PLATE 95
Two examples of Porcelain painted with coloured enamels on the biscuit, the details of the designs being first traced in brown. K’ang Hsi period (1662–1722)
Fig. 1.—One of a pair of Buddhistic Lions, sometimes called Dogs of Fo. This is apparently the lioness, with her cub: the lion has a ball of brocade under his paw. On the head is the character wang (prince) which is more usual on the tiger of Chinese art. Height 18 inches. S. E. Kennedy Collection.
Fig. 2.—Bottle-shaped Vase and Stand moulded in bamboo pattern and decorated with floral brocade designs and diapers. Height 8¾ inches. Cope Bequest (Victoria & Albert Museum).
In this interesting passage, written in 1722, we have a precise account of the manufacture of one of the types of porcelain which have been indiscriminately assigned to the Ming period. This on-biscuit polychrome was undoubtedly made in the Ming dynasty, but in view of d’Entrecolles’ description it will be safe to assume that, unless there is some very good evidence to the contrary, the examples in our collections are not older than K’ang Hsi. The type is easily identified from the above quotation, and there is a little group of the wares in the British Museum, mostly small figures and ornaments with washes of green, brownish yellow and aubergine purple applied direct to the biscuit, and on some of the unglazed details the unfired vermilion still adheres. These coloured glazes are compounded with powdered flint, lead, saltpetre, and colouring oxides, and the porcelain belongs to the comprehensive group of san ts’ai or three-colour ware, although the three colours—green, yellow and aubergine—are supplemented by a black formed of brown black pigment under one of the translucent glazes and a white which d’Entrecolles describes[300] as composed of ⅖ ounce of powdered flint to every ounce of white lead. This last forms the thin, iridescent film often of a faintly greenish tinge, which serves as white on these three-colour porcelains. In rare cases also a violet blue enamel is added to the colour scheme.
A characteristic of this particular type is the absence of any painted outlines. The colours are merely broad washes bounded by the flow of the glaze, and this style of polychrome is best suited to figures and moulded ornamental pieces, in which the details of the design form natural lines of demarcation for the glazes. On a flat surface this method of coloration is only suited to such patchy patterns as the so-called tiger skin and the tortoiseshell wares.
The Dresden collection is peculiarly rich in this kind of san ts’ai, but though two or three of the specimens (Plate [71], Figs. 1 and 2) differing considerably from the rest, are clearly of the Ming period, the great majority are undoubtedly contemporaneous with the forming of the collection, viz. of the K’ang Hsi period. The latter include numerous figures, human and animal, and ornaments such as the junk on Plate [98], besides some complicated structures of rocks and shrines and grottos, peopled with tiny images and human figures. To this group belong such specimens as the “brinjal bowls,” with everted rim and slight floral designs engraved in outline and filled in with coloured glaze in a ground of aubergine (brinjal) purple. There are similar specimens with green ground, and both types are frequently classed with Ming wares. Some of them may indeed belong to the late Ming period,[301] but those with finer finish are certainly K’ang Hsi. They are usually marked with rough, undecipherable seal marks in blue, which are commonly known as shop marks.
Some of the figures of deities, birds and animals, besides the small ornamental objects such as brush-washers in the form of lotus leaves and little water vessels for the writing table are of very high quality, skilfully modelled and of material far finer than that described by d’Entrecolles. Fig. 2, Plate [99], a statuette of Ho Hsien-ku, one of the Eight Immortals, is an example. The flesh is in white biscuit, showing the fine grain of the porcelain, white to-day, though possibly it was originally coloured with unfired pigment and gilt as was often the case. The glazes on this finer quality of ware, especially the green and the aubergine, are peculiarly smooth and sleek, and the yellow is fuller and browner than on the kindred ware, enamelled on the biscuit, which we now proceed to investigate.
The French term, émaillé sur biscuit, is used somewhat broadly to cover the coloured glazes just described, as well as the enamels proper of the muffle kiln. We shall try to confine the expression, “on-biscuit enamels,” to the softer, verifiable enamels which are fired at a lower temperature and in a smaller kiln or muffle. These are, in fact, the same enamels as are used in the ordinary famille verte porcelain painted over the finished glaze, but when applied direct to the biscuit they have a slightly darker and mellower tone, the background of biscuit reflecting less light than the glittering white glaze.
