Yuan Dynasty (1280-1368).

PLATE III.1—CHINESE, CELADON WARE2—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 truemartabani, 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. 21seq.).

As for theKo 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 offlambéporcelain. 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 nodoubt 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’ orflambéware 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 anundoubted 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 firstgreat 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 thefengor ‘flour’ Ting ware (also known asPaior ‘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 theTu-Tingor 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 thisTu-Tingin 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 wecan 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 rareflambévases, 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 thequalité 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

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 oldflambépieces 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 oldmartabaniceladon—I would point especially to several large dishes both at Sèvres and in theMusée Guimet. But what is perhaps the finest collection in Europe of celadon and other old wares is now to beseen 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.

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 shouldfind 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 claimadvantages 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 WesternAsia, 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 glazewith 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 decorationsous couvertefirmly 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 ArabIbraik. Again, we find this influence at times in themotifsof 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 PersianGulf, 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 theMongolorYuandynasty, 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]

IT was in the course of the three centuries during which the Ming dynasty ruled in China that the greatest advance was made in the manufacture of porcelain. When, however, we come to look a little more closely, we find that this long period may be shortened by nearly a hundred years. Before the accession of Yung-lo (1402), and after the death of Wanli (1619), the times were little favourable to the arts of peace, and even in this shorter period of two centuries there were intervals, indeed whole reigns, of which there is little to report.

The points of chief importance to remember in connection with this dynasty are—1. That not later than the beginning of the fifteenth century the employment of the oxides of copper and cobalt for decoration under the glaze was coming into general use. To this, or perhaps to an earlier date, we must assign the beginnings of the ware that we in England are wont to consider the most important of all, the great family of ‘blue and white’ porcelain. 2. That probably about the same time, or soon after, the ‘painted glazes,’ as we have called them, were introduced. In this ware the colours required for the decoration—the palette was a very restricted one—were painted directly on the biscuit, the piece having been previously fired; it was then re-fired at a moderateheat. 3. That at a later period, probably about the middle of the sixteenth century, the employment of enamel colours above the glaze was introduced, probably under European influence.

It is the blue and white that we are above all accustomed to associate with the Ming period. But this is not the Chinese point of view. If we consult the Bushell manuscript (see chap. v.) we find that Tzu-ching, towards the end of the sixteenth century, had in his collection thirty-nine pieces which he attributed to the reigning dynasty, but of these only five or six would be classed by us as ‘blue and white’; at least equal importance was given to those decorated with copper-red under the glaze, and even more specimens belong to the class of painted glazes. These latter are chiefly little objects—pen-rests, rouge-pots, and small wine-jars moulded to represent plant and animal forms, the gourd or again the persimmon being great favourites. We must not confuse these early specimens, dating mostly from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the somewhat similar objects so much sought after by the French collectors in the eighteenth century, which belong for the most part to the contemporaryfamille verte; on these the decoration is given for the most part by enamelspainted over the glaze. Still it is from some of these littlemagotsthat we can perhaps form the best idea of the coloured porcelain so prized by Tzu-ching, but of which we are unable to point to any specimens in our collections.

In connection with these painted glazes—for it undoubtedly belongs to this class—it may be well to say something of a very decorative ware of which the origin is probably to be placed in early Ming times. The colours are distinctly those of thedemi grand feu, and in this ware we have the earliest instance of the use of these colours. This porcelain occurs most frequently in the shape of vases of baluster outline with contracted necksand small mouths, or sometimes of the more ordinary oil-jar shape, with wide mouths. We may distinguish two types of this ware. In the first the decoration is given by means of a low relief of beads and of ribs surrounding countersunkcloisons. The field between thesecloisonsis of a deep blue passing into a blue-black, and thecloisonsthemselves are filled with a wash of turquoise or straw-yellow. Chains of pearls in festoon surround the neck, and from these hangpendeloquesof various Buddhist emblems. On the body of these vases the decoration often consists of lotus-plants arising from conventional waves.[40]In the second type the turquoise blue predominates, an impure pale manganese is added, and the jars are often built up of an open-work trellis of bars. Both the turquoise and aubergine purple porcelain of the Kang-he period, as well as the Japanese Kishiu ware, may possibly be traced back to a Ming porcelain of this class. There are specimens of all these wares in the British Museum and at South Kensington. In the Salting collection is a jar of thecloisonnétype, the blue-black ground covered with a skin of thin glaze of a dull surface. This jar was formerly the property of a Japanese collector (Pl. ii.).[41]

The colours appliedunder the glazeare confined to cobalt blue and copper red. The latter when fine in tint was greatly prized by the Chinese, and we are informed that in the most brilliant specimens the colour was given by ‘powdered rubies from the West.’ It was, however, a treacherous colour to use, and after the period of Hsuan-te (1425-1435), which was famous for its ruby-red,

PLATE V.CHINESE

it fell into comparative disuse and was displaced in a measure at a later date by a more manageable iron red. The use of the copper sub-oxide to obtain a red,sous couverte, was, however, revived in the time of Kang-he. On examples in European collections this red, when used alone or in connection with blue, is generally of a rather poor maroon colour, and it has not found much favour with us. The colour was often thus applied to the painting of fish, floating, it may be, among blue water-weeds. We see it at its best as a monochrome on some little bowls, enlivened with a floral design in gold, in the British Museum. These cups and some similar ones at Dresden undoubtedly date from Ming times; the ruby tint seen through a brilliant glaze has never been equalled in later days. With these we may compare certain little apple-green bowls similarly decorated with gold. One of these in a silver-gilt mounting of the early sixteenth century is in the Gold Room at the British Museum (Pl. v.).

What we somewhat vaguely call ‘blue and white,’ that is porcelain decorated under the glaze with designs painted with cobalt blue, has always formed the most important class in the eyes of European collectors, at least of those of England and Holland. This preference has been even more marked with the people of India and Persia, and no wonder, for no combination of colour more suggestive of coolness could be imagined. It has thus come about that this class of ware, more than any other, has been made with the direct object of exportation. This blue and white porcelain of China and Japan, which has found its way into so many lands both of Europe and Asia, has for centuries had the profoundest influence upon the native wares of these countries, whether of porcelain or of fayence.

In China, by the introduction of this process of freely painting with a brush upon the surface of the paste, the potters art was for the first time brought into contact with that of the painter, and thus fell under new influences. The artists of China at that time were divided into many schools, but what we may call the literary ordilettanteinfluence was predominant, and this influence is reflected in the subjects treated on Ming porcelain—subjects which, as usual in China, were handed on to the ceramic artists of the next dynasty. The earliest decoration in blue and white in no way followed, as far as we know, the hierated types of the old bronze ware. Suchmotifswe do indeed sometimes see repeated on porcelain, but only on pieces that may safely be attributed to a much later date, especially to the pseudo-archaic revival of Yung-cheng’s time (1722-35).

There is no class of Chinese porcelain to which it is more difficult to assign even an approximate date than to this blue and white ware. We may say at once that thenien-hao, or the characters giving the name of the dynasty and the emperor, so often found inscribed on the base, are in the vast majority of cases of no value for fixing the date, and this is especially true when the name of a Ming emperor is thus found. What is more, these marks, as far as we can judge (from the knowledge we now possess derived from other sources), do not, as we might have expected, even help us in giving hints of the style prevailing at the period indicated by the date. To take but one example, the reign-mark of Cheng-hua (1464-87) is the one most frequently found on the finest pieces of blue and white (in the Salting collection, for instance), but by far the greater number of the pieces so marked undoubtedly date from the beginning of the eighteenth century. On the other hand, the Chinese books all agree in telling us that this Cheng-hua period wasnoted for a decline in the excellence of the blue, but on the other hand was pre-eminent for its coloured decoration. It was rather the earlier Hsuan-te period (1425-35) that was renowned for the brilliancy of its blue. These statements of the Chinese authorities are confirmed by an analysis of the Ming specimens illustrated in the Bushell manuscript. The Japanese, perhaps a little more rationally, give the preference to the reigns of Hsuan-te and Yung-lo (1402-24), for the date-marks of these emperors (‘Sentoku’ and ‘Yeiraku’ in the Japanese reading) are to be read on the commonest modern blue and white in domestic use in that country.

This is a point that cannot be too strongly dwelt upon. Perhaps if a little more of the care and research that have been devoted to the reading of thesenien-haoand other inscriptions on Chinese porcelain had been earlier directed to a careful examination of the glazes and enamels, and to questions of technique generally, the misconceptions that so long prevailed as to the dating and classification of Oriental porcelain would have been sooner dispelled.

But what means have we then for settling the date of a piece of Chinese blue and white ware? What criterion is there for distinguishing between specimens of early Ming, late Ming, or Manchu times?—or indeed between those of Chinese and Japanese origin? That we even now possess no very exact criterion is shown by the wide difference of opinion so often found in individual cases. If we are to form our judgment from the rare extant pieces of blue and white known to have been imported into Europe in the sixteenth century, we must regard the Ming ware as distinguished by a certain irregularity of surface, seen best by side-reflected lights; the pieces are generally moulded, and the marks of the lines of junction of the moulds are often to be traced on the surface; the paste, too, isgenerally very thick, and sometimes shows gaping fissures at the margin. The drawing of the design is somewhat hasty and summary, although at times distinguished by a freshness of handling and by a certain caligraphic freedom. But we must not draw too hasty an inference from the few specimens in our European collections, many of which must have been made, as we shall see later on, at a period of temporary decline; nor are we justified in regarding mere articles of commerce, as most of these specimens undoubtedly were, as representative of the higher artistic products of the time.

The blue in these early pieces is generally of a full tint but not of any remarkable quality. There are, however, to be found a few specimens, heavily moulded indeed and of irregular contour, decorated with cobalt blue of a full sapphire tint. Of this class there are one or two brilliant specimens both in the British Museum and at South Kensington. In these and in other Ming wares the surface of the glaze is often dulled, and this is not always the result of minute scratches, for sometimes a process of devitrification appears to have set in.[42]Another class of Ming ware is distinguished by a decoration delicately painted in a pale blue tint, and it was this style that was copied by the Japanese in their Mikawaji ware of the seventeenth century.

It is to later Ming times that we must attribute the bulk of the rough heavy ware of which so much is found in India.[43]These are generally large plates and bowls, often discoloured from having been used for cooking purposes. The decoration is hastily executed

PLATE VI.CHINESE, BLUE AND WHITE WARE

in a dull indigo blue (derived of course from cobalt, as in other cases), and the outlines are often accentuated by black lines. Many fine specimens of this picturesque ware, from the collection of Mrs. Halsey, were shown in the exhibition of blue and white ware at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1895. It was claimed for one large vase that it came from the palace of the Moguls at Agra, and that it had been presented to Jehangir by the Chinese emperor Wan-li (1572-1619). It is often stated that this class of ware was made at some factory in the south of China, probably in the neighbourhood of Canton, the port from which doubtless most of it was exported. As yet, however, no evidence, as far as I am aware, for such a factory has been brought forward, and no definite locality indicated. The statement made by the Abbé Raynal, about a factory at Shao-king Fu, rests probably upon a misconception.

There are several specimens of blue and white in England, the metal mountings of which date from the early seventeenth or even from the sixteenth century. Of these the most famous are the four pieces from Burleigh House (now belonging to Mr. Pierpont Morgan), which are believed to have been in the possession of the Cecil family from the time of Queen Elizabeth. One of these bears the date-mark of Wan-li, the contemporary of that queen. This ware is not particularly fine, the surfaces are irregular, and all the pieces are apparently moulded (Pl. xxviii.).

This subject, however, of the early presence of Chinese porcelain in other lands we shall return to in a later chapter.

So far, then, with such imperfect lights as are at our command, we have attempted to follow up the history of porcelain, and so far, say up to the middle of the sixteenth century, China is practically the only country with which we are concerned. Some fair imitationsof celadon, themartabaniof Oriental commerce, had probably by this time been made in Siam and perhaps elsewhere, and the Japanese were already in a sporadic way experimenting with imported and native clays. But up to the sixteenth century the Chinese had practically the monopoly of the art, and as we have seen they had at that time the command of three processes of decoration—that is by monochrome glazes, by painting with glazes of a few simple colours on the biscuit, and finally by means of cobalt blues and copper reds painted on the surface of the raw paste.

Not but that some attempts may have already been made to apply coloured decoration over the glaze—the next and final step in the history of porcelain. There are some passages in contemporary Chinese books, giving descriptions of elaborate subjects painted in many colours on porcelain of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which it would be difficult to apply to our class of painted glazes. Thus—to take a pronounced instance from an unexceptionable source—the miniature wine-cups, No. 59 of the Bushell manuscript, are attributed by Tzu-ching to the reign of Cheng-hua (1464-87), and he describes them thus—‘They are painted in enamel colours’ (so Dr. Bushell translates the original) ‘with flowers and insects; ... the cockscomb, the narcissus and other flowers, the flying dragon-fly and crawling mantis are minutely painted after life in green, yellow, and crimson enamel.’ (This, by the way, is a combination of colours which it must have been difficult to apply at one firing with the pigments known at that time.) And yet in the absence of any specimen of enamelled ware (using the word enamel in its restricted sense for a decoration applied over the glaze) that can with certainty be attributed to so early a period, it will be safer to postpone the date of the introduction of this decoration,sur couverte, for another hundred years.

It will be remembered that the distinctive feature of this decoration with enamels is the use of an easily fusible silicate, containing much lead—in fact a kind of flint glass. A glass of this description is capable of being stained by the addition of small quantities of certain metallic oxides, some of which would not stand the heat requisite for the firing of the porcelain. This, in fact, is the application to porcelain of the arts of the glass-stainer and of the enameller, arts already at this time fully developed in the West. For once the Chinese authorities all agree in finding in an exotic and indeed Western art the origin of their enamelled porcelain. When, however, we attempt to interpret their statements we are landed in an even more than customary chaos—so many are the different readings for the names of foreign countries and for technical processes.

Let us then consider for a moment what the materials were that the Chinese had to draw from—whether from Arab or other sources.

Putting aside the application of stained glass to windows, for specimens of this art are not easily exported, these may be summed up as, first, the enamelled glass of the Saracens, and secondly, thecloisonnésandchamplevésenamels of the Byzantines and other Western nations.

As to the first—the application of coloured and easily fusible enamels to the surface of glass, which was then exposed to a second firing—this process had been used by the Arabs for the decoration of their mosque lamps and other vessels probably as early as the twelfth century, and this was an art identical in its system with the application of the same colours to the surface of porcelain. The beauty of the effect cannot have failed to have struck the Chinese if they had had any opportunity of seeing the finer specimens. But the material was fragile, and apart from a statement by M. Scherer that glass was exported from Aleppo toChina,[44]I cannot find in the accounts of the Arab trade of the time any record of such ware being imported into China.

On the other hand, we know that enamels on metal are first mentioned in the Ming annals about the middle of the fifteenth century. They take their name of Cheng-tai enamels from the emperor who reigned at that period; but the proper Chinese term for such enamels isFolang chien yao—‘the inlaid ware of Folang.’ Julien interpreted these words ‘Porcelaines à incrustations (ornées d’émaux) de France,’ and Dr. Hirth carries us to Bethlehem! But the wordFolangis probably the same as the termFolinorFulen, used as early as the sixth century for the Roman empire of the East, and it may possibly be connected with the Greek πόλις (cf. Stamboul = Εἰς τὴν πόλιν).[45]It is definitely stated by a later Chinese writer that the same colours are employed by both the enameller on metal and the decorator of porcelain.

If we examine the colours found on both the wares to which we have tentatively traced back the enamelled porcelain of the Chinese—the enamels on glass on the one hand, and those on metal on the other—taking in each case the earlier specimens as examples, we find on the mosque lamps from Cairo little except a deep blue generally used as a ground for a design which is outlined in an opaque iron red. On the famous flask from Würzburg, now in the British Museum, for which a ‘Mesopotamian’ origin of the thirteenth century is claimed, a turquoise blue relieved by gilding is thepredominant note; there is also a sparing use of yellow, of an opaque white, and, what is especially interesting, of a fine pinkish red, which is possibly obtained from gold. (The way in which this colour is shaded into the opaque white reminds us of the similar use of therouge d’orin later times in China.)

If, on the other hand, we turn to the earlier Chinese enamels on metal, the so-called Ching-tai vases, attributed to the fifteenth century, we find among the colours used an opaque iron red, a yellow, an opaque white, and finally two kinds of blue, a turquoise and a full deep blue that looks like a cobalt colour.[46]

Some time, then, during the sixteenth century, whether before or after the accession of Wan-li (1572), the Chinese began to decorate the surface of their porcelain with jewel-like enamelsappliquésto the glaze. At first, apparently, these colours were confined to three: a copper green, a yellow generally of a buff tint, probably containing antimony as well as iron, and a purple derived from manganese. These are theSan-tsaior three colours of the Chinese writers, and it will be seen that they differ from the colour triad of our ‘painted glazes’ (painted, that is, on biscuit and reheated in thedemi grand feu) in that the copper silicate is of a turquoise blue in the latter, and in the former of a full leafy green. The Chinese authorities further tell us that a second scheme of decoration was given by theWu-tsaior the five colours which were made up by the three already mentioned, with the addition of an opaque red derived from the sesqui-oxide of iron (otherwise known as hæmatite, bole or red ochre),[47]and finally of acobalt blue,sous couverte, surviving as it were from the earlier blue and white ware, for, as we have mentioned, the use of the blue as an enamel over the glaze belongs to a later period.

So much for the teaching of the Chinese books; but when, attacking the subject from the other side, we examine the specimens of enamelled ware which for one reason or another—the coarseness and thickness of the paste, the moulded form, and the irregular surface—we should be inclined to attribute to the Ming dynasty, we are led to classify these earlier examples somewhat as follows:—

1. On a white ground a design, often, it would seem, of textile origin, roughly painted in an opaque red (like sealing-wax), with the addition of a leafy green and very rarely of a little yellow. This is a class of decoration much imitated in Japan at a later date, especially by the artist potters of Kioto and at Inuyama.

2. The same colours with the addition of blue,sous couverte. The design often takes the form of figures in a landscape, the whole broadly treated. The earliest type of the Imari ware (apart from the Kakiyemon) seems to be based on this scheme of decoration.

Both these classes are distinguished by the white ground, the sparing use of yellow, and the almost complete absence of manganese purple and turquoise blue.

3. A transparent enamel of leafy green, yellow and manganese purple painted on in washes so as to cover the whole ground. When with these colours we find the outline drawn in black, we have the basis of a large part of thefamille verte. On the other hand, it is this class of decoration which probably carries on the tradition of the early Ming ware, sometimes described as ‘enamelled,’ but more probably all of it painted on the biscuit and fired in thedemi grand feu.

In China it would seem that these enamelled wares

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