THE PORCELAIN OF CHINA
Introductory--Classification--The Sung Dynasty (960-1279)--The Mongol or
Yuan Dynasty (1280-1368).
_‘La porcelaine de la Chine! Cette porcelaine supérieure à toutes les
porcelaines de la terre! Cette porcelaine qui a fait depuis des siècles,
et sur tout le globe, des passionnés plus fous que dans toutes les
autres branches de la curiosité.... Enfin cette matière terreuse
façonnée dans les mains d’hommes en un objet de lumière, de doux coloris
dans un luisant de pierre précieuse.’_--EDMOND DE GONCOURT, ‘La Maison
d’un artiste.’
In any work on porcelain it is something more than the premier place
that must be given to the ware of China. We are dealing with an art
Chinese in origin, and during a succession of many centuries Chinese in
its development. It was only at a comparatively late time that the
knowledge of this art spread over the whole civilised world. We in
England have, as it were, acknowledged the pre-eminence of that country
by adopting the word ‘china’ as an equivalent, more or less, to
porcelain.[24]
It was under Imperial patronage that the art was developed in China, and
the excellence of the porcelain of that country has in a measure varied
with the taste and intelligence with which that patronage was exercised
in different reigns. The native scholar and connoisseur has for ages
been a collector of choice pieces, and his influence has always been
exercised in a conservative direction. There is, indeed, in the whole
world no such consistent _laudator temporis acti_, and it is this
conservative spirit, resulting in a constant ‘returning upon oneself,’
that it is essential to bear in mind if we are to understand the
involved relation of the old and the new in the history of the arts of
China.
But the Chinese potter was not working only for the court or for the
learned connoisseur, or again for the supply of the towns and villages.
From the earliest times, or at least for the last thousand years, there
has been a demand for his ware, small at first but slowly spreading,
from the outer barbarian. Porcelain, or something akin to it, has been
exported from China, by one path or another, from the time of the first
Arab settlements at Canton and Kinsay in the eighth or ninth century;
and thus a countervailing influence, acting in the direction of variety
and change, at least as far as the decoration of the ware is concerned,
has always been present. To give but two instances of this influence--we
shall return to the subject later on: in the intimate connection of the
Chinese court with Western Asia, and especially with Persia, in the
thirteenth century, we may probably find the occasion of the first
introduction into China of the blue decoration under the glaze; and with
more certainty--the fact is indeed acknowledged by the Chinese--we may
attribute the second great revolution in the decoration of porcelain,
the use of enamel colours over the glaze, to European or Arab influence.
On the other hand, the decline that set in at the end of the eighteenth
century was not a little hastened by the increased demand for ware
decorated to suit the depraved taste of the ‘Western barbarian.’
For in spite of his rigidity and his conservative spirit, the Chinese
potter has always understood how to adapt his wares to the changing
taste of his customers. Indeed the variation in the decoration, the
subtle _nuances_ in colour and design, that enable us to distinguish
between the Chinese porcelain exported to India, to Persia, and to the
nations of the Christian west, might be made the basis of a most
interesting study.
When we come to consider the various factories of porcelain that sprang
up in Europe in the course of the eighteenth century, we shall find that
what strikes the inquirer above all (in comparison with the kindred arts
of the time) is the little we can observe in the way of development
either in the technique or decoration of the wares. The art springs up
full-blown; what history there is is concerned rather with an artistic
decline. It is only in China that we can hope to trace the steps by
which this special branch of the potter’s art attained to the perfection
that we find in the products of the eighteenth century, and this alone
is a reason for dwelling, even in a treatment of the subject so general
and brief as this must needs be, on what may seem to some mere
antiquarian detail.
But there is another and perhaps even a more important reason for our
trying to form some idea of what the earliest wares of the Chinese were
like: unless we make some such endeavour we shall find it impossible to
understand the later history of porcelain in that country. One point
must be specially borne in mind when we are attempting to follow the
order in which fresh styles and designs were introduced in China. When a
new method of decoration had been adopted and had come into general
use--the introduction of underglaze blue in early Ming times, and that
of coloured enamels at a later period, are cases in point--this did not
involve the abandonment of the older styles. There was a constant effort
to maintain the old methods, and in the most flourishing times of the
emperors Kang-he and Kien-lung, the series of great men who had charge
of the imperial works at King-te-chen, some of them practical potters
themselves, were constantly occupied with the problems of reproducing
the glazes, if not the pastes, of the earliest wares. During the reign
of Yung-chêng (1723-1735), perhaps the culminating period in the history
of Chinese porcelain, when Nien Hsi-yao was superintendent, a list was
drawn up of fifty-seven varieties of porcelain made at King-te-chen. In
this list the titles of all the old wares of the Sung dynasty are to be
found, and to them the place of honour is evidently awarded (Bushell,
chap. xii.). The names of some of these old wares, the Ko yao and the
Kuan yao, for instance, are applied to porcelain in common use at the
present day, an attribution based on the greater or less resemblance of
this modern ware to the Sung porcelain, at least in the matter of the
glazes.
It is only quite of late years that we in Europe have been able to make
any clear distinction, not only between the different classes of Chinese
porcelain, but between what is Chinese and what is not. A few years ago
the most characteristic porcelain of Japan was classed as Chinese, while
on the other hand Corea and even local English factories were credited
with porcelain made and decorated in one or other of the former
countries.
It is nearly two hundred years since the famous letters of the Jesuit
missionary, the Père D’Entrecolles, were written, and these letters
still remain our best source of information for the processes of
manufacture at King-te-chen. There was little further information on the
subject from the Chinese side[25] until, in 1856, Stanislas Julien
translated part of a Chinese work treating chiefly of the same porcelain
factory--this is the _King-te-chen Tao Lu_, a book which contains in
addition some information about the history of the different wares. This
translation was for many years the only native source of information
available to students of Chinese porcelain, and many were the
misconceptions and blunders in which these students were landed. The
book was indeed accompanied by a preface and valuable notes by M.
Salvétat, the porcelain expert of Sèvres, but Julien himself, though an
eminent Chinese scholar, had no practical acquaintance either with the
matter in hand or indeed with the country generally.
The beginning of a sounder knowledge of the subject was made when that
collector of genius, the late Sir A. Wollaston Franks, published a
catalogue of the private collection of Japanese and Chinese porcelain
which he afterwards presented to the nation. His marvellous intuition
and his vast experience enabled him to seize upon points of resemblance
and difference which threw light upon the origin of the various wares,
and to expose at the same time the inconsistencies of the arrangements
then in vogue. He it was who first pointed out the general
worthlessness, as a guide to the date or even the country of any piece
of porcelain, of the name of dynasty and emperor which it might bear.
His successor, Mr. C. H. Read, has well carried on the tradition. At the
present moment the British Museum is one of the few places where an
attempt has been made at a systematic arrangement of a representative
collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain.[26]
In the meantime in China itself, both in connection with the embassies
at Pekin and among some of the merchants at Shanghai and other treaty
ports, much information was being collected, and it was above all the
merit of Franks to keep himself in communication with and to encourage
all such research. Dr. Hirth, long in the service of the Chinese at
Shanghai and elsewhere, has published a series of learned studies
treating of the relation of the Chinese to the Roman empire, of the Arab
traders during the Middle Ages, and of the early history of Chinese
porcelain generally. But it is to a former member of our embassy at
Pekin, to Dr. Bushell, that we are above all indebted for the throwing
open of Chinese sources of information upon the history of porcelain. A
worthy successor of the Père D’Entrecolles in his intimate acquaintance
with the country and its language, Dr. Bushell is well abreast of the
chemical and technical knowledge of the day, and his position as
physician to our embassy at Pekin has given him access to information
from the best Chinese sources, as well as to the treasures of many of
the native collections of the capital.
Dr. Bushell has written the text to a sumptuously illustrated work,
nominally a catalogue of the collection of porcelain formed by the late
Mr. Walters of Philadelphia, and into this text he has woven all the
vast wealth of material that he had accumulated during many years of
study both at Pekin and in Europe. This work has thus superseded all
other sources of information on the history and manufacture of Chinese
porcelain. He has, in fact, ransacked all that has been written in China
on these subjects, and his translations have this advantage over the
works of Julien, that they are made by one who knows thoroughly the
subject that the Chinese author is dealing with.
We must not forget the researches on the chemical and technical side of
the subject by what we may call the school of Sèvres. To these workers
we have made frequent reference in previous chapters. It is to the
experiments and analyses of men such as Brongniart, Salvétat, Ebelmen,
and Vogt, that we are indebted for our knowledge of the chemical
constitution of the paste, the glaze, and the enamels of Chinese
porcelain, as well as for a rational exposition of the methods of its
manufacture. To sum up, our sources of information of late years are, in
the main, English, as far as the history and what I may call the
sinology of our subject are concerned; but for the chemistry and
technology we must turn to French works. As far as I know, little of
value has been published in Germany on the subject of Oriental
porcelain. The discussion between Karabacek, Meyer, and Hirth (whose
later papers have been published in German) on the early history of
celadon and on the Arab traders of the Middle Ages, is perhaps the most
notable exception.
We are in the dark even now as to the date and place of origin of more
than one class of Oriental porcelain. On the question of the relation of
the ceramic wares of China to the contemporary sister arts, there are
many points to be cleared up,--I mean especially the question how far
the early wares were influenced by the art of the bronze-caster and the
carver of jade, and again to what extent the decoration of porcelain in
later times was dependent upon the example of the contemporary schools
of painting. When we know about the pictorial art of the Chinese even
the little that we do already of that of their Japanese neighbours, we
shall, to give but one instance, be able to trace the source of the
beautiful landscapes and flower designs that we find on the vases and
plates of the _famille verte_ and _famille rose_.
There is one source of information which remains as yet almost
completely untapped. The Japanese have been for many centuries keen
collectors of Chinese porcelain, as of other Chinese objects of art.
They have their own views on its history, and some of the finest
specimens of the older wares remain still in Japan, in spite of the many
pieces that have of late years been carried away to Europe and America.
As we shall see, they have in their own pottery and porcelain handed on
to quite recent days many traditions of Ming and earlier times that have
been lost in China. If some Japanese connoisseur or antiquary, strong in
Chinese lore, could give us a history of porcelain from his own point of
view, I think that European investigators would have cause to be
grateful.
Much could be gleaned, as I have already said, by studying the relation
of the potters art to that of the jade-carver and the caster of bronze,
and this brings us to an important point that perhaps has not been fully
appreciated by us in the West. I refer to the comparatively late date of
the beginning of porcelain in China compared, for example, to the arts
just mentioned. We can hardly carry back the history of true porcelain
beyond the great Tang dynasty (618-907 A.D.), and even in China there is
no existing specimen that can safely be attributed to so early a date.
But this same Tang dynasty was the very heyday in that country, not only
of military power but also of artistic culture. It would be impossible
to enter into this important subject here; it is one that has been
strangely ignored by us in Europe. Suffice to say that the great
figure-painters of this period were looked back to with veneration in
later times, both in China and in Japan, and that the two schools of
landscape, the colour school of the North and the black and white
‘literary’ school of the South--schools whose traditions have survived
to the present day--were both founded by Tang artists. At that time art
critics were known (and even honoured); they already wrote books on the
early history of painting, and they have left us descriptions of famous
collections.
We may expect, then, to find the influence of these more precocious arts
on the early fictile ware of China, and indeed we see the quaint
decoration and the not too beautiful outlines of the early hieratic
bronzes repeated on the rare specimens that survive from the dynasty
that after a period of unrest followed that of Tang. This was the Sung
dynasty, which lasted till the time of the Mongol invasion in the
thirteenth century.[27]
It is difficult for a European to appreciate the charm, or rather
superlative excellence, that is found by a Chinaman in a fine specimen
of jade. It is, however, a substance that is closely linked with his
philosophy, his religion, and above all with his all-important
ceremonial. No wonder, then, if from an early time he strove, with the
pastes and glazes at his command, to imitate such a material. And
numberless references in contemporary writers, as well as the evidence
of many of the oldest pieces of porcelain surviving, show that this was
the case. We may safely say that in these early specimens the thick
glaze, of tints varying from a true celadon to a more pronounced blue or
green, was admired in proportion to its resemblance to jade. As for the
porcelain itself, all that was looked for in the paste was that it
should be hard, and that the vessel when struck should give out a
bell-like sound--‘a plaintive note like a cup of jade,’ as one early
Chinese writer says of a porcelain cup in his collection.
The Chinese in these times possessed also elaborately carved vessels of
rock crystal and of various kinds of chalcedony, and these also it was
attempted to imitate with the early glazes. Glass, too, as a material
for small objects, was probably known; it seems, however, to have been
somewhat of a rarity. It is mentioned by writers of the Tang period in
connection with these early wares, and indeed it is possible that there
may be some confusion in the literature of the time (or rather perhaps
in our interpretation of the language used) between the two
materials--the thickly glazed porcelain and the more or less opaque
glass.
After these preliminary remarks we shall be in a better position to
interpret the somewhat involved and contradictory allusions to our
subject found in Chinese books.
We now come to the important question of the classification of Chinese
porcelain. A difficulty here arises from the rival claims of two
systems. The older and perhaps safer division depends solely on the
nature of the ware, its colour, decoration, etc.; but in opposition to
this the claim of the more logical, historical classification has, with
our increasing knowledge, become of late years more pressing. The result
has been an attempt to combine the two systems. Such an attempt must
necessarily lead to many compromises, and yet something of the sort is
perhaps the only available plan. We may compare the development of the
ceramic art in China to what has taken place in the evolution of the
animal kingdom: while new and more elaborated forms are evolved, the
older ones, or many of them, survive in but slightly modified forms. If
this tendency be borne well in mind there will be less danger of
confusion between the really old types and the modern representations or
even copies which are called, in China, by the same names.
The three classes into which Chinese porcelain is divided--and there is
a general agreement among collectors on this head--rest on such an
attempt to combine a historical with a technical classification:--
1. Porcelain with single-coloured glazes, including plain white ware.
The colour of the glaze is derived from two metals only, iron and
copper. Any further decoration depends upon the moulding of the surface
or upon patterns incised in the paste. All the wares made up to the end
of the Sung period (1279 A.D.) may probably be included in this class.
2. Porcelain decorated with colour under the glaze. This division is
nearly equivalent to our ‘blue and white’ ware, but in addition to
cobalt, copper is at times introduced to give a red colour. This system
of decoration was probably introduced during the course of the
fourteenth century, and it is associated with the Ming dynasty.
3. Porcelain decorated with enamels over the glaze, necessitating a
second firing in a muffle-stove. The use of these fusible enamel colours
came in probably during the sixteenth century, but the art was not fully
developed till much later.
The glazes of the first and second classes as a rule contained no lead,
and to melt them the full heat of the oven, the _grand feu_, was
required.
There is, however, a class of porcelain which does not fall well into
any of the above divisions, but which is historically of great
importance. The blue, purple, and yellow glazes of this ware were
_painted_ on the biscuit after a preliminary baking of the paste, and
then fired, not in the hottest part of the furnace, but in what we may
call the _demi grand feu_. The glaze of this ware contains lead, and
this fact and the method of the decoration may be held to give it a
position bridging over the interval between our first two classes and
the third--that of enamelled porcelain. This ware, _painted on the
biscuit_, dates, however, from an earlier time than the latter class,
and must not be confused with it.
As I have pointed out, these types did not entirely replace one another,
for the earlier forms continued to be made by the side of the later.
One of our principal difficulties in discussing the early wares of China
is to reconcile and co-ordinate the various types described in old
Chinese books with the few specimens surviving at the present day. Of
these scanty examples we can point to scarcely any in public
collections; the rare pieces that have been brought from China are in
the hands of private collectors in England, France, and America. In the
Chinese authorities we find as early as the tenth century references to
porcelain which was ‘blue as the sky, brilliant as a mirror, thin as
paper, and as sonorous as a piece of jade’; an emperor who reigned just
before the accession of the Sung dynasty (960 A.D.) demanded that the
porcelain made for him should be ‘of the azure tint of the sky after
rain, as it appears in the interval between the clouds.’ Compare with
these descriptions the thick paste, barely translucent, the heavy
irregular glaze, greyish white to celadon or pale blue, of the few
specimens of undoubted antiquity that have survived to our day. How can
we reconcile the tradition with the material evidence? Two explanations
have been given of the discrepancy. According to one theory, all the
more delicate and fragile pieces have disappeared ‘under the hands of
time’ (or shall we say more definitely under those of endless
generations of housemaids?), only the heavy, solid specimens surviving.
The other theory is simpler: it is that the writers of the books are apt
to fall into exaggeration when speaking of any matter that has the
sanction of age--that, not to mince matters, they are as a class great
liars; and this is a point of view that commends itself to those who
have any acquaintance with Chinese literature.[28]
We have now, however, one source of information for these early wares
upon which, although it is in a measure a literary source, we can place
greater reliance. This is nothing less than an illustrated list, a
_catalogue raisonné_, of famous specimens of porcelain, drawn up by a
distinguished Chinese art connoisseur and collector as long ago as the
end of the sixteenth century. In this manuscript there were more than
eighty coloured reproductions of pieces, both from the author’s own
collection and from those of his friends. The work came from the library
of a Chinese prince of high rank, and it was purchased in Pekin by Dr.
Bushell some twenty years ago. Since then this valuable document has
perished in a fire at a London warehouse, where it had been deposited,
but not before the illustrations had been copied by a Chinese artist and
its owner had made a careful translation and analysis of its
contents.[29] The writer, Hsiang-yuan-pien, better known as Tzu-ching,
after giving a brief sketch of the early history of ceramics in his
country, exclaims apologetically: ‘I have acquired a morbid taste for
pot-sherds. I delight in buying choice specimens of Sung, Yuan, and Ming
ware, and exhibiting them in equal rank with the bells, urns, and
sacrificial wine-vessels of bronze dating from the three ancient
dynasties, from the Chin and the Han’ (2250 B.C. to 220 A.D.)--that is
to say, in placing them in the same rank as antiquities that are
acknowledged to be worthy of the attention of the scholar. Porcelain at
that time, we see, had hardly established its claim to so dignified a
position; hence the apologetic tone. After telling us how with the
advice of a few intimate friends he had selected choice specimens, which
he then copied in colour and carefully described, Tzu-ching concludes
with these words: ‘Say not that my hair is scant and sparse, and yet I
make what is only fit for a child’s toy.’ This appeal is evidently
addressed to the Lord Macaulays of his day.[30]
The first point to notice in this catalogue is that more than half of
the objects described are attributed to the Sung period (960-1279 A.D.),
that is to say, they were at least three hundred years old at the time
when Tzu-ching wrote. The Sung dynasty, we must bear in mind, was above
all remembered as a period of great wealth and material prosperity. Less
warlike than the Tang which preceded it, the arts were cultivated at the
court of the pleasure-loving emperors who had their capital during the
earlier time at Kai-feng Fu (in the north of Honan, near to the great
bend of the Hoang-ho). When driven south by the advance of the more
warlike Mongols they retired to Hangchow, the Kinsay of which Marco Polo
has such wonderful tales to relate. In these early days there was no
great centre for the manufacture of porcelain; it was made in many
widely separated districts, so that the classification of these early
wares is, in a measure, a geographical one. At King-te-chen, at least in
the later Sung period, they were already making porcelain, but for court
use only, it would appear, for at that time the factory was a strict
imperial preserve, and its wares did not come into the market.
As to the still older wares, those of Ch’ai and of Ju, which generally
hold the place of honour in Chinese lists, it was of the first that the
emperor spoke when he commanded that pieces intended for his own use
should be clear as the sky after rain; but no specimen of this porcelain
was extant even in Ming times. Its place, it would seem, was taken by
the JU YAO (the word _yao_ is about equivalent to our term ‘ware’),
which, like the Ch’ai, came from the province of Honan. This ware also
is now practically extinct; Tzu-ching, however, claims to have possessed
some specimens, and of these he gives more than one illustration. The
glaze was thick and like melted lard (a comparison often made by the
Chinese), and varied in colour from a _clair-de-lune_ to a brighter
tint of blue. The name Ju, we may add, is often applied to more modern
glazes which resemble the old ones in colour and thickness.
The name KUAN YAO, which means ‘official’ or ‘imperial’ porcelain, has
been the cause of much confusion; the term has been applied to any ware
made for imperial use. That of the Sung dynasty was made in the
immediate neighbourhood of the imperial court, first at Kai-feng Fu and
later at Hangchow. In its more strict use the term Kuan yao is applied
to pieces generally of archaic form, to censers ornamented with
grotesque heads of monstrous animals, and to wares of other shapes
copied from old ritual bronzes. The glaze varies in colour from emerald
green to greyish green and _clair-de-lune_, it is generally crackled,
the cracks forming large ‘crab-claw’ divisions. Other kinds are
described as white and very thin, but of these, perhaps for one of the
reasons given above, no examples have survived to our day.
LUNG-CHUAN YAO and KO YAO. It will be convenient to class together these
two most important types of Chinese porcelain. At the present day these
names are applied in China to some comparatively common varieties of
porcelain, not necessarily of any great age. But more strictly
Lung-chuan yao is the term used by the Chinese for the heavy celadon
pieces, whether dating from Sung or from Ming times, which were the
first kinds of porcelain to become a regular article of export; while
the word Ko yao is used as a general name for many kinds of crackle
ware, which may vary in colour from white to a full celadon. In a more
restricted sense it includes only the early pieces with a greyish white
glaze and well-marked crackles.
LUNG-CHUAN WARE was made during Sung times at a town of that name in the
province of Chekiang, situated about halfway between the Poyang lake
and the coast. In Ming times the kilns were removed to the adjacent
provincial capital, Chu-chou Fu, nearer to the coast. This was probably
the ware that Marco Polo saw when passing through the town of Tingui. It
was largely exported from the ports of Zaitun and Kinsay. It will,
however, be better to defer the discussion of this thorny question to a
later chapter, when we shall have something to say about the way in
which the knowledge of Chinese porcelain was spread through the
Mohammedan and Christian west. It will be enough for the present to
mention that the Lung-chuan ware was the original type and always
remained one of the principal sources of the Martabani celadon so prized
in early Saracen times.
As this is the first time that we come across celadon ware,[31] we may
mention that we use the term in the older and narrower sense for a
greyish sea-green colour tending at times to blue. The name is, however,
sometimes made to cover nearly the whole range of monochrome glazes. It
is the _Ching-tsu_[32] of the Chinese and the _Sei-ji_ of the Japanese.
The true Lung-chuan celadon of Sung times was, however, of a more
pronounced grass-green colour. But we are concerned rather with the
later celadon made at Chu-chou Fu during the Ming period. For it is to
this time that we must refer most of the heavy dishes and bowls, often
fluted or moulded in low relief with a floral design of peony or lotus
flowers, or again with plaited patterns surrounding a fish or dragon
[Illustration: _PLATE III._ 1--CHINESE, CELADON WARE
2--CHINESE, CELADON WARE]
which occupies the centre; in other examples the decoration is engraved
in the paste. In either case, whether moulded or engraved, the glaze
accumulating in the hollows helps to accentuate the pattern. The paste
as seen through the glaze where the latter is thin appears white, but
where the glaze is absent, as on the foot, or where it is exposed by
bubbles or other irregularities, the ground is seen to be of a peculiar
reddish tint. By this test the Chinese claim to distinguish the older
celadon, the true _martabani_, from the later imitations made at
King-te-chen. The paste of these later copies is often artificially
coloured on the exposed surface so that they may resemble the old ware
(Hirth, _Ancient Porcelain_, pp. 21 _seq._).
As for the KO YAO, the old ware of Sung times is said to have been first
made in the twelfth century. The Chinese character with which ‘Ko’ is
written means ‘elder brother.’ According to the books there were at this
time at Lung-chuan two brother potters named Chang. The elder brother
leaving the younger Chang to continue in the old ways, started to make a
new ware distinguished by the crackle of its glaze. This was originally
a thick, heavy ware, with the iron-red foot and white paste already
noticed, but, as we have said, the name is now used for a large class of
crackle ware with a glaze of celadon, of greyish white and especially of
a yellowish stone colour. This porcelain with grey and yellowish crackle
does not seem to have been so largely exported as the uncrackled
celadon; bowls and jars of a similar ware have, however, been found in
Borneo and in the adjacent islands.
CHÜN YAO.--It is to this ware that we may trace back the now famous
family of _flambé_ porcelain. Chün yao was already made in early Sung
times, _i.e._ before the Mongol conquests of the twelfth century, in
Honan, not far from the old capital of Kai-feng Fu. A description in a
work of the seventeenth century leaves no doubt as to its
identification. ‘As to this Chün yao,’ the writer says, ‘a fine specimen
should be red as cinnabar, green as onion-leaves or the plumage of the
kingfisher, and purple, brown, and black like the skin of the
egg-plant.’ We have here the description of that ‘transmutation’ or
_flambé_ ware of which such magnificent examples were made at
King-te-chen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and which has
lately been successfully imitated in France. The play of flashing colour
in the glaze was said to have been originally the result of accident,
but we must not attach much importance to statements of this kind. In
the old Sung pieces the clay is less white and fine than in the highly
finished examples made at King-te-chen during the reigns of Kang-he and
Yung-cheng. On the Sung ware we may frequently find a number (from one
to nine) engraved, sometimes more than once, in the paste, and these
characters are carefully copied in the later reproductions. We have here
perhaps the earliest instance of the employment of a mark on porcelain.
The old writers tell us apologetically of the vulgar names given, by way
of joke, it would seem, to these glazes, such as mule’s lungs or pig’s
liver--no inapt comparisons, however, for some of the effects seen in
these old wares. These varied hues were of course obtained from copper
in the first place, though the presence of iron, in both stages of
oxidation, may sometimes add to the variety of the tints.
KIEN YAO.--This was a dark-coloured ware made at Kien-chou, north-west
of the port of Fuchou. It must not be confused with the well-known
creamy-white ware of Fukien, exported in later days from the same port.
Certain shallow conical cups of this ware, with a vitreous glaze, almost
black, but relieved around the margin with small streaks and spots of a
lighter colour, were especially valued from very early times for the
preparation of powdered tea--nowhere more than in Japan, where an
undoubted specimen of this Kien ware is treasured as a priceless
heirloom. There is an excellent specimen in the British Museum: a
careful examination of this little bowl will give no little aid in
understanding what are some of the qualities that are looked for in
China and Japan in these old glazes. There is a quiet charm in the
glassy surface, and an air as of some quaint natural stone carefully
carved and polished rather than of a product of the potter’s wheel.
TING YAO.--In the Ting yao of the Sung dynasty, as in the case of the
contemporaneous celadon and crackle wares, we have the oldest type of an
important class of porcelain. The earlier specimens have served more
than once as models for famous potters of Ming and later times. It was
probably at Ting-chou, a town in the province of Chihli, to the
south-west of Pekin, that a brilliant white porcelain was first
successfully made by the Chinese, possibly as early as the time of the
Tang dynasty; and the name of Ting yao has remained associated with all
pure white wares of a certain quality, even though made at other places.
As in the case of the celadon porcelain, the decoration, if any, was
either in low relief or incised in the paste; but in opposition to many
of the other wares we have mentioned, the Ting porcelain seems from the
first to have been made from a paste of great fineness, its translucency
was at times considerable, and the patterns were engraved or moulded
with much delicacy. The design when engraved is scarcely visible unless
the vessel is held up to the light. The specimens of Ting ware that
survive date probably from Mongol or from Ming times. The British Museum
possesses a remarkable collection of these Ting bowls and plates. A pair
of very thin pure white shallow bowls are noticeable as having in the
centre an inscription finely engraved in minute characters under the
glaze. It is the nien-hao or year-mark of the Emperor Yung-lo
(1402-1424), the first great name among the emperors of the Ming
dynasty. This is perhaps the earliest date-mark with any pretentions to
genuineness that has been found on the Chinese porcelain in our
collections. The decoration, in this case, is formed by a five-clawed
dragon faintly engraved in the paste. These bowls are specimens of the
_feng_ or ‘flour’ Ting ware (also known as _Pai_ or ‘white’ Ting), but
most of the Ting plates in the same collection are of quite another kind
of ware, which has a surface like that of a European soft-paste
porcelain--this the Chinese know as the _Tu-Ting_ or earthy Ting. This
latter ware has in fact a soft lead glaze covering a hard body, and must
therefore have required two firings, the first to thoroughly bake the
paste, and a second at a lower temperature to melt the glaze on to it.
Some of the specimens of this _Tu-Ting_ in the British Museum are said
to date from Sung times. I do not know what is the authority for the use
of a lead glaze in China at so early a date. Many of these plates have
certainly a great appearance of age, but this antique look is due in
some measure to the ‘weathering’ of the soft glazes on the exposed
surfaces. This weathering has brought into prominence the very graceful
decoration of lotus-flowers, but the surface is often discoloured by
stains as of some oily matter which has apparently found its way under
the glaze. The copper bands with which the edges of many of these plates
are bound are mentioned in the old accounts; those in use in the palace,
it is said, were fitted thus with collars to preserve the tender
material.
We must postpone the account of the rival white ware, the creamy
porcelain of Fukien, or later Kien yao, as none of it was made as early
as the time of the Sung dynasty. The Kien yao of that time, as we have
seen, was quite another ware.
We have now mentioned the most important of the classes of Chinese
porcelain that date from early times. We have confined our brief notice
to the varieties of which specimens have survived, laying special stress
upon those kinds which have, as it were, founded a family, and which we
can therefore study in specimens from later ages. The names of many
other wares of both the Sung and Tang periods may be found in Chinese
books, but of these we do not propose to say a word.
The paste of these early wares is rarely of a pure white, and their
translucency is generally very slight, but they are not for that reason
to be classed as stonewares. The materials were probably in all cases
derived from granitic rocks, that is to say, from a more or less
decomposed granite (containing mica and often a certain amount of iron)
mixed with some kind of impure kaolin. Professor Church, in his Cantor
Lectures, gives us two analyses of ‘old Chinese ware,’ which confirm
this view. One specimen, with a white body, was found to contain 75 per
cent. of silica, about 18 per cent. of alumina, and about 5·5 per cent.
of alkalis (chiefly potash). The other, of brownish coloured paste,
contained a little less silica, but as much as 2·5 per cent. of iron.
For the roughly prepared material of these old wares we would prefer the
name of proto-porcelain or kaolinic stoneware, so that there may be no
confusion with the true stoneware of Europe, a quite different
material.[33]
In the absence of more ordinary clays in the central and northern parts
of China, some such kaolinic pottery may have been made by the Chinese
from very early times. When in Tang or in earlier days it occurred to
them to attempt to imitate jade or other natural stones, they had the
good fortune to be already using materials that allowed of these
experiments being after a time crowned with success. The important point
that still remains unsettled is at what date they first succeeded in
covering a ware of this class with a vitreous coating. For the date of
the first use of glaze in China we can at present only give a very wide
limit, let us say some time between the first and the fifth century of
our era. Very probably it was their acquaintance with the nature of
glass that put them on the right track. This material, it is said, they
first knew of from their intercourse with the later Roman empire. There
is some reason to believe that they acquired at the same time the secret
of its manufacture, though, according to the Chinese, the art was lost
at a later time.[34]
We can now form some idea of how far the art of making porcelain had
advanced at the time when the tide of the Mongol invasion swept over the
country. Our knowledge of the wares made at this time must be derived
chiefly from the imitations of the older porcelain made at a later
period, but in such a conservative country as China this reservation is
of no great importance. We must remember that in all these wares there
was no other decoration than that given by the glaze as applied to the
variously moulded or incised surface of the paste. The nature of the
glaze was therefore of pre-eminent importance. The range of colour,
except in the rare _flambé_ vases, was in the main confined to shades of
blue and green, and even of these colours pronounced tints are rare. All
the colours at the command of the potters of these days were derived
from the oxides of iron and copper. And yet with such simple elements,
what an infinite variety! It has been truly said by a French writer that
the beauty of the glaze is the _qualité maîtresse de la céramique_, and
it is partly a recognition of this claim that has led so many French and
American collectors, of late, to follow the example of the Chinese and
Japanese connoisseurs, and to give so marked a preference to monochrome
porcelains, which owe their charm to the
[Illustration: _PLATE IV._ CHINESE]
merits of the glaze alone. But the specimens we find in these
collections are with but few exceptions of much later date. The price
that a fine piece of Sung ware, above all if it has a good pedigree and
comes from a known collection, has always commanded in China has
sufficed, at least until quite lately, to keep such specimens in their
native country.
As we have said, there are very few examples in our public collections
that can with any assurance be attributed to Sung times. In the British
Museum, in the same case with the Kien yao tea-bowl already mentioned,
is a jar some twelve inches in height, with two small handles on the
shoulder. It is of irregular shape and covered with a thick glaze of a
pale turquoise blue, faintly crackled. Close to the mouth is a bright
red mark, like a piece of sealing-wax, due probably to the local partial
reduction of the copper. This beautiful but very archaic-looking jar
(PL. IV.) is attributed to no earlier date than the later or southern
Sung dynasty (1127-1279). Among the large number of crackle monochrome
pieces in the same collection there are many specimens which a Chinese
connoisseur would classify as Ko yao, and similarly some of the old
_flambé_ pieces might be termed Chün yao, without definitely assigning
them to Sung times. The Lung-Chuan celadons are represented by some
early pieces, more than one distinguished by the red foot. There are
some fine plates of old heavy celadon at South Kensington, not a few
purchased in Persia. Here may also be found a celadon jar cut down at
the neck; and the ‘mouth’ thus artificially formed has been carefully
stained of a red colour to imitate the old ware. The French museums are
particularly rich in specimens of old _martabani_ celadon--I would point
especially to several large dishes both at Sèvres and in the _Musée
Guimet_. But what is perhaps the finest collection in Europe of celadon
and other old wares is now to be seen in the museum at Gotha. It was
brought together by the late Duke of Edinburgh, who added to previous
acquisitions the collection formed in China by Dr. Hirth.
YUAN DYNASTY (1280-1368).
Probably at no period during its long history has the Chinese empire
been subjected to such a thorough shaking up, to such a complete
upsetting and reversal of its ancient ways, as during the advance of the
Mongols from the north to the south during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. When they had at length subdued the whole land, there was a
moment during the rule of the liberal-minded Kublai Khan when the old
barriers and prejudices seemed to have been broken down, and when the
Middle Kingdom appeared to be about to enter the general comity of
nations. This is what gives to Marco Polo’s account of the country,
which he visited at the time, so very ‘un-Chinese’ an air. We hear of
Italian friars and French goldsmiths at the court, and of projected
embassies from the Pope. Still closer were the relations with the
Mohammedan people of Western Asia, then ruled by members of Kublai’s
family. Marco Polo, we know, formed part of the escort of Kublai’s
sister, when she travelled by sea to Persia to become the bride of the
Mongol khan of that country; and a predecessor of this latter ruler,
Hulugu, as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, brought over,
it is said, as many as a thousand Chinese artificers and settled them in
Persia.
And yet when scarcely two generations later the degenerate descendants
of Kublai were driven from the imperial throne and replaced by a native
dynasty, what slight permanent trace do we see of all these changes
reflected in the arts of the Middle Kingdom! No doubt, on looking
closely, we should find that a change had taken place during these
years: new materials had been brought in, new forms and new decorations
applied to the metal ware and the pottery of the Chinese. It is in
connection with these two arts especially (and we may add to them the
designs on textile fabrics) that we find so many points of interest in
the mutual influence of the civilisations of China and Persia at this
time. We must remember that in the thirteenth century the craftsman of
Persia, as the inheritor of both Saracenic and older traditions, was in
many respects ahead of his rival artist in China.
As far as the potter’s art was concerned this was the first meeting of
two contrasted schools, which between them cover pretty well the whole
field of ceramics--of that part at least of the field in which the glaze
is the principal element in the decoration.[35]
The Persian ware of this time was the culminating example of an art that
had been handed down from the Egyptians and the Assyrians. As a rule,
among these races, the baser nature of the paste had been concealed by a
more or less opaque coating either of a fine clay or ‘slip,’ or of a
glaze rendered non-transparent by the addition of tin; it is on this
coating that the decoration is painted, to be covered subsequently (in
the first case at least, that of the slip ware) by a coating of glaze.
It is to this large class, for the most part to the latter or
stanniferous division, that nearly all the famous wares of the European
renaissance belong, not only the Spanish and Italian majolica but the
enamelled fayence of France and Holland as well. It was with the latter
two wares that at a later date the porcelain of China was destined to
come into competition. Each of these ceramic schools, the Eastern
porcelain and the Western fayence, might in certain points claim
advantages over the other, advantages both of a practical and of an
æsthetic nature. For example, the glory of the Persian fayence of that
day lay in its application to architecture, in the brilliant coating of
tiles that covered the walls and the domes of the mosques and dwellings
both inside and out. The Chinese have never succeeded in making tiles of
any size with their porcelain. When used for the decoration of buildings
the porcelain, or rather the earthenware, is always in the form of
solid, moulded bricks.
But there is another matter with which the Chinese who visited Western
Asia at that time cannot fail to have been struck--with the materials, I
mean, at the command of the Persians, for the application of colour both
under and over the glaze. Of the decorations over the glaze the most
important were those given by their famous metallic lustres. This
lustre, we now know, was the result of an ingenious process by which a
film of copper, or sometimes of silver, was developed on the surface of
the glaze.
The Chinese have never attempted anything of the kind, in part because
such a method of adornment was foreign to their notions of what was
fitting. For we must bear in mind that the influence of the literary
tradition in China has always tended towards simplicity of means in
their decorative arts, and has been opposed to anything like an
ostentatious display of expensive materials. Any marked infringement of
this sentiment, even on the part of an emperor, has always called forth
a protest from the censors. Another cause which hindered the adoption of
the lustre decoration by the Chinese may be found, no doubt, in the
difficulties of its practical application. At that time the processes of
the muffle-stove for decoration over the glaze were quite unknown to
them.[36] But the Saracens, in Western Asia, were already in possession
of another means of decorating their ware. This they found in the use of
cobalt, especially as a material for painting a design on the paste
before the application of the glaze. We find this colour at times on the
tiles that lined their prayer-niches; these indeed date from a somewhat
later time. But there is another variety of Saracenic ware of which a
few specimens have survived. I refer to the vases and bowls covered with
a thick alkaline glaze, and decorated, in part at least, _under the
glaze_ with a design of black lines and some rude patches of blue. These
rare vases were formerly classed as Siculo-Moorish, but later research
has proved most of them to be of Persian or perhaps rather of Syrian or
Mesopotamian origin. They appear to be the work of thirteenth century
potters, and some of them may be of even earlier date.[37]
When we consider that there is no evidence of the use of cobalt by the
Chinese for the decoration of their porcelain during Sung times, that
indeed the use of colour apart from that of the glaze as a means of
decoration appears to have been then unknown; but that, on the other
hand, not long after the turmoil of the Mongol invasion and
domination--a period during which the two countries, China and Persia,
were so closely connected--we find the use of cobalt as a decoration
_sous couverte_ firmly established, we may, I think, regard it as not
improbable that it was from the Persians that the Chinese learned the
new method of decoration.[38]
The influence of the Saracenic art of Western Asia is indeed now for the
first time to be seen in other directions, and we shall find it cropping
up here and there during the whole of the following Ming period. It was
the source of many new forms which we see now for the first time in
China: the graceful water-vessels, for instance, with long necks and
curved spouts, copied from the Arab _Ibraik_. Again, we find this
influence at times in the _motifs_ of the conventional floral patterns
found on Ming porcelain, though these patterns, indeed, are always mere
counterchanges, as it were, upon a field of an unmistakable Chinese
stamp (PL. VI.). All these changes were doubtless regarded as anathema
by the Chinese censors, who reminded the rash innovators that the great
men of old were content with simple materials and forms, and that they
in their wisdom rejected all such meretricious ornament. For it was
seriously maintained that had they thought it desirable, these old sages
could have commanded all the resources of the later potter, not only the
larger field he could draw from for his designs and colours, but the
improved paste of his porcelain as well.
On the other hand, the Chinese influence at this time on Persian art was
small. By a careful search we may find at times a dragon or a phœnix
amid unmistakable Chinese clouds on the spandrel above the arch of a
Persian prayer-niche of the fourteenth century, or forming the centre of
a star-shaped tile. But the great invasion of Chinese wares and Chinese
schemes of decoration belongs, as far as the fictile art of the country
is concerned, to a later period, that of Shah Abbas in the early years
of the seventeenth century.
It is not unlikely that in China the Western influence did not make much
way until the time of the early Ming emperors, and that it was due more
immediately to the growing commercial intercourse with the Persian
Gulf, but this intercourse was itself fostered by the events of the
Mongol invasion.
There is very little to be said of the porcelain made during the time of
the MONGOL or YUAN dynasty, and we have few specimens that can be
definitely assigned to that period. The name is still given in Pekin to
a rude, somewhat heavy ware, with a thick glaze of mingled tints, among
which a shade of lavender with speckles of red predominates. This is but
a modification of the Chün yao of Sung times, and belongs in a general
way to the class of ‘transmutation’ wares--those in which the colours
depend on the partial reduction of the oxides of iron and copper in the
glaze. Specimens of this ware that claim to be of Chinese origin are
often found in Japan, where they are much in favour for use as flower
vases, but neither in that country nor in China have the pieces we meet
with much claim to any great antiquity.
There is only one specimen in the Bushell manuscript that is attributed
by Tzu-ching to the Yuan period--this is a little vase of white ware
decorated with dragons faintly engraved in the paste under the glaze.
This white ware, generally classed as Ting, is indeed in many of our
books on porcelain considered to be especially characteristic of the
Mongol dynasty, but I cannot find any definite confirmation of this. The
finer pieces of plain white seem to be generally attributed by the
Chinese rather to the beginning of the next dynasty. The little white
plate in the Dresden Museum, said to have been ‘brought back from the
East by a crusader,’ has no claim to such an early date.[39]