Among the “blue and white” wares of all periods, the Hsüan Tê porcelain is unanimously voted the first place by Chinese writers, and its excellence is ascribed principally to the superior quality of an imported mineral variously described as su-ni-p’o, su-p’o-ni and su-ma-ni. These outlandish names are, no doubt, attempts to render in Chinese the foreign name of the material, which was itself probably the name of the place or people whence it was exported. There is little doubt that this mysterious substance was the same species as the Mohammedan blue (hui hui ch’ing) of the following century. Indeed, this latter name is applied to it in Hsiang’s Album. The Mohammedan blue was obtained from Arab traders, and its use for painting on pottery had been familiar in the Near East, in Persia and Syria for instance, at least as early as the twelfth century.[35] The su-ni-p’o blue was no doubt imported in the form of mineral cobalt, and though there was no lack of this mineral in the neighbourhood of Ching-tê Chên, the foreign material was of superior quality. It was, however, not only expensive but unsuited for use in a pure state. If applied by itself, it had a tendency to run in the firing, and it was necessary to blend it with proportions of the native mineral varying from one in ten for the finest quality to four in six for the medium quality. The native mineral used by itself tended to be heavy and dull in tone, owing to its inability to stand the intense heat of the kiln, and was only employed alone on the coarser wares. The supply of Mohammedan blue was uncertain and spasmodic. It ceased to arrive at the end of the Hsüan Tê period, and it was not renewed till the next century (see p. [29]). Its nature, too, seems to have varied, for we are expressly told that the Hsüan Tê blue was pale in tone while the Mohammedan blue of the sixteenth century was dark. Possibly, however, this was not so much due to the nature of the material as to the method of its application, for Chinese writers are by no means unanimous about the paleness of the Hsüan Tê blue. The Ch’ing pi ts’ang, for instance, states that “they used su-p’o-ni blue and painted designs of dragons, phœnixes, flowers, birds, insects, fish and similar forms, deep and thickly heaped and piled and very lovely.”
Authentic specimens of Hsüan Tê blue and white are virtually unknown, but the mark of the period is one of the commonest on Chinese porcelain of relatively modern date. In most cases this spurious dating means nothing more than that the period named was one of high repute; but there is a type of blue and white, usually bearing the period mark of Hsüan Tê, which is so mannered and characteristic that one feels the certainty that this really represents one kind at least of the Hsüan porcelain. It is usually decorated in close floral scrolls, and the blue is light dappled with darker shades, which are often literally “heaped and piled” (tui t’o) over the paler substratum.
I have seen examples of this style belonging to various periods, mostly eighteenth century, but some certainly late Ming[36] (see Plate [67], Fig. 4). Seven examples of Hsüan blue and white porcelain are figured in Hsiang’s Album,[37] comprising an ink pallet, a vase shaped like a section of bamboo, a goose-shaped wine jar, a vase with an elephant on the cover, a tea cup, a sacrificial vessel, and a lamp with four nozzles. In five of these the blue is confined to slight pencilled borders, merely serving to set off the white ground, which is compared to driven snow. The glaze is rich and thick, and of uneven surface, rising in slight tubercles likened to “grains of millet.” This is the “orange skin” glaze. The blue in each case is hui hu[38] ta ch’ing (deep Mohammedan blue). Of the two remaining instances, one is painted with a dragon in clouds, and the other with “dragon pines,” and in the latter case the glaze is described as “lustrous like mutton fat jade,” and the blue as “of intensity and brilliance to dazzle the eye.”
The impression conveyed by all these examples is that they represent a type quite different from that described as “heaped and piled,” a type in which delicate pencilling was the desideratum, the designs being slight and giving full play to the white porcelain ground. It is, in fact, far closer in style to the delicately painted Japanese Hirado porcelain than to the familiar Chinese blue and white of the K’ang Hsi period.
Plate [60] illustrates a little flask-shaped vase in the Franks Collection, which purports to be a specimen of Hsüan Tê blue and white porcelain. It has a thick, “mutton fat” glaze of faint greenish tinge, and is decorated with a freely drawn peach bough in underglaze blue which has not developed uniformly in the firing. The colour in places is deep, soft and brilliant, but elsewhere it has assumed too dark a hue.[39] Its certificate is engraved in Chinese fashion on the box into which it has been carefully fitted—hsüan tz’ŭ pao yüeh p’ing, “precious moon vase of Hsüan porcelain”—attested by the signature Tzŭ-ching, the studio name of none other than Hsiang Yüan-p’ien, whose Album has been so often quoted. Without attaching too much weight to this inscription, which is a matter easily arranged by the Chinese, there is nothing in the appearance of this quite unpretentious little vase which is inconsistent with an early Ming origin.
On the same plate is a brush rest in form of a log raft, on which is a seated figure, probably the celebrated Chang-Ch’ien, floating down the Yellow River. The design recalls a rare silver cup of the Yüan dynasty, which was illustrated in the Burlington Magazine (December, 1912). Here the material is porcelain biscuit with details glazed and touched with blue, and the nien hao of Hsüan Tê is visible on the upper part of the log beside two lines of poetry. Whether this brush rest really belongs to the period indicated or not, it is a rare and interesting specimen. Two other possible examples of Hsüan Tê blue and white are described on p. [32].
PLATE 62
Barrel shaped Garden Seat: porcelain with coloured glazes on the biscuit, the designs outlined in slender fillets of clay. A lotus scroll between an upper band of clouds and a lower band of horses in flying gallop and sea waves. Lion mask handles. About 1500 A.D.
Height 14¼ inches.