Fig. 1.—Bottle-shaped Vase of Porcelain with landscape design lightly engraved in relief under a turquoise blue glaze. Early eighteenth century. Height 8½ inches.
Fig. 2.—Water Vessel for the Writing Table of the form known as T’ai-po tsun after the poet Li T’ai-po. Porcelain with faintly engraved dragon medallions under a peach bloom glaze; the neck cut down and fitted with a metal collar. Mark in blue of the K’ang Hsi period (1662–1722) in six characters. Height 2¾ inches.
The cobaltiferous ore of manganese is the same material which is used to give a blue colour, but in this case the manganese is removed, and the cobalt rendered as pure as possible. For the manganese if in excess produces a purplish brown, and its presence in however small a quantity gives the blue a purple or violet strain. By the simple method of graduating the amount of manganese which was allowed to remain with the cobalt the potters were able to obtain many intermediate shades between dark blue and purple for their monochrome glazes.
The green monochromes are scarcely less numerous than the blue. There are the transparent greens of apple or leaf green shades whether even or mottled, which have been described among the glazes applied to the biscuit and among the enamels of the famille verte. These were used as monochromes and ground colours; and closely akin to them are (1) the cucumber green (kua p’i lü), in which a yellowish leaf green is heavily mottled with darker tints, and (2) the snake skin green (shê p’i lü), a deep transparent green with iridescent surface, one of the colours for which the directorate of Ts’ang Ying-hsüan was celebrated. There are good examples of both in the Salting Collection, but it would be useless to reproduce them except in colour.
There are the apple and emerald green crackles (in both cases a green glaze overlying a grey or stone-coloured crackle), but these have already been discussed.[338] A somewhat similar technique characterises the series of semi-opaque and crackled green glazes of camelia leaf, myrtle, spinach, light and dark sage, dull emerald and several intermediate tints. These are soft-looking glazes with small but very regular crackle,[339] and their surface often has a “satiny” sheen which recalls the Yi-hsing glazes. They are evidently glazes of the demi-grand feu, and the colouring agent is doubtless copper, though apparently modified with other ingredients. How far this particular group was used in the K’ang Hsi period is hard to say. Most of the specimens which I have seen give me the impression of a later make, but as there are a few which might come within the K’ang Hsi limits I have taken this opportunity to discuss them.
There is one specimen of a rare green in the British Museum to which I cannot recall a parallel. It is a bowl with the ordinary white glaze, but covered on the exterior with a very bright yellowish green, like the young grass with the sun shining on it. It is, perhaps, rather in the nature of an enamel than a glaze, but the ware has the appearance of age and should belong to the early part of the K’ang Hsi period.
Most of the green glazes are low fired, melting in the temperature of the demi-grand feu and the muffle kiln. The high-fired greens are those of celadon class. There is the lang yao[340] green, which has been discussed under that heading, a crackled glaze, in colour intermediate between apple green and the sea green celadon, and with a surface texture hazy with bubbles like the sang de bœuf, to which it is a near relation. This soft and beautiful colour has been described as a “copper celadon,” and though Dr. Bushell refuses his blessing on the name it seems to me a particularly happy expression. For the colour apparently results from the same copper medium which under slightly different firing conditions produces the sang de bœuf red and at the same time its tint approaches very nearly to the typical celadon green.
The true celadon glaze was freely employed on the early Ch’ing porcelains, especially on those of K’ang Hsi and Yung Chêng periods. It is a beautiful pale olive or sea green colour, made light by the pure white porcelain beneath which its transparent nature permits to shine through. Compared with the Sung celadons as we know them,[341] the Ch’ing dynasty ware is thinner in material and glaze, wanting in the peculiar solidity of appearance of the ancient wares; the body is whiter and finer, and the base is usually white with the ordinary porcelain glaze. There is, moreover, no “brown mouth and iron foot,” unless indeed this feature has been deliberately added by means of a dressing of ferruginous clay, a make-up which is too obvious to deceive the initiated. There were, however, some careful imitations of the ancient celadons made at this time and got up with the appearance of antiquity, but these were exceptional productions.[342]
Père d’Entrecolles, writing in 1722, alludes to the K’ang Hsi celadon in the following terms[343]:—“I was shown this year for the first time a kind of porcelain which is now in fashion; its colour verges on olive and they call it long tsiven. I saw some which was called tsim ko (ch’ing kuo), the name of a fruit which closely resembles the olive.” The long tsiven is clearly a transliteration of the characters which we write Lung-ch’üan, the generic name of the old celadons; but it is odd that Père d’Entrecolles should not have seen copies of this glaze before 1722, for its use must have been continuous at Ching-tê Chên from very early times, and we have found reference to it in various periods of the Ming dynasty. It is evident, however, that the colour was enjoying a fresh burst of popularity just at this time. D’Entrecolles gives a few further notes which concern its composition. His recipe is substantially the same as that given in Chinese works, viz. a mixture of ferruginous earth, which would contribute a percentage of iron oxide, with the ordinary glaze.[344] He also states that sui yu (crackle glaze) was added if a crackled surface was required, and there are numerous examples of this kind of ware to be seen. The most familiar are the vases with crackled celadon or grey green glaze interrupted by bands of biscuit carved with formal patterns and stained to an iron colour with a dressing of ferruginous earth. Monster heads with rings (loose or otherwise) serve as twin handles on these vases, which are designed after bronze models. These crackled celadons are evidently fashioned after an old model, but they have been largely imitated in modern times, and almost every pawnbroker’s window displays a set of execrable copies (often further decorated in underglaze blue) which are invariably furnished with the Ch’êng Hua mark incised on a square brown panel under the base.
The yellow monochromes of the K’ang Hsi period are mostly descendants of the Ming yellows. There is the pale yellow applied over a white glaze reproducing the yellow of “husked chestnuts,” for which the Hung Chih (q.v.) porcelains were celebrated; and there is a fuller yellow, usually of browner shade, applied direct to the biscuit. Yellow is one of the Imperial colours, the usual tint being a full deep colour like the yolk of a hen’s egg, and the Imperial wares are commonly distinguished by five-clawed dragons engraved under the glaze. Other glazes[345] used on the services made for the Emperor are the purplish brown (aubergine) and the bright green of camelia leaf tint, which with the yellow make up the san ts’ai or three colours. In fact the precise shades of these colours are those used on finer types of three-colour porcelain[346] with transparent glazes fired in the temperate part of the great kiln. All these glazes tend to become iridescent with age.