The mirror black is usually a monochrome tricked out with gilt traceries, but as in the case of the powder blue the light Chinese gilding is usually worn away, and often its quondam presence can now only be detected by a faint oily film which appears when the porcelain is held obliquely to the light. It is a common practice to have this lost gilding replaced by modern work.
There are several large vases of triple-gourd form in the Charlottenburg Palace with the upper and lower lobes coated with gilt mirror black, and the central bulb enamelled with famille verte colours; and another use of the glaze as panel decoration in a lustrous brown ground has already been noted in an extract from Père d’Entrecolles; it is also found on rare specimens as a background for panels of famille verte enamelling. But its most effective use is as a pure monochrome only relieved by faint gilding, and some of the choicest K’ang Hsi specimens have soft brown reflexions in the lustre of the surface. Another and probably a later type of mirror black is a thick lacquer-like glaze with signs of minute crackle.
There is a type of glaze which, though variegated with many tints, still belongs to the category of monochromes. This is the flambé, to use the suggestive French term which implies a surface shot with flame-like streaks of varying colour. This capricious colouring, the result of some chance action of the fire upon copper oxide in the glaze, had long been known to the Chinese potters. It appeared on the Chün Chou wares of the Sung and Yüan dynasties, and it must have occurred many times on the Ming copper monochromes; but up to the end of the K’ang Hsi period it seems to have been still more or less accidental on the Ching-tê Chên porcelain, if we can believe the circumstantial account written by Père d’Entrecolles in the year 1722[356]:—“I have been shown one of the porcelains which are called yao pien, or transmutation. This transmutation takes place in the kiln, and results from defective or excessive firing, or perhaps from other circumstances which are not easy to guess. This specimen which, according to the workman’s idea, is a failure and the child of pure chance, is none the less beautiful, and none the less valued. The potter had set out to make vases of soufflé red. A hundred pieces were entirely spoilt, and the specimen in question came from the kiln with the appearance of a sort of agate. Were they but willing to take the risk and the expense of successive experiments, the potters would eventually discover the secret of making with certainty that which chance has produced in this solitary case. This is the way they learnt to make porcelain with the brilliant black glaze called ou kim (wu chin); the caprice of the kiln determined this research, and the result was successful.”
It is interesting to read how this specimen of flambé resulted from the misfiring of a copper red glaze, no doubt a sang de bœuf; for in the most common type of flambé red (see Plate [123], Fig. 1) passages of rich sang de bœuf emerge from the welter of mingled grey, blue and purple tints. The last part of d’Entrecolles’ note was prophetic, for in the succeeding reigns the potters were able to produce the flambé glaze at will.
There are, besides, many other strangely coloured glazes which can only be explained as misfired monochromes of the grand feu, those of mulberry colour, slaty purple, and the like, most of which were probably intended for maroon or liver red, but were altered by some caprice of the fire. But it would be useless to enumerate these erratic tints, which are easily recognised by their divergence from the normal ceramic colours.
The French have always been partial to monochrome porcelains. In the eighteenth century they bought them eagerly to decorate their hotels and châteaux, and enshrined them in costly metal mounts. But as the style of the mounting, rococo in the early part of the century, neo-classical in the latter part, was designed to match the furniture of the period, the oriental shapes were often sacrificed to the European fashion. Dark blue and celadon green were favourite colours, if we may judge by surviving examples, and to-day enormous prices are paid for Chinese monochromes fitted with French ormolu mounts by the Court goldsmiths, such as Gouthière, Caffieri, and the rest.[357] But these richly mounted pieces have more interest as furniture and metal work, and the ceramophile regards them askance for their foreign and incongruous trappings, which disturb the pure enjoyment of the porcelain.[358]
It remains to consider the white porcelain, that is to say the porcelain which was intended to remain white and undecorated with any form of colouring. White was the colour used by the Court in times of mourning, and large services of white porcelain were made for the Emperor on these occasions. But it is not to be supposed that all the beautiful white wares were made solely for this purpose.[359] They have always been highly esteemed by the Chinese from the early Ming times, when the Yung Lo bowls and the white altar cups of Hsüan Tê were celebrated among porcelains, down to the present day. Many exquisite whites were made in the early reigns of the Ch’ing dynasty, and as with so many of the perennial monochromes their exact dating is full of difficulty. We are not concerned here with the blanc de chine or white porcelain of Tê-hua in Fukien, which has already been discussed, but with the white of Ching-tê Chên, the glaze of which is distinguished from the former by its harder appearance, and its bluish or greenish tinge.
The latter was made to perfection in the K’ang Hsi period. Having no colours to distract the eye from surface blemishes, nothing short of absolute purity could satisfy the critic. In choice specimens the paste was fine, white and unctuous, the glaze clear, flawless, and of oily lustre,[360] the form was elegant and the potting true. Such pieces without blemish or flaw are the very flower of porcelain, whether they be of eggshell thinness (t’o t’ai), half eggshell (pan t’o t’ai), or of the substance of ordinary wares.
But though innocent of colour the white porcelain was rarely without decoration. The finest Imperial services were usually delicately etched under the glaze with scarcely visible dragon designs. Other kinds have the ornament strongly cut, such as the eggshell cups and saucers with patterns of hibiscus, lotus, or chrysanthemum petals firmly outlined, or the vases with full-bodied designs in low relief obtained by carving away the ground surrounding the pattern.[361] Others have faint traceries or thickly painted patterns in white slip, in steatite,[362] or in fibrous gypsum under the glaze. A fuller relief was obtained by pressing in deeply cut moulds or by applying strips and shavings of the body clay, and working them into designs with a wet brush after the manner of the modern pâte sur pâte. There are still higher reliefs in K’ang Hsi porcelain, figures, and symbolical ornaments, formed separately in moulds and “luted” on to the ware with liquid clay, but these generally appeared on the enamelled wares, and are themselves coloured. The applied reliefs on the white wares are usually in unglazed biscuit, and there are, besides, pierced and channelled patterns, but these processes have been fully described among the late Ming wares,[363] and nothing further need be said of them, except that they were employed with supreme skill and refinement by the K’ang Hsi potters. Père d’Entrecolles[364] alludes to these perforated wares in the following passage:—“They make here (i.e. at Ching-tê Chên) another kind of porcelain which I have never yet seen. It is all pierced à jour like fretwork, and inside is a cup to hold the liquid. The cup and the fretwork are all in one piece.” Wares of various kinds with solid inner lining and pierced outer casing are not uncommon in Chinese porcelain and pottery. Sometimes, however, the cups are completed without the inner shell, like Fig. 2, of Plate [78], which could be fitted with a silver lining if required to hold liquid.
Objects entirely biscuit are exceptional. There are, however, two small Buddhistic figures, and two lions of this class in the British Museum, and curiously enough both are stamped with potter’s marks, which is itself a rare occurrence on porcelain. The former bear the name of Chang Ming-kao and the latter of Ch’ên Mu-chih (see vol. i., page 223). Bushell[365] tells us that the Chinese call biscuit porcelain fan tz’ŭ (turned porcelain), a quaint conception which implies that the ware is turned inside out, as though the glaze were inside, and the body out; and this illusion is occasionally kept up by applying a touch of glaze inside the mouth of the unglazed vessel.