K’ANG HSI BLUE AND WHITE
Western collectors have agreed to give the place of honour to the K’ang
Hsi blue and white. The Ming wares of the same kind, mainly from lack
of adequate representation, have not yet been fully appreciated; and in
the post-K’ang Hsi periods the blue and white took an inferior status,
owing to the growing popularity of enamelled wares. The peculiar
virtues of the K’ang Hsi blue and white are due to simple causes.
Blue was still regarded as the best medium for painted designs, and
the demand for it, both in China and abroad, was enormous. The body
material was formed of carefully selected clay and stone, thoroughly
levigated and freed from all impurities. No pains were spared in the
preparation of the blue, which was refined over and over again until
the very quintessence had been extracted from the cobaltiferous ore.
Naturally this process was costly, and the finest cobalt was never used
quite pure; even on the most expensive wares it was blended with a
proportion of the lower grades of the mineral, and this proportion was
increased according to the intended quality of the porcelain. But the
choicest blue and white of this period was unsurpassed in the purity
and perfection of the porcelain, in the depth and lustre of the blue,
and in the subtle harmony between the colour and the white porcelain
background; and the high standard thus established served to raise the
quality of the manufacture in general.
Vast quantities of this blue and white were shipped to Europe by the
Dutch and the other East India companies, who sent extensive orders
to Ching-tê Chên. It need hardly be said that this export porcelain
varied widely in quality, but it included at this time wares of the
highest class. Indeed, in looking through our large collections
there are surprisingly few examples of the choice K’ang Hsi blue and
white which cannot be included in the export class, as indicated by
the half-Europeanised forms of plates, jugs, tankards, and other
vessels, and by the fact that the vases are made in sets of five. But
considering that it was made to suit purchasers of such varied tastes
and means, it is surprising how little of this K’ang Hsi porcelain is
bad. Even the roughest specimens have a style and a quality not found
on later wares, and all have an unquestionable value as decoration.
It would be futile to attempt to describe exhaustively the different
kinds of K’ang Hsi blue and white and the innumerable patterns with
which they are decorated. We must confine our descriptions to a few
type specimens, but first it will be useful to give the points of a
choice example. Such a vessel, whatever its nature, will be potted with
perfect skill, its form well proportioned and true. The surface will
be smooth, because the material is thoroughly refined and the piece
has been carefully trimmed or finished on the lathe, and finally all
remaining inequalities have been smoothed away with a moist feather
brush before the glazing. The ware will be clean and white, and the
glaze[276] pure, limpid, and lustrous, but with that faint suspicion of
green which is rarely absent from Chinese porcelain. The general effect
of the body and glaze combined is a solid white like well set curds.
The base, to which the connoisseur looks for guidance, is deeply cut
and washed in the centre with glaze which reaches about half-way down
the sides of the foot rim. This patch of glaze is usually pinholed,
as though the nemesis of absolute perfection had to be placated by
a few flaws in this inconspicuous part. The rim itself is carefully
trimmed, and in many cases grooved or beaded, as though to fit a wooden
stand,[277] and the unglazed edge reveals a smooth, close-grained
biscuit whose fine white material is often superficially tinged with
brown in the heat of the furnace. The decoration is carefully painted
in a pure sapphire blue of great depth and fire, and singularly free
from any strain of red or purple--a quality of blue only obtained by
the most elaborate process of refining. The designs, as on the Ming
porcelains, are first drawn in outline; but, unlike the strong Ming
outlines, these are so faint as to be practically unobserved; and the
colour is filled in, not in flat washes, as on the Ming blue and white,
but in graded depths of pulsating blue. This procedure is clearly shown
by two interesting bowls in the British Museum. They are identical
in form and were intended to match in pattern; but in one the design
(the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup) is completed, while on the other
it remains in outline only, giving us a wonderful illustration of
the beautiful firm touch with which the artists traced these faint
outlines. The work of decoration was systematically subdivided in the
Chinese factory, and Père d’Entrecolles tells us that “one workman is
solely occupied with the ring which one sees on the border of the ware;
another outlines the flowers, which a third paints; one does the water
and the mountains, another the birds and animals.”[278] Whatever the
advantages and disadvantages of this divided labour, the designs on the
blue and white were admirably chosen to show off the fine qualities
of the colour; and it is to the blue that the collector looks first.
The distinction between the various qualities of blue hardly admit
of verbal definition. It can only be learnt by comparing the actual
specimens, and by training the eye to distinguish the best from the
second best.
The patterns are not always blue on a white ground. Many of the most
beautiful results were obtained by reserving the design in white in a
blue ground, and both styles are often combined on the same piece. The
second is fairly common on the K’ang Hsi porcelains, being specially
suited to the lambrequins, arabesques, and formal patterns which were a
favourite decoration at this time. See Plates 89 and 91.
[Illustration: PLATE 89
Three examples of K’ang Hsi Blue and White Porcelain in the
British Museum
Fig. 1.--Ewer with leaf-shaped panels of floral arabesques,
white in blue, enclosed by a mosaic pattern in blue and white:
stiff plantain leaves on the neck and cover. Silver mount with
thumb-piece. Height 7⅛ inches.
Fig. 2.--Deep bowl with cover, painted with “tiger-lily” scrolls.
Mark, a leaf. Height 7½ inches.
Fig. 3.--Sprinkler with panels of lotus arabesques, white in
blue, and _ju-i_ shaped border patterns. A diaper of small
blossoms on the neck. Mark, a leaf. Height 7⅛ inches.]
The choicest materials were lavished on the porcelains with these
formal designs, which consisted now of bands of _ju-i_ shaped
lappets[279] filled with arabesque foliage, forming an upper and lower
border, between which are floral sprays, now of a belt of three or four
palmette-like designs, similarly ornamented, and linked together round
the centre of a vase or bottle; of large, stiff, leaf-shaped medallions
borrowed, like the patterns which fill them, from ancient bronzes,
and of ogre-head designs from a similar source; of successive belts of
arabesque scrolls and dragon designs covering cylindrical jars; of a
mosaic of small blossoms, or of network diapers recalling the pattern
of a crackled porcelain. The white on blue process is constant in a
well known decoration in which archaic dragons, floral arabesques,
roses or peonies are arranged in “admired disorder” over the whole
surface of a cylinder vase or a triple gourd, as on Plate 91. Sometimes
the roses occupy the greater part of the design, and among them are
small oval or round blank medallions, which have earned for the pattern
the name of “rose and ticket.”
This type of ware is represented in almost every variety in the Dresden
collection, and there are examples of the “rose and ticket” jars in
the _Porzellan-zimmer_ of the Charlottenburg Palace. Both these
collections are mainly composed of the export porcelain sent from
China in the last decades of the seventeenth century, and the latter
is practically limited to the presents made by the English East India
Company to Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia (1688–1705). The white on
blue patterns are also freely used in combination with blue and white
to form borders and to fill in the ground between panels.
As for the blue on white designs, they are legion. There are the old
Ming favourites such as the Court scenes, historical and mythological
subjects, pictorial designs, such as ladies looking at the garden
flowers by candlelight.[280] There are landscapes after Sung and Ming
paintings, the usual dragon and phœnix patterns, animal, bird, and
fish designs, lions and mythical creatures, the familiar group of a
bird (either a phœnix or a golden pheasant) on a rock beside which
are peony, magnolia, and other flowering plants. Panel decoration,
too, is frequent, the panels sometimes petal-shaped and emphasised by
lightly moulded outlines, or again mirror-shaped, circular, fan-shaped,
leaf-shaped, oval, square, etc., and surrounded by diapers and “white
in blue” designs. The reserves are suitably filled with figure subjects
from romance, history, or family life, mythical subjects such as the
adventures of Taoist sages, the story of Wang Chi watching the game of
chess, Tung-fang So and his peaches, or, if numerical sequences are
needed, with the Four Accomplishments (painting, calligraphy, music and
chess), the flowers of the Four Seasons, the Eight Taoist Immortals,
the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup, etc. Another favourite panel
design is a group of vases, furniture, and symbolical objects from the
comprehensive series known as the Hundred Antiques.[281] Sometimes
the whole surface of a vase is divided into rows of petal-shaped
compartments filled with floral designs, figure subjects, birds and
flowers or landscapes. Plate 91, Fig. 3, from a set of five, is one of
the large vases in the Dresden collection which, tradition says, were
obtained by Augustus the Strong from the King of Prussia in exchange
for a regiment of dragoons. It is decorated with panels illustrating
the stories of the Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety.
Some of the purely floral patterns strike perhaps a more distinctive
note. The “aster pattern,” for instance, is a design of stiff,
radiating, aster-like flowers usually in a dark tone of blue and
displayed on saucer dishes or deep covered bowls. Some of the specimens
of this class appear to be a little earlier than K’ang Hsi. The
so-called “tiger-lily” pattern illustrated by Fig. 2 of Plate 89 is
usually associated with deep cylindrical covered bowls of fine material
and painted in the choicest blue. A beaker (Plate 91, Fig. 2) shows a
characteristic treatment of the magnolia, parts of the blossoms being
lightly sculptured in relief and the white petals set off by a foil of
blue clouding. It evidently belongs to a set of five (three covered
jars and two beakers) made as a _garniture de cheminée_ for the
European market.
The squat-bodied bottle (Plate 92, Fig. 1) illustrates a familiar
treatment of the lotus design, with a large blossom filling the front
of the body.
But perhaps the noblest of all Chinese blue and white patterns is the
prunus design (often miscalled hawthorn) illustrated by Plate 90, a
covered vase once in the Orrock Collection and now in the Victoria and
Albert Museum. The form is that of the well-known ginger jar, but these
lovely specimens were intended for no banal uses. They were filled with
fragrant tea or some other suitable gift, and sent, like the round cake
boxes, by the Chinese to their friends at the New Year, but it was not
intended that the jars or boxes should be kept by the recipients of the
compliment.
The New Year falls in China from three to seven weeks later than in our
calendar, and it was seasonable to decorate these jars with sprays and
petals of the flowering prunus fallen on the ice, which was already
cracked and about to dissolve. The design is symbolic of the passing of
winter and the coming of spring; and the vibrating depths of the pure
sapphire blue broken by a network of lines simulating ice cracks form
a lovely setting for the graceful prunus sprays reserved in the pure
curd-like white of the ware.
The prunus pattern has been applied to every conceivable form, whether
to cover the whole surface or to serve as secondary ornament in the
border of a design or on the rim of a plate, and the prunus jar
appears in all qualities of blue and on porcelain good and bad, old
and new. The graceful sprays have become stereotyped and the whole
design vulgarised in many instances; and in some cases the blossoms are
distributed symmetrically on a marbled blue ground as a mere pattern.
But nothing can stale the beauty of the choice K’ang Hsi originals, on
which the finest materials and the purest, deepest blue were lavished.
The amateur should find no difficulty in distinguishing these from
their decadent descendants. The freshness of the drawing, the pure
quality of the blue, and the excellence of body, glaze, and potting
are unmistakable. The old examples have the low rim round the mouth
unglazed where the rounded cap-shaped cover fitted, and the design on
the shoulders is finished off with a narrow border of dentate pattern.
The original covers are extremely rare, and in most cases have been
replaced with later substitutes in porcelain or carved wood.
There are, besides, a number of types specially prevalent among the
export porcelains, some purely Chinese in origin, others showing
European influence. Take, for example, the well-known saucer dish with
mounted figures of a man and a woman hunting a hare--a subject usually
known as the “love chase”--a free and spirited design, rather sketchily
painted in pale silvery blue. The porcelain itself is scarcely less
characteristic, a thin, crisp ware, often moulded on the sides with
petal-shaped compartments, and in many ways recalling the earlier type
described on p. 70. It is, however, distinguished from the latter class
by slight differences in tone and finish which can only be learnt by
comparison of actual specimens. It is, moreover, almost always marked
with a _nien hao_ in six characters, whereas marks on the other type
are virtually unknown. The _nien hao_ is usually that of Ch’êng Hua,
but an occasional example with the K’ang Hsi mark gives the true date
of the ware.
A quantity of this porcelain was brought up by divers from wrecks of
old East Indiamen in Table Bay, among which was the _Haarlem_, lost in
1648,[282] though most of the ships were wrecked at later dates. It
is a thin and sharply moulded ware, often pure eggshell, and the blue
varies from the pale silvery tint to vivid sapphire. The usual forms
are of a utilitarian kind--plates, saucer dishes, cups and saucers,
small vases and bottles, jugs, tankards, and the like--and the designs
are not confined to the “love chase,” but include other figure subjects
(e.g. a warrior on horseback carrying off a lady,[283] and various
scenes from romance and family life), floral designs, deer, phœnixes,
fish, birds, etc., and perhaps most often the tall female figures,
standing beside flowering shrubs or pots of flowers, which are vulgarly
known as “long Elizas,” after the Dutch _lange lijsen_ (see Plate 92,
Fig. 2).
Graceful ladies (_mei jên_) are familiar motives in Chinese
decoration, but this particular type, usually consisting of isolated
figures in small panels or separated from each other by a shrub or
flowerpot, and standing in a stereotyped pose, are, I think,[284]
peculiar to the export wares of the last half of the seventeenth
century.
This same type of thin, crisply moulded porcelain was also painted with
similar designs in _famille verte_ enamels over the glaze. It has a
great variety of marks, the commonest being the apocryphal Ch’êng Hua
date-mark, while others are marks of commendation,[285] such as _ch’i
chên ju yü_ (a rare gem like jade), _yü_ (jade), _ya_ (elegant), and
various hall-marks.
[Illustration: PLATE 90
Covered Jar for New Year gifts, with design of blossoming prunus
(_mei hua_) sprays in a ground of deep sapphire blue, which
is reticulated with lines suggesting ice cracks: dentate border
on the shoulders
Height 10 inches. _Victoria and Albert Museum._]
Yet another group of superior quality is obviously connected with the
European trade by a peculiar mark (see vol. i., p. 228) resembling the
letter C or G. It is most commonly represented by pairs of bottles with
globular body and tall, tapering neck, decorated with flowing scrolls
of curious rosette-like flowers, a design stated with much probability
to have been copied from Dutch delft. As the Dutch design in question
had evidently been based on a Chinese original, the peculiar nature
of the flowers explains itself. There are other instances of patterns
bandied in this way between the Far East and the West. The same
peculiar floral scroll appears in _famille verte_ associated with
the same mark; and the same G mark occurs on two rare bottles in the
collection of Mr. J. C. J. Drucker, which have blue and white painting
on the neck and _famille verte_ designs in the finest enamels on the
body. A deep bowl in the Eumorfopoulos collection with _famille verte_
panels of symbols from the Hundred Antiques, and a ground of green
“prunus” pattern, bears the same mark. Neither of these last examples
can be even remotely connected with Dutch influence, so that we may
dismiss the suggestion that the letter in the mark is intended to be
a D, standing for D(elft), for this reason quite apart from the fact
that such a mark on Delft ware is non-existent. I imagine that the true
explanation is that this peculiar mark is a merchant’s sign placed by
order on the goods made for some particular trader.
A close copy of the “wing handles” of Venetian glass on certain blue
and white bottles (Plate 92, Fig. 3), the appearance of Prince of
Wales’s feathers in the border of a plate and of an heraldic eagle in
the well of a salt cellar, no less than many forms obviously Western
in origin, further emphasise the close relations between the Ching-tê
Chên potters and European traders.[286] An immense quantity of
indifferent blue and white was made for the European table services,
and summarily decorated with baskets of flowers, the usual flowering
plant designs, close patterns of small blossoms, floral scrolls with
large, meaningless flowers, ivy scrolls, passion flowers, and numerous
stereotyped designs, such as dragons in sea waves, prunus pattern
borders, pine tree and stork, a garden fence with rockery and flowering
shrubs, groups from the Hundred Antiques, a parrot on a tree stump,
etc. The blue of these pieces is usually rather dull and heavy, but
the ware has the characteristic appearance of K’ang Hsi porcelain, and
was evidently made for the most part about the year 1700. If marked
at all, the marks are usually symbols, such as the double fish, the
lozenge, the leaf, a tripod vase, and a strange form of the character
_shou_ known as the “spider mark” (see vol. i., p. 225). The
plates are often edged with lustrous brown glaze to prevent that
chipping and scaling to which the Chinese glaze was specially liable on
projecting parts of the ware.[287]
Something has already been said[288] of another very distinctive class
of blue and white for which the misleading name of “soft paste” has
been widely adopted. The term is of American origin and has been too
readily accepted, for it is not only inaccurate as a description,
but is already current in Europe for a totally different ware, which
it describes with greater exactitude, viz. the artificial, glassy
porcelains made at Sèvres and Chelsea and other factories, chiefly in
France and England, in the middle of the eighteenth century. In actual
fact the Chinese ware to which the term “soft paste” is applied has
an intensely hard body. The glaze, however, which is softer than that
of the ordinary porcelain, contains a proportion of lead, and if not
actually crackled from the first becomes so in use, the crackle lines
being usually irregular and undecided.
A detailed description of the manufacture of this ware is given by Père
d’Entrecolles,[289] though he is probably at fault in supposing that
its chief ingredient was a recent discovery in 1722. It was made, he
says, with a mineral called _hua shih_ (in place of kaolin), a stone of
glutinous and soapy nature, and almost certainly corresponding to the
steatite or “soapy rock” which was used by the old English porcelain
makers at Bristol, Worcester and Liverpool. “The porcelain made with
_hua shih_,” to quote Père d’Entrecolles, “is rare and far more
expensive than the other porcelain. It has an extremely fine grain; and
for purposes of painting, when compared with ordinary porcelain, it is
almost as vellum to paper. Moreover, this ware is surprisingly light
to anyone accustomed to handle the other kinds; it is also far more
fragile than the ordinary, and there is difficulty in finding the exact
temperature for its firing. Some of the potters do not use _hua shih_
for the body of the ware, but content themselves with making a diluted
slip into which they dip their porcelain when dry, so as to give it a
coating of soapstone before it is painted and glazed. By this means it
acquires a certain degree of beauty.” The preparation of the _hua shih_
is also described, but it is much the same as that of the kaolin, and
the composition of the steatitic body is given as eight parts of _hua
shih_ to two of porcelain stone (_petuntse_).
There are, then, two kinds of steatitic porcelain, one with the body
actually composed of _hua shih_ and the other with a mere surface
dressing of this material. The former is light to handle, and opaque;
and the body has a dry, earthy appearance, though it is of fine grain
and unctuous to touch. It is variously named by the Chinese[290]
_sha-t’ai_ (sand bodied) and _chiang-t’ai_ (paste bodied), and when the
glaze is crackled it is further described as _k’ai pien_ (crackled).
The painting on the steatitic porcelain differs in style from that
of the ordinary blue and white of this period. It is executed with
delicate touches like miniature painting, and every stroke of the
brush tells, the effects being produced by fine lines rather than by
graded washes. The ware, being costly to make, is usually painted by
skilful artists and in the finest blue. Fig. 3, of Plate 93, is an
excellent example of the pure steatitic ware, an incense bowl in the
Franks collection, of which the base and a large part of the interior
is unglazed and affords a good opportunity for the study of the body
material. The glaze is thin and faintly crackled, and the design--Hsi
Wang Mu and the Taoist Immortals--is delicately drawn in light, clear
blue.
The second type, which has only a dressing of steatite over the
ordinary body, has neither the same lightness nor the opacity of the
true steatitic ware, but it has the same soft white surface, and is
painted in the same style of line drawing.
There are, besides, other opaque and crackled wares painted in
underglaze blue, which are also described as “soft paste,” and, indeed,
deserve the name far more than the steatitic porcelain. The creamy,
crackled copies of old Ting wares, for instance, made with _ch’ing
tien_ stone,[291] are occasionally enriched with blue designs; and
the ordinary stone-coloured crackle with buff staining is also painted
at times with underglaze blue,[292] or with blue designs on pads of
white clay in a crackled ground.
On the other hand, there are numerous wares of the Yung Chêng and
Ch’ien Lung periods which are probably composed in part, at least, of
steatite. They are usually opaque, and the surface is sometimes dead
white, sometimes creamy and often undulating like orange peel, and in
addition to blue decoration, enamel painting is not infrequent on these
later types. The purely steatitic porcelains are generally of small
size, which was appropriate to the style of painting as well as to the
expensive nature of the material. The furniture of the scholar’s table,
with its tiny flower vases for a single blossom, its brush washers and
water vessels of fanciful forms, its pigment boxes, etc., were suitable
objects for the material, and many of these little crackled porcelains
are veritable gems. Snuff bottles are another appropriate article, and
a representative collection of snuff bottles will show better than
anything the great variety of these mixed wares and so-called “soft
pastes.”
It has been already observed that crackled blue and white porcelain
of the steatitic kind is found with the date marks of Ming Emperors,
and there can be little doubt that it was made from early Ming times,
but as the style of painting seems to have known no change it will be
always difficult to distinguish the early specimens. It is safe to
assume that almost all the specimens in Western collections belong to
the Ch’ing dynasty, a few to the K’ang Hsi period, but the bulk of the
better examples to the reigns of Yung Chêng and Ch’ien Lung. Modern
copies of the older wares also abound.
[Illustration: Plate 91.--Blue and White K’ang Hsi Porcelain.
Fig. 1.--Triple Gourd Vase, white in blue designs of archaic
dragons and scrolls of season flowers. Height 36½ inches.
_Dresden Collection._
Fig. 2.--Beaker, white magnolia design slightly raised, with blue
background. Height 18 inches. _British Museum._
Fig. 3.--“Grenadier Vase,” panels with the Paragons of Filial
Piety. Height 44 inches. _Dresden Collection._]
[Illustration: Plate 92.--Blue and White K’ang Hsi Porcelain.
Fig. 1.--Sprinkler with lotus design. Height 6¼ inches.
_British Museum._
Fig. 2.--Bottle with biscuit handles, design of graceful ladies
(_mei jen_). Height 11 inches. _Fitzwilliam Museum
(formerly D. G. Rosetti Collection)_.
Fig. 3.--Bottle with handles copied from Venetian glass. Height
6¼ inches. _British Museum._]
[Illustration: Plate 93.--Blue and White Porcelain.
Fig. 1.--Tazza with Sanskrit characters. Ch’ien Lung mark. Height
4¼ inches. _British Museum._
Fig. 2.--Water Pot, butterfly and flowers, steatitic porcelain.
Wan Li mark. Height 1⅞ inches. _Eumorfopoulos Collection._
Fig. 3.--Bowl, steatitic porcelain. Immortals on a log raft.
K’ang Hsi period. Diameter 5¾ inches. _British Museum._]
[Illustration: Plate 94.--Porcelain decorated in enamels on the
biscuit.
Fig. 1.--Ewer in form of the character _Shou_ (Longevity);
blue and white panel with figure designs. Early K’ang Hsi period.
Height 8¾ inches. _Salting Collection._
Fig. 2.--Ink Palette, dated 31st year of K’ang Hsi (1692
A.D.). Length 5¼ inches. _British Museum._]
An interesting passage in the first letter[293] of Père d’Entrecolles
describes a curious kind of porcelain, of which the secret had already
been lost. It was known as _chia ch’ing_ or “blue put in press,”
and it was said that the blue designs on the cups so treated were
only visible when the vessel was filled with water. The method of
the manufacture is described as follows: “The porcelain to be so
decorated had to be very thin; when it was dry, a rather strong blue
was applied, not to the exterior in the usual manner, but on the
interior to the sides. The design usually consisted of fish, as being
specially appropriate to appear when the cup was filled with water.
When the colour was dry a light coating of slip, made with the body
material, was applied, and this coating enclosed the blue between
two layers of clay. When this coating was dry, glaze was sprinkled
inside the cup, and shortly afterwards the porcelain was placed on the
wheel. As the body had been strengthened on the interior, the potter
proceeded to pare it down outside as fine as possible without actually
penetrating to the colour. The exterior was then glazed by immersion.
When completely dry it was fired in the ordinary furnace. The work is
extremely delicate, and requires a dexterity which the Chinese seem no
longer to possess. Still, they try from time to time to recover the
secret of this magical painting, but without success. One of them told
me recently that he had made a fresh attempt, and had almost succeeded.”
No example of this mysterious porcelain is known to exist, and it is
probable that the whole story is based on some ill-grounded tradition.
It is true that water will bring out the faded design on certain old
potteries, but this is due to the action of the water in restoring
transparency to a soft decayed glaze. But how the water or any other
liquid could affect the transparency of a hard, impenetrable porcelain
glaze, still less influence the colour concealed beneath a layer of
clay and glaze, is far from clear. Indeed, the whole story savours of
the “tall tales” quoted in chap. x. of vol. i.
But perhaps it will not be inappropriate to mention here another
peculiar type of blue and white, which, if we may judge by the early
date mark usually placed upon it, throws back to some older model. The
design, usually a dragon, is delicately traced with a needle point on
the body of the ware, and a little cobalt blue is dusted into the
incisions.[294] The glaze is then applied, and when the piece is fired
and finished the dragon design appears faintly “tattooed” in pale blue.
The effect is light and delicate, but of small decorative value, and
the few examples which I have seen are redeemed from insignificance
by a peculiarly beautiful body of pure glassy porcelain. They bear an
apocryphal Ch’êng Hua mark, but evidently belong to the first half of
the eighteenth century, to the Yung Chêng, or perhaps the late K’ang
Hsi period.