PLATE 90
Covered Jar for New Year gifts, with design of blossoming prunus (mei hua) sprays in a ground of deep sapphire blue, which is reticulated with lines suggesting ice cracks: dentate border on the shoulders
Height 10 inches.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
Yet another group of superior quality is obviously connected with the European trade by a peculiar mark (see vol. i., p. [228]) resembling the letter C or G. It is most commonly represented by pairs of bottles with globular body and tall, tapering neck, decorated with flowing scrolls of curious rosette-like flowers, a design stated with much probability to have been copied from Dutch delft. As the Dutch design in question had evidently been based on a Chinese original, the peculiar nature of the flowers explains itself. There are other instances of patterns bandied in this way between the Far East and the West. The same peculiar floral scroll appears in famille verte associated with the same mark; and the same G mark occurs on two rare bottles in the collection of Mr. J. C. J. Drucker, which have blue and white painting on the neck and famille verte designs in the finest enamels on the body. A deep bowl in the Eumorfopoulos collection with famille verte panels of symbols from the Hundred Antiques, and a ground of green “prunus” pattern, bears the same mark. Neither of these last examples can be even remotely connected with Dutch influence, so that we may dismiss the suggestion that the letter in the mark is intended to be a D, standing for D(elft), for this reason quite apart from the fact that such a mark on Delft ware is non-existent. I imagine that the true explanation is that this peculiar mark is a merchant’s sign placed by order on the goods made for some particular trader.
A close copy of the “wing handles” of Venetian glass on certain blue and white bottles (Plate [92], Fig. 3), the appearance of Prince of Wales’s feathers in the border of a plate and of an heraldic eagle in the well of a salt cellar, no less than many forms obviously Western in origin, further emphasise the close relations between the Ching-tê Chên potters and European traders.[286] An immense quantity of indifferent blue and white was made for the European table services, and summarily decorated with baskets of flowers, the usual flowering plant designs, close patterns of small blossoms, floral scrolls with large, meaningless flowers, ivy scrolls, passion flowers, and numerous stereotyped designs, such as dragons in sea waves, prunus pattern borders, pine tree and stork, a garden fence with rockery and flowering shrubs, groups from the Hundred Antiques, a parrot on a tree stump, etc. The blue of these pieces is usually rather dull and heavy, but the ware has the characteristic appearance of K’ang Hsi porcelain, and was evidently made for the most part about the year 1700. If marked at all, the marks are usually symbols, such as the double fish, the lozenge, the leaf, a tripod vase, and a strange form of the character shou known as the “spider mark” (see vol. i., p. [225]). The plates are often edged with lustrous brown glaze to prevent that chipping and scaling to which the Chinese glaze was specially liable on projecting parts of the ware.[287]
Something has already been said[288] of another very distinctive class of blue and white for which the misleading name of “soft paste” has been widely adopted. The term is of American origin and has been too readily accepted, for it is not only inaccurate as a description, but is already current in Europe for a totally different ware, which it describes with greater exactitude, viz. the artificial, glassy porcelains made at Sèvres and Chelsea and other factories, chiefly in France and England, in the middle of the eighteenth century. In actual fact the Chinese ware to which the term “soft paste” is applied has an intensely hard body. The glaze, however, which is softer than that of the ordinary porcelain, contains a proportion of lead, and if not actually crackled from the first becomes so in use, the crackle lines being usually irregular and undecided.
A detailed description of the manufacture of this ware is given by Père d’Entrecolles,[289] though he is probably at fault in supposing that its chief ingredient was a recent discovery in 1722. It was made, he says, with a mineral called hua shih (in place of kaolin), a stone of glutinous and soapy nature, and almost certainly corresponding to the steatite or “soapy rock” which was used by the old English porcelain makers at Bristol, Worcester and Liverpool. “The porcelain made with hua shih,” to quote Père d’Entrecolles, “is rare and far more expensive than the other porcelain. It has an extremely fine grain; and for purposes of painting, when compared with ordinary porcelain, it is almost as vellum to paper. Moreover, this ware is surprisingly light to anyone accustomed to handle the other kinds; it is also far more fragile than the ordinary, and there is difficulty in finding the exact temperature for its firing. Some of the potters do not use hua shih for the body of the ware, but content themselves with making a diluted slip into which they dip their porcelain when dry, so as to give it a coating of soapstone before it is painted and glazed. By this means it acquires a certain degree of beauty.” The preparation of the hua shih is also described, but it is much the same as that of the kaolin, and the composition of the steatitic body is given as eight parts of hua shih to two of porcelain stone (petuntse).
There are, then, two kinds of steatitic porcelain, one with the body actually composed of hua shih and the other with a mere surface dressing of this material. The former is light to handle, and opaque; and the body has a dry, earthy appearance, though it is of fine grain and unctuous to touch. It is variously named by the Chinese[290] sha-t’ai (sand bodied) and chiang-t’ai (paste bodied), and when the glaze is crackled it is further described as k’ai pien (crackled).
The painting on the steatitic porcelain differs in style from that of the ordinary blue and white of this period. It is executed with delicate touches like miniature painting, and every stroke of the brush tells, the effects being produced by fine lines rather than by graded washes. The ware, being costly to make, is usually painted by skilful artists and in the finest blue. Fig. 3, of Plate [93], is an excellent example of the pure steatitic ware, an incense bowl in the Franks collection, of which the base and a large part of the interior is unglazed and affords a good opportunity for the study of the body material. The glaze is thin and faintly crackled, and the design—Hsi Wang Mu and the Taoist Immortals—is delicately drawn in light, clear blue.