THE MING DYNASTY (1368-1644) AND ITS PRODUCTS
The story of the overthrow of the Mongol dynasty by a rebellion headed
by a native named Hung-woo, the son of a labouring man, introduces the
great Ming dynasty. This man, a former Buddhist priest, captured Nankin
in 1355, and thirteen years later he took the title of Emperor. During
this dynasty, which lasted till 1644, the progress of the manufacture
of porcelain was very marked; indeed, the Chinese themselves are keen
collectors of the Ming products, considering them to be the finest
ever made. They scarcely exist outside the treasures of the cabinets
of princes or of the collections of mandarins. Whether this is due to
the extreme devotion of the nation to past history and to their love
of ancient relics more than their appreciation of what we consider
beautiful, the fact remains that, in the early times, Ming porcelain
was rarely exported, so that we have very little to guide us in
determining what is or is not porcelain of the Ming period. True, there
are the marks, but the marks were copied just as much as the forms
and decorations were. The best periods of Ming porcelain arranged in
order of merit, and not in order of date, were Suen-tih (1426-1436),
Ching-hwa (1465-1488), Yung-lo (1403-1425), Kea-tsing (1522-1567).
Ching-hwa is the first in order of reproduction; his mark is most
frequently copied.
At about the period of Ching-hwa, Europeans were making efforts to
reach the East by sea, and in 1498 Vasco de Gama sailed round the Cape
of Good Hope, and thus made an opening, by which eventually trade
was carried on by sea to China. The Portuguese were the first to
settle in China in 1516. From their factory or settlement in Macco,
or Macao, at the entrance to the Canton river, the first sea-borne
pieces of Oriental porcelain were sent to Europe by way of the Cape.
The conclusion, therefore, must be, in view of these dates, that the
earliest pieces found in England and on the Continent were carried
overland, by camels, thousands of miles over mountains and through
deserts, till at last they reached their European owners. The earliest
porcelain found in England--that is, a Celadon bowl presented to New
College, Oxford, by Archbishop Warham, and the bowls of Oriental china
given in 1506 by Philip of Austria to Sir Thomas Trenchard--came by
land. The Portuguese vessels were not content to sail only to China
and to exchange its products for those of Europe, for in 1542 they
appeared in Japan. Fernam Mendez Pinto in his "Travels," published in
1545, states that he and his companions were cordially received by the
Prince of Japan. Evidently, then, at the time when Queen Elizabeth
was reigning in England the Portuguese were pushing their trade in
the East as the Spaniards were in the West, and, as we have seen, the
Portuguese, amongst other commodities, sent Oriental porcelain home,
and brought European products back. They brought the Jesuits too.
Christian teachers had been at work in China for long years before the
Jesuits came, but the activity and knowledge of these gave them great
influence amongst the reigning class practically from the close of the
sixteenth to the beginning of the eighteenth century. It is said that
they had much to do with the evolution of the beautiful enamel colours
of the next dynasty, the "Tsing," though the evidence of this is of
the slightest. On the contrary, the development appears to have had
purely a native origin; an unusual step, it is true, to be taken by a
nation which seemed all along the line to be reproducing earlier forms
and earlier decoration. From the period when the vases of the Yung-lo
period were in demand, painted as they were with lions rolling a ball,
with birds or with dark blue or red flowers, we find progress being
continually made.
Suen-tih, whose reign is the most celebrated for the production of
Ming porcelain, produced very fine examples, with flowers in pale
blue, having red fish moulded as handles. Then comes the fine colour
paintings of Ching-hwa, through which we reach the perfection of the
Kang-he in the Tsing dynasty. It is remarkable that only a few Ming
specimens seem to have been identified with enamel colour decoration,
though in recent, indeed, quite late times, authorities are ascribing
many pieces with green and yellow enamel set in black outline to Ming,
rather than to Kang-he. White, green, and crackle pieces are often
mentioned in the historical records.
We read that Lord Treasurer Burleigh, William Cecil, Secretary of State
for nearly forty years to Queen Elizabeth, offered as a New Year's
gift, in 1588, to his royal mistress "one porringer of white porselyn
garnished with gold," and another gift of a similar kind was made to
the Queen by Mr. Robert Cecil, "a cup of grene pursselyne." Later, we
read that amongst the effects of Lady Dorothy Shirley were "purslin
stuffe, Chinese stuffe, two dozen of purslin dishes."
It will be noted that it was only with the advent of Shakespeare and
the Authorised Version of the Bible that our English spelling took
anything like uniformity. The last note regarding Lady Shirley's
possessions was made in 1620. In the time which had elapsed between
these records much had occurred in the Orient. The Dutch, in 1595, sent
out their first expedition to the East Indies, and Queen Elizabeth, not
to be outdone, despatched three English ships to China in 1596. Three
years later the East India Company was founded, a company which at
first could not trade in India or China owing to the fierce opposition
of the Portuguese and Dutch. They therefore made their headquarters at
Gombron in the Persian Gulf. The china ware was brought overland or by
coasting vessels to Gombron, which gave the early name "Gombron ware"
to porcelain which was universally used before the adoption of the name
"china."
During the Ming dynasty the practice of placing marks upon the
porcelain was first adopted, though the rule seems to have been to
mark only one piece in a set, yet the method of marking porcelain was
far from being universal or methodical. In acquiring Ming porcelain
the buyer must be especially careful. For many centuries the old forms
were copied, and in counterfeiting the porcelain and decoration it was
quite easy to imitate the mark. Here, then, we must once more advise
the collector to rely upon sight and touch. We have stated that it is
the inspiration of the educated eye regarding the _tout ensemble_ which
was largely to be trusted. On the other hand it would not be well to
dispense with the necessity for actually handling the piece with the
view to detecting differences between the old and the new work. In
dealing with fine pieces there is one advantage: they are submitted to
expert after expert, whose opinions may vary, but truth is great and
will prevail.
The end of the Ming dynasty was rapidly approaching. The Tartars, with
shaven head and pigtail, were "as the storm clouds which had been
collecting for some time," and at length they "burst over the Empire."
The space of time between the years 1616 and 1644, when the struggle
for supremacy between the Ming and Tsing dynasties was at its height,
leaves the identification of porcelain made during that period a matter
of considerable difficulty. In a national struggle, art manufactures
are the first to suffer, so that it is quite probable that only a
small output of porcelain took place during those troublous years. In
revising the Ming period note should be made that Hung-woo preferred
black, blue, and white ornaments; and that gold used as the decoration
for a dark-blue ground was first employed. In Yung-lo's time intense
patches of colour were used, and there was a development with regard to
the reds; a dark red was widely adopted. The paintings of flowers and
of birds and beasts, mainly used figuratively as emblems, became far
more delicate.
The Ching-hwa potters seem to have adopted a delicacy and a mastery
over the art of porcelain decoration scarcely ever met with in history.
It is true that the supply of blue failed, the cobalt was of an
inferior quality, but the coloured painting reached high perfection.
The marks and designs of the Ching-hwa period furnished unexampled
opportunities for copying, for although the later Kang-he showed,
without doubt, the finest blue and white with regard to colour that was
ever made, the pattern generally adopted can be distinctly traced to
Ching-hwa.
Kea-tsing was noted for the use of enamel colours of a beautiful depth
and quality. About this time pure white cups were made imitating white
jade, but the quality of the porcelain is inferior to many of the other
periods because one of the sources of supply of porcelain earth failed.
VIII
THE TSING
DYNASTY