Chapter 20

FOOTNOTES:[1]Some English porcelain is stated by Professor Church to have a hardness equal to that of quartz. See below, ‘Bristol Porcelain.’[2]We have thought it well, once for all, to treat briefly of the scientific aspect of our subject, but those who are not interested in this point of view may pass over the next few pages.[3]I shall return to this point in a later chapter. I lay the more stress on this fact, as it is often stated that the hard and slightly translucent stonewares, such as the Fulham ware of Dwight, which contains as much as eighty per cent. of silica, form one degree of a series of which true porcelain is the next term. The fact is, those who sought to make porcelain by a refinement in the manufacture of stoneware were as much astray as those who started from a fusible glass frit.[4]The china-stone of Cornwall might, in part at least, be claimed as an old volcanic rock, and that used in the Imari district of Japan is distinctly of volcanic origin. Both these rocks, however, consist essentially of a mixture of quartz and felspar.[5]For further details consult the authorities quoted in theHandbookof the Jermyn Street Collection, p. 5; for sections showing the relation of the beds of kaolin to the surrounding rock, see Brongniart’sTraité des Arts Céramiques, vol. i.[6]It is to the scattered notices and essays of Mr. William Burton that we must go for information in this country. In his new work onEnglish Porcelainhe does not treat upon this side of the subject.[7]The most complete work on the processes of manufacture is now Dubreuil’sLa Porcelaine, Paris, 1885. It forms part forty-two in Fremy’sEncyclopédie Chimique. This volume brings up to date and replaces in some measure the great work of Alexandre Brongniart, theTraité des Arts Céramiques(two volumes, with a quarto volume of plates), Paris, 1844. M. Georges Vogt inLa Porcelaine, Paris, 1893, gives valuable details of the processes employed at Sèvres.[8]Thecaillouxof the French. This material is often described as felspar, but I think that quartz can seldom be completely absent.[9]I should, however, be inclined to class not only much of the porcelain of Japan, but some of that made in Germany and in south-west France, rather in the ‘severe’ kaolinic than in the intermediary class of M. Vogt.[10]We can, however, distinguish, in the tomb paintings of the Middle Empire, an earlier form without the lower table. This earlier type, moved by hand from the upper table, was that used by the Greeks at least as late as the sixth centuryB.C., and a similar primitive wheel is still used in India. On later Egyptian monuments of Ptolemaic time, the potter is seen moving the wheel by pressing his foot on a second lower table, as now at Sèvres and elsewhere. Both forms of wheel appear to have been used by the Italian potters of the Renaissance.[11]This seam is often visible on vases of old Chinese porcelain, and may be taken as a sign that the object has been moulded.[12]Porcelain in China followed, as we shall see, in the wake of the more early developed arts of the bronze-caster and the jade-carver. Hence the prevalence in the early wares of shapes unsuitable to the wheel.[13]I think that this is a more practical division than the one made by M. Vogt and adopted by Dr. Bushell.[14]An important exception is to be noted in the case of the firing of large vases in China.[15]A good instance of the first case is the finding of crow-claws in the rubbish-heaps of Fostât or Old Cairo. As to the method of support indicating the place of origin, see what is said below about the celadon ware of Siam.[16]There is only one exception of any importance—the porcelain of Chantilly, much of which has an opaque stanniferous glaze.[17]So we can infer from the magnificent wall decoration of the Achæmenian period brought home from Susa by M. Dieulafoi.[18]A glaze of this nature was in the Saracenic East applied to a layer of fine white slip, which itself formed a coating on the coarse paste. Such a combination, often very difficult to distinguish from a tin enamel, we find on the wall-tiles of Persia and Damascus.[19]Metallic gold has, of course, been applied to the decoration of porcelain in all countries.[20]The colour of the ruby glass in our thirteenth century windows has a very similar origin. In this case the art was lost and only in a measure recovered at a later period. As in the case of the Chinese glaze, the point was to seize the moment when the copper was first reduced and, in a minute state of division, was suspended in floccular masses in the glass.[21]With these colours a dark blue is sometimes associated. Is this derived like the turquoise from copper? It is a curious fact that we have here exactly the same range of colours that we find in the little glass bottles of Phœnician or Egyptian origin, with zig-zag patterns (1500-400B.C.).[22]See Vogt,La Porcelaine, p. 219. The problem is really more complicated. For simplicity’s sake we have ignored the changes that take place in the glaze that lies between the enamels and the paste.[23]The same result may be obtained by painting one colour over the other, as we find in the black ground of thefamille verte.[24]In Persia, where for three centuries at least the Chinese wares have been known and imitated, the wordchinihas almost the same connotation. See below for a discussion of the route by which this word reached England.[25]During the eighteenth century, however, the French missionaries remained in friendly relation with the Chinese court, especially with the Emperor Kien-lung, a man of culture and a poet. The Père Amiot sent home not only letters with valuable information, but from time to time presents of porcelain from the emperor. He was in correspondence with the minister Bertin, who was himself a keen collector of porcelain. See the notes in the Catalogue of Bertin’s sale, Paris, 1815.[26]Thanks to the industry of the present curator, Herr Zimmermann, the same may now be said of the great collection at Dresden.[27]For a discussion, and for many illustrations of the art of these early dynasties which survives chiefly in objects of jade or bronze, see Paléologue,Art Chinois, Paris, 1887.[28]The wild statements as to the transparency, above all, of the Sung and even the Tang porcelain may, however, appear to receive some confirmation from the reports of the old Arab travellers. But how much credence we can give to these authorities may be gleaned from a description of the fayence of Egypt, by a Persian traveller of the eleventh century. ‘This ware of Misr,’ he says, ‘is so fine and diaphanous that the hand may be seen through it when it is applied to the side of the vessel.’ He is speaking not of porcelain, but of a silicious glazed earthenware![29]Pekin Oriental Society, 1886; see also Bushell’sCeramic Art, p. 132 seq.[30]See the passage in hisHistory(chapter ix.) where this stern censor, referring to the passion for collecting china, rebukes the ‘frivolous and inelegant fashion’ for ‘these grotesque baubles.’[31]The name Céladon first occurs in theAstrée, the once famous novel of Honoré D’Urfé. When later in the seventeenth century Céladon, the courtier-shepherd, was introduced on the stage, he appeared in a costume of greyish green, which became the fashionable colour of the time, and his name was transferred to the Chinese porcelain with a glaze of very similar colour, which was first introduced into France about that period.[32]Julien translated the wordchingas blue, an unfortunate rendering in this case, which has been the cause of much confusion. He was so far justified in this, in that the same word is used by the Chinese for the cobalt blue of our ‘blue and white,’ while it was not applied by them to a pronounced green tint.[33]I shall return to this point when treating of English porcelain.[34]Somewhat later the Chinese were for a time neighbours of the Sassanian empire, where the arts of glazing pottery and making glass were highly developed. Sassanian bronzes, and probably textiles, have found their way to Japan.[35]The salt-glazed ware of Europe seems to be the only important exception to this perhaps rather sweeping generalisation.[36]It is possible, however, that some of the various tints of brown used from early Ming times, especially that known to the Chinese as ‘old gold,’ may have been suggested by this copper lustre. The ground on which this lustre is superimposed in some old Persian wares is of a very similar shade. Dr. Bushell mentions a tradition that the old potters tried to produce a yellow colour by adding metallic gold to their glaze, but that the gold all disappeared in the heat of thegrand feu. They had therefore to fall back upon theor bruni.[37]Consult for this ware the beautifully illustrated monographs of Mr. Henry Wallis on early Persian ceramics.[38]The cobalt pigment itself, when not of native origin, was known to the Chinese in Ming times asHui-hui ch’ingor ‘Mohammedan blue.’ The other names for the material,sunipoandsumali, probably point in the same direction.[39]A little white oval vase, in the Treasury of St. Mark’s, at Venice, may possibly be of this old Ting ware. The decoration is in low relief, and four little rings for suspension surround the mouth. In any case this is the only piece in this famous collection that has any claim to be classed as porcelain.[40]The style of thiscloisonnédecoration is almost identical with that seen in the two magnificent lacquer screens with landscapes and Buddhist emblems at South Kensington. The chains of pearls andpendeloquesare characteristic of a style of painting often found on the beams and ceilings of the old Buddhist temples of Japan. This is, I think, amotifnot found elsewhere on Chinese porcelain.[41]The late M. Du Sartel gives in his work on Chinese porcelain good photographs of some jars of this class in his collection. He was one of the first to call attention to this ware.[42]This dull surface is especially noticeable in some of the specimens with Arabic inscriptions in the British Museum; these date from the Cheng-te period (1505-21).[43]In Persia, too, and in that country accompanied by many other varieties of Chinese porcelain. For examples of these wares see above all the collection at South Kensington.[44]Relations des Musulmans avec les Chinois.It is not impossible, however, that further research may bring to light some information on this subject. Since writing this I hear from Dr. Bushell that some specimens of Saracenic enamelled glass, presumably of the fourteenth century, have lately been purchased in Pekin. The Arab trade with China was probably never more active than in the first half of the fifteenth century. It is with the Memlook Sultans, then ruling a wide empire from Cairo, that we must associate most of this enamelled glass, and the Eastern trade was in their hands.[45]See Bushell, p. 454.[46]Note that cobalt as an enamel colour was not applied on porcelain during Ming times.[47]There is, however, a curious old bowl in the Salting collection with the nien-hao of Cheng-te (1505-21), on which a design of iron red, two shades of green, a brownish purple,and a cobalt blue of poor lavender tint, all these colours over the glaze, is combined with anunderglazedecoration of fish, in a fullcopper red. Note also the early use of a cobalt blue enamel,sur couverte, in the Kakiyemon ware of Japan.[48]Much of this kind was translated by Julien, and a good summary may be found in Hippisley’s paper contributed to the Smithsonian Institute, but the information from the same and other sources is more accurately translated and critically analysed in the seventh and eighth chapters of Dr. Bushell’s great work.[49]Yung-lo, according to the Chinese reckoning, did not commence his reign until the new year’s day following the death of his predecessor (1403). I have, however, thought it better to adopt the European method of reckoning dates.[50]The nameSentokuthat they give to it is the Japanese reading of the characters forming this emperor’s name.[51]We may mention that a pair of wide-mouthed vases of this ware, shown at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1896, bore the nien-hao of Kia-tsing (1521-66) inscribed round the mouth.[52]More properly afresh name was given to the period, but for the sake of brevity we here as elsewhere identify the emperor’s name with that given to the nien-hao.[53]The Trenchard bowls, mentioned below, belong probably to this or to the following reign.[54]But this name is also applied by some to the older Su-ma-li blue.[55]Perhaps the earliest nien-hao on a piece of blue and white in which we can place any confidence.[56]A predecessor of his as viceroy and superintendent at King-te-chen wasLang Ting-tso, from whom the famous Lang yao, thesang de bœuf, had its name, though this derivation is not absolutely certain. It could only have been quite in the last days of the latter viceroy’s rule that much good work was turned out from the kilns.[57]It will be observed that the turquoise blue and the green, both derived from copper, so happily combined in the wall-tiles of the Saracenic East, are in China rarely found united in the decoration of the same piece, and this arises from practical difficulties connected with the fluxes and the firing. At least the two colours are neversuccessfullycombined, for the attempt was apparently made in Ming times, and of this some instances are given in the following note. Indeed I should be inclined to regard such a combination on any piece as an evidence of early, probably of Ming, origin.[58]I would especially point to a remarkable water-vessel, about ten inches high, in the collection at Dresden. This vase is in the form of a phœnix.Green, as well asturquoise, purple and yellow are all found in the decoration, and the colours are all well developed. There is in the British Museum—a collection in many ways remarkable for the number of exceptional types illustrated—a jar with cover, of this class. The ground is a dull purple covered with small spirals of black; the rest of the decoration—rocks, waves, flowers, and jewels—is mainly green of two shades with a little yellow. On some of the flowers, however, we see a poor attempt at turquoise blue. Next to this example stands a baluster-shaped vase with tall, straight neck (Pl. vii. 2.). The ground is here of a pale greyish yellow, with crackles of a darker shade—so far, in fact, of a Ko yao type. The decoration is of a predominant leafy green, with a little purple and yellow here and there; but on the flowers we find, in addition, an enamel of turquoise, poor in colour, indeed, but certainly a copper blue. Both these examples are classed as Ming, and both would seem to show that the combination of the turquoise enamel (essentially a silicate of copper and soda) with the lead-fluxed green had been attempted in Ming times. It was, however, impossible to obtain satisfactory results in this way, so that in Kang-he’s time the turquoise was reserved for thedemi grand feu, and the green alone used as an enamel over the glaze.[59]‘Muffle-colours,’ of course in these later examples painted over the glaze, and therefore to be classed as enamels.[60]In this respect we may compare such decoration to a dark water-colour drawing on white paper, where advantage is only taken of the white ground for scattered lights here and there.[61]We must always think of this great man in connection with his contemporary in France, Louisxiv.Omitting the early years of the French king, before he attained his majority, the two long reigns run almost exactly together.[62]This list is to be found in Julien’s book. Dr. Bushell has since given a more accurate translation, accompanied by a careful analysis (Chinese Ceramics, chapter xii.).[63]The red paste of early times was, however, imitated, and a ‘copper paste’ is also mentioned in connection with these old wares. The last expression is obscure, but it has certainly nothing to do with an enamel on copper.[64]On the other hand, on some large showy vases of this time we can trace a series of rings, giving an uneven surface. These are caused either by the undue pressure of the potter’s fingers (vissage), or perhaps in part by the way in which the successive stages of the jar were built up with ‘sausage-shaped’ rolls of clay.[65]How this iron red was manipulated, apparently at a transition period, so as to obtain an effect approaching that of therouge d’or, is described on page 162.[66]A ruby-red can be obtained by careful manipulation from gold alone. We may regard the addition of tin as a convenient method of developing the colour which was apparently known to the mediæval alchemists.[67]It would be a point of special interest to determine the date when these two colours—the pink (used as a ground) and the opaque turquoise blue—were first used in China. Their presence together with the lemon-yellow gives perhaps the first note of a period of decline. There is in the British Museum a bowl and saucer covered on the outside with this rose enamel and bearing this unusual inscription—‘theSin-chouyear occurring again.’ This expression was referred by Franks to the sixty-first year of the reign of Kang-he, when the cyclical year in which his reign began recurred again, an unprecedented fact in Chinese history. In the same collection is a saucer-shaped plate with a pale pink ground with the mark of the period Yung-cheng. But the evidence in favour of a somewhat later date for the fully developed use of therouge d’orseems to me fairly strong. Dr. Bushell, however, tells me that he has seen other examples where the same inscription is found upon ware decorated with therouge d’or, and that he accepts the early date (1722) on the Sin-chou plate. I return to this question on page 136.[68]Julien omitted this curious passage in his translation as devoid of interest![69]There are two magnificent vases of the black lacquered ware, each about eight feet high, in the Musée Guimet, and of the brown variety a well-preserved spherical bowl may be seen at South Kensington.[70]The snuff-bottles of the Chinese represent theinroof the Japanese. Both were originally used for pills and for eye medicine.[71]Dr. Bushell tells us that she is an accomplished artist and calligraphist, and that her autograph signature is much valued. She is said to have sent down from the palace, to be copied at King-te-chen, bowls and dishes of the time of Kien-lung, just as that emperor in his day forwarded from Pekin examples of Sung and Ming wares with the same object. So the old tradition is kept up![72]These references are to the plates of marks at the end of the book.[73]See, however,p. 110note, for a curious instance of its use.[74]A good example of a date-mark of Wan-li in this position may be seen on the vase reproduced onPl. vii.Fig. 2.[75]Why, by the way, do we find, in catalogues otherwise well edited, porcelain ascribed to the Kang-hedynasty? One might as well speak of the Louisxiv.dynasty.[76]At least such was the case when the Canal was in working order. For some time since, the Grand Canal has only been navigablewhen the country is flooded.[77]I cannot find the exact date of the first publication of these letters. In the eighteenth century we find them generally quoted from Du Halde.[78]This is a passage made use of by Longfellow in those often-quoted lines beginning—‘A burning town, or seeming so,Three thousand furnaces that glow,’ etc.[79]If we are to understand by this ‘transparent pebble’ some form of arsenic, for it would seem that arsenic (and not tin as with us) is the base of the opaque white enamels of the Chinese, it is difficult to believe that so volatile a substance could be thus prepared.[80]For the use of steatite in English porcelain see chap. xxii. At Vinovo, in Piedmont, another magnesian mineral has been employed for the paste.[81]In the following summary I have kept to the Père D’Entrecolles’s words as far as possible, but with considerable abbreviations.[82]We must here think of the more soberfamille vertelantern at South Kensington, rather than of the magnificent specimen of pierced work in the Salting collection, which is of later date.[83]The unique bowl of Chinese porcelain illustrated in Du Sartel’s book, of which the outside is decorated in black and gold in imitation of the Limoges enamel of the renaissance, may have had some such origin. This piece, on which even the initials of the original French artist have been copied, was formerly in the Marquis collection, and is now to be seen in the Grandidier Gallery at the Louvre.[84]We have already alluded to this point,à proposof a bowl in the British Museum; seep. 110note.[85]This branch of the subject is fully worked out in chapter xvii. of Dr. Bushell’s work.[86]When compared with a similar collection of European wares, perhaps the most noticeable difference is the small number of vessels adapted topouring. So much is this the case that when we find a spout or lip on a specimen of Chinese porcelain, the piece takes at once a somewhat exotic aspect, and we are reminded of the ArabIbraik, or the European ewer.[87]It is a curious fact that London chemists now send out their pills in little glass bottles almost identical in shape and size with these Chinese yao-ping.[88]The word is used in a restricted sense as explained above.[89]We have far too often to fall back on names of French origin. Our colour-vocabulary in the case of the enamels and glazes of porcelain is a sadly poor one.[90]In the case of some monochrome ware the colour may have been painted on the raw paste or on the biscuit, and a colourless glaze then added; or again, as in the case of the coral red mentioned below, it may be painted like an enameloverthe glaze.[91]It must, however, be remembered that this carved lacquer itself is sometimes applied as a coating to porcelain in China.[92]It would be convenient to have a name to include the whole series—theflambé, thesang de bœuf, the lavender Yuan, and perhaps also the peach-bloom and the ‘robin’s egg.’ I would propose to includeall these classesunder the head oftransmutation glazes.[93]A French writer compares the effect to the ‘palette d’un coloriste montrée sous un morceau de glace’ (E. de Goncourt,La Maison d’un Artiste).[94]There were many kinds of ‘furnace transmutations’ known to the Chinese, mostly of a miraculous nature (see Bushell, p. 219).[95]When applied tothe whole surface, a similar slip forms the ground on which the decoration is painted in the case of many kinds of European and Saracenic fayence, but in such ware the slip is used to conceal a more or less coarse and coloured paste.[96]It may, however, be noticed, on close examination, that the crackles do not seem to be developed in the lower glaze covered by the slip. This would rather point to both the first and the second coats of glaze, as well as the intermediate slip, being all applied before the firing.[97]Not that we need claim any great age for these plates, but it is in such places that old types (ase.g.the celadon) are likely to continue in fashion.[98]We may perhaps connect the first steady export of ‘blue and white’ direct to Europe with the establishment of the Dutch at Nagasaki, where they probably employed Chinese workmen.[99]So what is by far the most successful imitation of Chinese ‘blue and white’ ever produced in Europe was made by the Dutch, in the enamelled fayence of Delft, about the middle of the century.[100]In Japanese art also we find the prunus as a symbol of the approaching spring, but there the branches are covered with freshly fallen snow. The contrast of the weather in early spring, in China and Japan respectively, could not be better expressed—by ice in the one case, by soft thawing snow in the other.[101]Dr. Zimmermann, the curator of the Dresden Museum, regards the black division of thefamille verteas a product of thedemi grand feu,i.e.he holds that the black and green was painted on the biscuit. But this is certainly not the case with the fully developed examples. I may say that this class is only represented at Dresden by some small roughly painted plates.[102]We find it so used, however, upon the Japanese ‘Kakiyemon’ porcelain, some of which cannot be much later than the middle of the seventeenth century.[103]Since writing this I have discovered a tall-necked bottle of this ware at South Kensington, which is stated to have been purchased in Persia (Pl. xx.).[104]That is to say, no attempt was ever made to imitate the material—the hard paste.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]Some English porcelain is stated by Professor Church to have a hardness equal to that of quartz. See below, ‘Bristol Porcelain.’

[2]We have thought it well, once for all, to treat briefly of the scientific aspect of our subject, but those who are not interested in this point of view may pass over the next few pages.

[3]I shall return to this point in a later chapter. I lay the more stress on this fact, as it is often stated that the hard and slightly translucent stonewares, such as the Fulham ware of Dwight, which contains as much as eighty per cent. of silica, form one degree of a series of which true porcelain is the next term. The fact is, those who sought to make porcelain by a refinement in the manufacture of stoneware were as much astray as those who started from a fusible glass frit.

[4]The china-stone of Cornwall might, in part at least, be claimed as an old volcanic rock, and that used in the Imari district of Japan is distinctly of volcanic origin. Both these rocks, however, consist essentially of a mixture of quartz and felspar.

[5]For further details consult the authorities quoted in theHandbookof the Jermyn Street Collection, p. 5; for sections showing the relation of the beds of kaolin to the surrounding rock, see Brongniart’sTraité des Arts Céramiques, vol. i.

[6]It is to the scattered notices and essays of Mr. William Burton that we must go for information in this country. In his new work onEnglish Porcelainhe does not treat upon this side of the subject.

[7]The most complete work on the processes of manufacture is now Dubreuil’sLa Porcelaine, Paris, 1885. It forms part forty-two in Fremy’sEncyclopédie Chimique. This volume brings up to date and replaces in some measure the great work of Alexandre Brongniart, theTraité des Arts Céramiques(two volumes, with a quarto volume of plates), Paris, 1844. M. Georges Vogt inLa Porcelaine, Paris, 1893, gives valuable details of the processes employed at Sèvres.

[8]Thecaillouxof the French. This material is often described as felspar, but I think that quartz can seldom be completely absent.

[9]I should, however, be inclined to class not only much of the porcelain of Japan, but some of that made in Germany and in south-west France, rather in the ‘severe’ kaolinic than in the intermediary class of M. Vogt.

[10]We can, however, distinguish, in the tomb paintings of the Middle Empire, an earlier form without the lower table. This earlier type, moved by hand from the upper table, was that used by the Greeks at least as late as the sixth centuryB.C., and a similar primitive wheel is still used in India. On later Egyptian monuments of Ptolemaic time, the potter is seen moving the wheel by pressing his foot on a second lower table, as now at Sèvres and elsewhere. Both forms of wheel appear to have been used by the Italian potters of the Renaissance.

[11]This seam is often visible on vases of old Chinese porcelain, and may be taken as a sign that the object has been moulded.

[12]Porcelain in China followed, as we shall see, in the wake of the more early developed arts of the bronze-caster and the jade-carver. Hence the prevalence in the early wares of shapes unsuitable to the wheel.

[13]I think that this is a more practical division than the one made by M. Vogt and adopted by Dr. Bushell.

[14]An important exception is to be noted in the case of the firing of large vases in China.

[15]A good instance of the first case is the finding of crow-claws in the rubbish-heaps of Fostât or Old Cairo. As to the method of support indicating the place of origin, see what is said below about the celadon ware of Siam.

[16]There is only one exception of any importance—the porcelain of Chantilly, much of which has an opaque stanniferous glaze.

[17]So we can infer from the magnificent wall decoration of the Achæmenian period brought home from Susa by M. Dieulafoi.

[18]A glaze of this nature was in the Saracenic East applied to a layer of fine white slip, which itself formed a coating on the coarse paste. Such a combination, often very difficult to distinguish from a tin enamel, we find on the wall-tiles of Persia and Damascus.

[19]Metallic gold has, of course, been applied to the decoration of porcelain in all countries.

[20]The colour of the ruby glass in our thirteenth century windows has a very similar origin. In this case the art was lost and only in a measure recovered at a later period. As in the case of the Chinese glaze, the point was to seize the moment when the copper was first reduced and, in a minute state of division, was suspended in floccular masses in the glass.

[21]With these colours a dark blue is sometimes associated. Is this derived like the turquoise from copper? It is a curious fact that we have here exactly the same range of colours that we find in the little glass bottles of Phœnician or Egyptian origin, with zig-zag patterns (1500-400B.C.).

[22]See Vogt,La Porcelaine, p. 219. The problem is really more complicated. For simplicity’s sake we have ignored the changes that take place in the glaze that lies between the enamels and the paste.

[23]The same result may be obtained by painting one colour over the other, as we find in the black ground of thefamille verte.

[24]In Persia, where for three centuries at least the Chinese wares have been known and imitated, the wordchinihas almost the same connotation. See below for a discussion of the route by which this word reached England.

[25]During the eighteenth century, however, the French missionaries remained in friendly relation with the Chinese court, especially with the Emperor Kien-lung, a man of culture and a poet. The Père Amiot sent home not only letters with valuable information, but from time to time presents of porcelain from the emperor. He was in correspondence with the minister Bertin, who was himself a keen collector of porcelain. See the notes in the Catalogue of Bertin’s sale, Paris, 1815.

[26]Thanks to the industry of the present curator, Herr Zimmermann, the same may now be said of the great collection at Dresden.

[27]For a discussion, and for many illustrations of the art of these early dynasties which survives chiefly in objects of jade or bronze, see Paléologue,Art Chinois, Paris, 1887.

[28]The wild statements as to the transparency, above all, of the Sung and even the Tang porcelain may, however, appear to receive some confirmation from the reports of the old Arab travellers. But how much credence we can give to these authorities may be gleaned from a description of the fayence of Egypt, by a Persian traveller of the eleventh century. ‘This ware of Misr,’ he says, ‘is so fine and diaphanous that the hand may be seen through it when it is applied to the side of the vessel.’ He is speaking not of porcelain, but of a silicious glazed earthenware!

[29]Pekin Oriental Society, 1886; see also Bushell’sCeramic Art, p. 132 seq.

[30]See the passage in hisHistory(chapter ix.) where this stern censor, referring to the passion for collecting china, rebukes the ‘frivolous and inelegant fashion’ for ‘these grotesque baubles.’

[31]The name Céladon first occurs in theAstrée, the once famous novel of Honoré D’Urfé. When later in the seventeenth century Céladon, the courtier-shepherd, was introduced on the stage, he appeared in a costume of greyish green, which became the fashionable colour of the time, and his name was transferred to the Chinese porcelain with a glaze of very similar colour, which was first introduced into France about that period.

[32]Julien translated the wordchingas blue, an unfortunate rendering in this case, which has been the cause of much confusion. He was so far justified in this, in that the same word is used by the Chinese for the cobalt blue of our ‘blue and white,’ while it was not applied by them to a pronounced green tint.

[33]I shall return to this point when treating of English porcelain.

[34]Somewhat later the Chinese were for a time neighbours of the Sassanian empire, where the arts of glazing pottery and making glass were highly developed. Sassanian bronzes, and probably textiles, have found their way to Japan.

[35]The salt-glazed ware of Europe seems to be the only important exception to this perhaps rather sweeping generalisation.

[36]It is possible, however, that some of the various tints of brown used from early Ming times, especially that known to the Chinese as ‘old gold,’ may have been suggested by this copper lustre. The ground on which this lustre is superimposed in some old Persian wares is of a very similar shade. Dr. Bushell mentions a tradition that the old potters tried to produce a yellow colour by adding metallic gold to their glaze, but that the gold all disappeared in the heat of thegrand feu. They had therefore to fall back upon theor bruni.

[37]Consult for this ware the beautifully illustrated monographs of Mr. Henry Wallis on early Persian ceramics.

[38]The cobalt pigment itself, when not of native origin, was known to the Chinese in Ming times asHui-hui ch’ingor ‘Mohammedan blue.’ The other names for the material,sunipoandsumali, probably point in the same direction.

[39]A little white oval vase, in the Treasury of St. Mark’s, at Venice, may possibly be of this old Ting ware. The decoration is in low relief, and four little rings for suspension surround the mouth. In any case this is the only piece in this famous collection that has any claim to be classed as porcelain.

[40]The style of thiscloisonnédecoration is almost identical with that seen in the two magnificent lacquer screens with landscapes and Buddhist emblems at South Kensington. The chains of pearls andpendeloquesare characteristic of a style of painting often found on the beams and ceilings of the old Buddhist temples of Japan. This is, I think, amotifnot found elsewhere on Chinese porcelain.

[41]The late M. Du Sartel gives in his work on Chinese porcelain good photographs of some jars of this class in his collection. He was one of the first to call attention to this ware.

[42]This dull surface is especially noticeable in some of the specimens with Arabic inscriptions in the British Museum; these date from the Cheng-te period (1505-21).

[43]In Persia, too, and in that country accompanied by many other varieties of Chinese porcelain. For examples of these wares see above all the collection at South Kensington.

[44]Relations des Musulmans avec les Chinois.It is not impossible, however, that further research may bring to light some information on this subject. Since writing this I hear from Dr. Bushell that some specimens of Saracenic enamelled glass, presumably of the fourteenth century, have lately been purchased in Pekin. The Arab trade with China was probably never more active than in the first half of the fifteenth century. It is with the Memlook Sultans, then ruling a wide empire from Cairo, that we must associate most of this enamelled glass, and the Eastern trade was in their hands.

[45]See Bushell, p. 454.

[46]Note that cobalt as an enamel colour was not applied on porcelain during Ming times.

[47]There is, however, a curious old bowl in the Salting collection with the nien-hao of Cheng-te (1505-21), on which a design of iron red, two shades of green, a brownish purple,and a cobalt blue of poor lavender tint, all these colours over the glaze, is combined with anunderglazedecoration of fish, in a fullcopper red. Note also the early use of a cobalt blue enamel,sur couverte, in the Kakiyemon ware of Japan.

[48]Much of this kind was translated by Julien, and a good summary may be found in Hippisley’s paper contributed to the Smithsonian Institute, but the information from the same and other sources is more accurately translated and critically analysed in the seventh and eighth chapters of Dr. Bushell’s great work.

[49]Yung-lo, according to the Chinese reckoning, did not commence his reign until the new year’s day following the death of his predecessor (1403). I have, however, thought it better to adopt the European method of reckoning dates.

[50]The nameSentokuthat they give to it is the Japanese reading of the characters forming this emperor’s name.

[51]We may mention that a pair of wide-mouthed vases of this ware, shown at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1896, bore the nien-hao of Kia-tsing (1521-66) inscribed round the mouth.

[52]More properly afresh name was given to the period, but for the sake of brevity we here as elsewhere identify the emperor’s name with that given to the nien-hao.

[53]The Trenchard bowls, mentioned below, belong probably to this or to the following reign.

[54]But this name is also applied by some to the older Su-ma-li blue.

[55]Perhaps the earliest nien-hao on a piece of blue and white in which we can place any confidence.

[56]A predecessor of his as viceroy and superintendent at King-te-chen wasLang Ting-tso, from whom the famous Lang yao, thesang de bœuf, had its name, though this derivation is not absolutely certain. It could only have been quite in the last days of the latter viceroy’s rule that much good work was turned out from the kilns.

[57]It will be observed that the turquoise blue and the green, both derived from copper, so happily combined in the wall-tiles of the Saracenic East, are in China rarely found united in the decoration of the same piece, and this arises from practical difficulties connected with the fluxes and the firing. At least the two colours are neversuccessfullycombined, for the attempt was apparently made in Ming times, and of this some instances are given in the following note. Indeed I should be inclined to regard such a combination on any piece as an evidence of early, probably of Ming, origin.

[58]I would especially point to a remarkable water-vessel, about ten inches high, in the collection at Dresden. This vase is in the form of a phœnix.Green, as well asturquoise, purple and yellow are all found in the decoration, and the colours are all well developed. There is in the British Museum—a collection in many ways remarkable for the number of exceptional types illustrated—a jar with cover, of this class. The ground is a dull purple covered with small spirals of black; the rest of the decoration—rocks, waves, flowers, and jewels—is mainly green of two shades with a little yellow. On some of the flowers, however, we see a poor attempt at turquoise blue. Next to this example stands a baluster-shaped vase with tall, straight neck (Pl. vii. 2.). The ground is here of a pale greyish yellow, with crackles of a darker shade—so far, in fact, of a Ko yao type. The decoration is of a predominant leafy green, with a little purple and yellow here and there; but on the flowers we find, in addition, an enamel of turquoise, poor in colour, indeed, but certainly a copper blue. Both these examples are classed as Ming, and both would seem to show that the combination of the turquoise enamel (essentially a silicate of copper and soda) with the lead-fluxed green had been attempted in Ming times. It was, however, impossible to obtain satisfactory results in this way, so that in Kang-he’s time the turquoise was reserved for thedemi grand feu, and the green alone used as an enamel over the glaze.

[59]‘Muffle-colours,’ of course in these later examples painted over the glaze, and therefore to be classed as enamels.

[60]In this respect we may compare such decoration to a dark water-colour drawing on white paper, where advantage is only taken of the white ground for scattered lights here and there.

[61]We must always think of this great man in connection with his contemporary in France, Louisxiv.Omitting the early years of the French king, before he attained his majority, the two long reigns run almost exactly together.

[62]This list is to be found in Julien’s book. Dr. Bushell has since given a more accurate translation, accompanied by a careful analysis (Chinese Ceramics, chapter xii.).

[63]The red paste of early times was, however, imitated, and a ‘copper paste’ is also mentioned in connection with these old wares. The last expression is obscure, but it has certainly nothing to do with an enamel on copper.

[64]On the other hand, on some large showy vases of this time we can trace a series of rings, giving an uneven surface. These are caused either by the undue pressure of the potter’s fingers (vissage), or perhaps in part by the way in which the successive stages of the jar were built up with ‘sausage-shaped’ rolls of clay.

[65]How this iron red was manipulated, apparently at a transition period, so as to obtain an effect approaching that of therouge d’or, is described on page 162.

[66]A ruby-red can be obtained by careful manipulation from gold alone. We may regard the addition of tin as a convenient method of developing the colour which was apparently known to the mediæval alchemists.

[67]It would be a point of special interest to determine the date when these two colours—the pink (used as a ground) and the opaque turquoise blue—were first used in China. Their presence together with the lemon-yellow gives perhaps the first note of a period of decline. There is in the British Museum a bowl and saucer covered on the outside with this rose enamel and bearing this unusual inscription—‘theSin-chouyear occurring again.’ This expression was referred by Franks to the sixty-first year of the reign of Kang-he, when the cyclical year in which his reign began recurred again, an unprecedented fact in Chinese history. In the same collection is a saucer-shaped plate with a pale pink ground with the mark of the period Yung-cheng. But the evidence in favour of a somewhat later date for the fully developed use of therouge d’orseems to me fairly strong. Dr. Bushell, however, tells me that he has seen other examples where the same inscription is found upon ware decorated with therouge d’or, and that he accepts the early date (1722) on the Sin-chou plate. I return to this question on page 136.

[68]Julien omitted this curious passage in his translation as devoid of interest!

[69]There are two magnificent vases of the black lacquered ware, each about eight feet high, in the Musée Guimet, and of the brown variety a well-preserved spherical bowl may be seen at South Kensington.

[70]The snuff-bottles of the Chinese represent theinroof the Japanese. Both were originally used for pills and for eye medicine.

[71]Dr. Bushell tells us that she is an accomplished artist and calligraphist, and that her autograph signature is much valued. She is said to have sent down from the palace, to be copied at King-te-chen, bowls and dishes of the time of Kien-lung, just as that emperor in his day forwarded from Pekin examples of Sung and Ming wares with the same object. So the old tradition is kept up!

[72]These references are to the plates of marks at the end of the book.

[73]See, however,p. 110note, for a curious instance of its use.

[74]A good example of a date-mark of Wan-li in this position may be seen on the vase reproduced onPl. vii.Fig. 2.

[75]Why, by the way, do we find, in catalogues otherwise well edited, porcelain ascribed to the Kang-hedynasty? One might as well speak of the Louisxiv.dynasty.

[76]At least such was the case when the Canal was in working order. For some time since, the Grand Canal has only been navigablewhen the country is flooded.

[77]I cannot find the exact date of the first publication of these letters. In the eighteenth century we find them generally quoted from Du Halde.

[78]This is a passage made use of by Longfellow in those often-quoted lines beginning—‘A burning town, or seeming so,Three thousand furnaces that glow,’ etc.

[78]This is a passage made use of by Longfellow in those often-quoted lines beginning—

‘A burning town, or seeming so,Three thousand furnaces that glow,’ etc.

[79]If we are to understand by this ‘transparent pebble’ some form of arsenic, for it would seem that arsenic (and not tin as with us) is the base of the opaque white enamels of the Chinese, it is difficult to believe that so volatile a substance could be thus prepared.

[80]For the use of steatite in English porcelain see chap. xxii. At Vinovo, in Piedmont, another magnesian mineral has been employed for the paste.

[81]In the following summary I have kept to the Père D’Entrecolles’s words as far as possible, but with considerable abbreviations.

[82]We must here think of the more soberfamille vertelantern at South Kensington, rather than of the magnificent specimen of pierced work in the Salting collection, which is of later date.

[83]The unique bowl of Chinese porcelain illustrated in Du Sartel’s book, of which the outside is decorated in black and gold in imitation of the Limoges enamel of the renaissance, may have had some such origin. This piece, on which even the initials of the original French artist have been copied, was formerly in the Marquis collection, and is now to be seen in the Grandidier Gallery at the Louvre.

[84]We have already alluded to this point,à proposof a bowl in the British Museum; seep. 110note.

[85]This branch of the subject is fully worked out in chapter xvii. of Dr. Bushell’s work.

[86]When compared with a similar collection of European wares, perhaps the most noticeable difference is the small number of vessels adapted topouring. So much is this the case that when we find a spout or lip on a specimen of Chinese porcelain, the piece takes at once a somewhat exotic aspect, and we are reminded of the ArabIbraik, or the European ewer.

[87]It is a curious fact that London chemists now send out their pills in little glass bottles almost identical in shape and size with these Chinese yao-ping.

[88]The word is used in a restricted sense as explained above.

[89]We have far too often to fall back on names of French origin. Our colour-vocabulary in the case of the enamels and glazes of porcelain is a sadly poor one.

[90]In the case of some monochrome ware the colour may have been painted on the raw paste or on the biscuit, and a colourless glaze then added; or again, as in the case of the coral red mentioned below, it may be painted like an enameloverthe glaze.

[91]It must, however, be remembered that this carved lacquer itself is sometimes applied as a coating to porcelain in China.

[92]It would be convenient to have a name to include the whole series—theflambé, thesang de bœuf, the lavender Yuan, and perhaps also the peach-bloom and the ‘robin’s egg.’ I would propose to includeall these classesunder the head oftransmutation glazes.

[93]A French writer compares the effect to the ‘palette d’un coloriste montrée sous un morceau de glace’ (E. de Goncourt,La Maison d’un Artiste).

[94]There were many kinds of ‘furnace transmutations’ known to the Chinese, mostly of a miraculous nature (see Bushell, p. 219).

[95]When applied tothe whole surface, a similar slip forms the ground on which the decoration is painted in the case of many kinds of European and Saracenic fayence, but in such ware the slip is used to conceal a more or less coarse and coloured paste.

[96]It may, however, be noticed, on close examination, that the crackles do not seem to be developed in the lower glaze covered by the slip. This would rather point to both the first and the second coats of glaze, as well as the intermediate slip, being all applied before the firing.

[97]Not that we need claim any great age for these plates, but it is in such places that old types (ase.g.the celadon) are likely to continue in fashion.

[98]We may perhaps connect the first steady export of ‘blue and white’ direct to Europe with the establishment of the Dutch at Nagasaki, where they probably employed Chinese workmen.

[99]So what is by far the most successful imitation of Chinese ‘blue and white’ ever produced in Europe was made by the Dutch, in the enamelled fayence of Delft, about the middle of the century.

[100]In Japanese art also we find the prunus as a symbol of the approaching spring, but there the branches are covered with freshly fallen snow. The contrast of the weather in early spring, in China and Japan respectively, could not be better expressed—by ice in the one case, by soft thawing snow in the other.

[101]Dr. Zimmermann, the curator of the Dresden Museum, regards the black division of thefamille verteas a product of thedemi grand feu,i.e.he holds that the black and green was painted on the biscuit. But this is certainly not the case with the fully developed examples. I may say that this class is only represented at Dresden by some small roughly painted plates.

[102]We find it so used, however, upon the Japanese ‘Kakiyemon’ porcelain, some of which cannot be much later than the middle of the seventeenth century.

[103]Since writing this I have discovered a tall-necked bottle of this ware at South Kensington, which is stated to have been purchased in Persia (Pl. xx.).

[104]That is to say, no attempt was ever made to imitate the material—the hard paste.

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