are large bowls for gold-fish (yü kang), usually with straight sides slightly expanding towards the upper part and broad flat rims, cisterns, hot-water bowls with double bottom and plug hole beneath, square bowls (Plate [66], Fig. 1) for scraps and slops, and large vessels, probably of punch-bowl form, known as “wine seas.” The commonest type of Chinese dish is saucer-shaped, but they had also flat plates bounded by straight sides and a narrow rim, which has no relation to the broad, canted rim of the European plate constructed to carry salt and condiments.
The Chinese use porcelain plaques for inlaying in furniture and screens, or mounting as pictures, and there are, besides, many objects of purely native design, such as barrel-shaped garden seats for summer use, cool pillows, and hat stands with spherical top and tall, slender stems. But it was only natural that when they began to cater for the foreign market many foreign forms should have crept in, such as the Persian ewer with pear-shaped body, long elegant handle and spout, the latter usually joined to the neck by an ornamental stay: the hookah bowl: weights with wide base and ball-shaped tops for keeping down Indian mats, etc., when: spread on the ground; and at the end of the Ming period a few European shapes, such as jugs and tankards. In the Ch’ing dynasty European forms were made wholesale.
In considering the colours used in the decoration, we naturally take first the limited number which were developed in the full heat of the porcelain furnace, the couleurs de grand feu of the French classification. These were either incorporated in the glazing material or painted on the porcelain body and protected by the glaze. Chief among them was blue, which we have already discussed in its various qualities. The Mohammedan blue—the su-ni-p’o of the Hsüan Tê period and the hui hui ch’ing of the reigns of Chêng Tê and Chia Ching—was an imported material of pre-eminent quality but of uncertain supply. It was supplemented—and, indeed, usually blended—with the native mineral[222] which was found in several places. Thus the po-t’ang blue (so called from a place name) was found in the district of Lo-p’ing Hsien in the Jao-chou Fu; but the mines were closed after a riot in the Chia Ching period, and its place was taken by a blue known as shih-tzŭ ch’ing (stone, or mineral, blue) from the prefecture of Jui-chou in Kiangsi. According to Bushell[223] the po-t’ang blue was very dark in colour, and it was sometimes known as Fo t’ou ch’ing (Buddha’s head blue) from the traditional colour of the hair of Buddha. Another material used for painting porcelain was the hei chê shih (black red mineral) from Hsin-chien in Lu-ling, which was also called wu ming tzŭ. It was evidently a cobaltiferous ore of manganese and a blue-producing mineral, doubtless the same as the wu ming i (nameless wonder), which we have already found in use as a name for cobalt.
Much confusion exists, in Chinese works, on the subject of these blues, and it is stated in one place that the “Buddha head blue” was a variety of the wu ming i, which would make the po t’ang blue and the wu ming i and the wu ming tzŭ one and the same thing. In effect they were the same species of mineral, and the local distinctions are of no account at the present day except in so far as they explain the variety of tints in the Ming blue and white. It is, however, interesting to learn from a note on Mohammedan blue in the K’ang Hsi Encyclopædia that the native mineral, when carefully prepared, was very like the Mohammedan blue in tint.
All these blues were used either for painting under the glaze or for mixing with the glaze to form ground colours or monochromes, which varied widely in tint, according to the quantity and quality of the cobalt, from dark violet blue (chi ch’ing) through pale and dark shades of the ordinary blue colour to slaty blue and lavender. Some of them—notably the lavender and the dark violet blue—are often associated with crackle, being used as an overglaze covering a greyish white crackled porcelain. This treatment of the surface is well illustrated by a small covered jar in the British Museum with a dark violet blue apparently uncrackled but covering a crackled glaze. Two lavender blue bowls in the Hippisley Collection with the Chêng Tê mark are similarly crackled. Other Ming blue monochromes are a small pot found in Borneo and now in the British Museum with a dark blue of the ordinary tint used in painted wares, and a wine pot in the same collection with dragon spout and handle of a peculiar slaty lavender tint strewn with black specks, the colour evidently due to a strain of manganese in the cobalt.
Next in importance to the blue is the underglaze red derived from copper, which was discussed at length in connection with the Hsüan Tê porcelains.[224] Its various tints, described as hsien hung (fresh red), pao shih hung (ruby red), and cinnabar bowls “red as the sun,” are, we may be sure, more or less accidental varieties of the capricious copper red. The same mineral produced the sang de bœuf, maroon and liver reds, and probably the peach bloom[225] of the K’ang Hsi and later porcelains.
Other colours incorporated in the high-fired glaze in the Ming period are the pea green (tou ch’ing) or celadon, and the lustrous brown (tzŭ chin) which varied from coffee colour to that of old gold. Both of these groups derived their tint from iron oxide, carried in the medium of ferruginous earth. The use of two or more of these coloured glazes on one piece is a type of polychrome which was doubtless used on the Ming as on the later porcelains.
The glazes fired at a lower temperature, in the cooler parts of the great kiln, and known for that reason as couleurs de demi-grand feu, include turquoise (ts’ui sê), made from a preparation of old copper (ku t’ung) and nitre; bright yellow (chin huang), composed of 1⅕ oz. of antimony mixed with 16 oz. of pulverised lead; bright green (chin lü), composed of 1⅖ oz. of pulverised copper, 6 oz. of powdered quartz and 16 oz. of pulverised lead; purple (tzŭ sê), composed of 1 oz. of cobaltiferous ore of manganese, 6 oz. of powdered quartz and 16 oz. of pulverised lead. These colours, melting as they did at a lower temperature than that required to vitrify the porcelain body, had to be applied to an already fired porcelain “biscuit.”[226]