The colouring medium of the pale yellow is antimony combined with a proportion of lead, and iron oxide is added to give the glaze an orange or brown tinge.[347] It is noticeable that the yellow applied to the biscuit is usually browner in tone. This is the nature, if we may judge from the excellent coloured illustrations in the Walters catalogue,[348] of the eel yellow (shan yü huang), a brownish colour of clouded smoky appearance, and one of the few glazes named in the T’ao lu as a speciality of the directorate of Ts’ang Ying-hsüan. The other yellow associated with the name of Ts’ang is the “spotted yellow” (huang pan t’ien), discussed on p. [127]. Its identification is uncertain, and Brinkley describes it as “stoneware with a dark olive green glaze with yellow speckles,” while Bushell (O. C. A., p. 317) regards it as a “tiger skin” glaze with large patches of yellow and green enamel, the same as the huang lü tien (yellow and green spotted), which he quotes from another context.
All these varieties belong to the couleurs de demi-grand feu; but there are besides several varieties of yellow enamels fired in the muffle kiln. Of these the transparent yellow was used as a ground colour in the K’ang Hsi period, but the opaque varieties, such as the lemon yellow, etc., belong rather to a later period. Among the latter I should include the crackled mustard yellow, though examples of it have often been assigned to the K’ang Hsi and even earlier reigns. There is, for instance, a bottle-shaped vase with two elephant handles in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which Bushell[349] regarded as a specimen of the old mi-sê (“millet colour”) glaze of the Sung dynasty. A careful examination shows that this crackled brownish yellow is made in much the same fashion as the apple green and the sage green crackles, viz. a yellow glaze or enamel overlying a stone-coloured crackle. This is not a Sung technique, but rather an imitative method belonging perhaps to the Yung Chêng period, when old glazes and archaic shapes were reproduced with wonderful skill and truth.
There is a solitary specimen of a high-fired glaze of pale buff yellow colour in the British Museum, which perhaps should be ranked with the yellow monochromes, though its appearance suggests an exceptional effect of the pale tzŭ chin or “Nanking yellow” glaze. And a rare vase in the Peters Collection has a minutely crackled brownish yellow glaze clouded with dark olive in bold markings like those of tortoiseshell.
Another Ming monochrome freely used in the K’ang Hsi period is the lustrous brown (tzŭ chin), formed like the celadon by mixing ferruginous earth called tzŭ chin shih with the ordinary glaze. Presumably the quantity of this material was greater in the brown glaze than in the celadon. Père d’Entrecolles describes this glaze in its diverse shades of bronze, coffee and dead-leaf brown, but he makes the curious error of proclaiming it a new invention in 1722.[350] He also refers to its use on the exterior of white cups and as a ground colour in which white panels were reserved. “On a cup or vase,” he tells us, “which one wished to glaze with brown, a round or square of damped paper was applied in one or two places; after the glaze had been laid on, the paper was peeled off, and the unglazed space was painted in red or blue. This dry, the usual glaze was applied to the reserve by blowing or by some other method. Some of the potters fill the blank spaces with a ground of blue or black, with a view to adding gilt designs after the first firing.”
There were other methods of decorating these panels, and perhaps the most familiar is that in which the early famille rose enamels were employed. This combination of brown ground with panels of floral designs in thick opaque rose red, yellow, white and green was a favourite with the Dutch exporters. In fact this ware is still called Batavian, the old catalogue name derived from the Dutch East Indian settlement of Batavia, which was an entrepot for far-Eastern merchandise. The date of the Batavian porcelain is clearly indicated by the transition enamels as late K’ang Hsi.
The tzŭ chin brown was used as a monochrome in all its various shades from dark coffee colour to pale golden brown, and the lighter and more transparent shades were sometimes laid over engraved decoration. In the British Museum there are two candlesticks, the stems of which with dragon designs in full relief are in an intensely dark tzŭ chin glaze, so dark, indeed, that the tops have been exactly matched in the deep brown ware made by Böttger of Dresden about 1710, the latter polished on the lathe to simulate the lustrous surface of the Chinese glaze. In the same collection are two saucer dishes of dark tzŭ chin glaze of fine quality painted with slight floral designs in silver.[351] This kind of decoration must have been singularly effective in its original state, but the silver does not stand the test of time, and though it still firmly adheres its surface has turned black. An unusual effect is seen on a vase in the Peters collection which has a lustrous coffee brown glaze passing into olive and clouded with black; and a very rare specimen in the same collection has a “leopard skin” glaze of translucent olive brown with large mottling of opaque coffee brown. The latter piece bears the Wan Li mark.
The lightest shade of this colour is what has been described as Nanking yellow.[352] It is used as a monochrome or as a ground colour with panels usually of famille verte enamels, and sometimes with enamelled decoration applied over the brown glaze itself. It is clear that the sui yu or crackle glaze was sometimes mixed with the tzŭ chin, for we find many examples of beautiful lustrous brown crackle. They have, however, in many cases an adventitious tinge of grey or green, for which the crackle glaze is perhaps responsible.
A near relation to the tzŭ chin (brown gold) glaze is the wu chin (black gold), a lustrous black glaze obtained by mixing a little impure cobaltiferous ore of manganese (or coarse blue material[353]) with the tzŭ chin glaze. Like the latter the black is an intensely hard glaze fired in the full heat of the great kiln, and it has a lustrous metallic surface which earned for it the name of “mirror black.”[354] This glaze seems to have really been a K’ang Hsi innovation,[355] and possibly it was a confusion with this fact which led d’Entrecolles into his erroneous statement about the date of the lustrous brown.
Plate 112.—Three figures of Birds, late K’ang Hsi Porcelain, with coloured enamels on the biscuit.