The second type, which has only a dressing of steatite over the ordinary body, has neither the same lightness nor the opacity of the true steatitic ware, but it has the same soft white surface, and is painted in the same style of line drawing.
There are, besides, other opaque and crackled wares painted in underglaze blue, which are also described as “soft paste,” and, indeed, deserve the name far more than the steatitic porcelain. The creamy, crackled copies of old Ting wares, for instance, made with ch’ing tien stone,[291] are occasionally enriched with blue designs; and the ordinary stone-coloured crackle with buff staining is also painted at times with underglaze blue,[292] or with blue designs on pads of white clay in a crackled ground.
On the other hand, there are numerous wares of the Yung Chêng and Ch’ien Lung periods which are probably composed in part, at least, of steatite. They are usually opaque, and the surface is sometimes dead white, sometimes creamy and often undulating like orange peel, and in addition to blue decoration, enamel painting is not infrequent on these later types. The purely steatitic porcelains are generally of small size, which was appropriate to the style of painting as well as to the expensive nature of the material. The furniture of the scholar’s table, with its tiny flower vases for a single blossom, its brush washers and water vessels of fanciful forms, its pigment boxes, etc., were suitable objects for the material, and many of these little crackled porcelains are veritable gems. Snuff bottles are another appropriate article, and a representative collection of snuff bottles will show better than anything the great variety of these mixed wares and so-called “soft pastes.”
It has been already observed that crackled blue and white porcelain of the steatitic kind is found with the date marks of Ming Emperors, and there can be little doubt that it was made from early Ming times, but as the style of painting seems to have known no change it will be always difficult to distinguish the early specimens. It is safe to assume that almost all the specimens in Western collections belong to the Ch’ing dynasty, a few to the K’ang Hsi period, but the bulk of the better examples to the reigns of Yung Chêng and Ch’ien Lung. Modern copies of the older wares also abound.
Plate 91.—Blue and White K’ang Hsi Porcelain.
Fig. 1.—Triple Gourd Vase, white in blue designs of archaic dragons and scrolls of season flowers. Height 36½ inches. Dresden Collection.
Fig. 2.—Beaker, white magnolia design slightly raised, with blue background. Height 18 inches. British Museum.
Fig. 3.—“Grenadier Vase,” panels with the Paragons of Filial Piety. Height 44 inches. Dresden Collection.
