CHAPTER I

THE MING [chch] DYNASTY, 1368–1644 A.D.

As we have already discussed, so far as our imperfect knowledge permits, the various potteries which are scattered over the length and breadth of China, we can now concentrate our attention on the rising importance of Ching-tê Chên. From the beginning of the Ming dynasty, Ching-tê Chên may be said to have become the ceramic metropolis of the empire, all the other potteries sinking to provincial status. So far as Western collections, at any rate, are concerned, it is not too much to say that 90 per cent. of the post-Yüan porcelains were made in this great pottery town.

What happened there in the stormy years which saw the overthrow of the Mongol dynasty and the rise of the native Ming is unknown to us, and, indeed, it is scarcely likely to have been of much interest. The Imperial factories were closed, and did not open till 1369, or, according to some accounts, 1398.[1] If we follow the _Ching-tê Chên T’ao lu_, which, as its name implies, should be well informed on the history of the place, a factory was built in 1369 at the foot of the Jewel Hill to supply Imperial porcelain (_kuan tz’ŭ_), and in the reign of Hung Wu (1368–1398) there were at least twenty kilns in various parts of the town working in the Imperial service. They included kilns for the large dragon bowls, kilns for blue (or green) ware (_ch’ing yao_), “wind and fire”[2] kilns, seggar kilns for making the cases for the fine porcelain, and _lan kuang_ kilns, which Julien renders _fours à flammes étendues_. The last expression implies that the heat was raised in these kilns by means of a kind of bellows (_kuang_) which admitted air to the furnace, and Bushell’s rendering, “blue and yellow enamel furnaces,” ignores an essential part of both the characters[3] used in the original.

From this time onward there is no lack of information on the nature of the Imperial wares made during the various reigns, but it must be remembered that the Chinese descriptions are in almost every case confined to the Imperial porcelains, and we are left to assume that the productions of the numerous private kilns followed the same lines, though in the earlier periods, at any rate, we are told that they were inferior in quality and finish.

The Hung Wu [chch 2] palace porcelain, as described in the _T’ao lu_, was of fine, unctuous clay and potted thin. The ware was left for a whole year to dry, then put upon the lathe and turned thin, and then glazed and fired. If there was any fault in the glaze, the piece was ground down on the lathe, reglazed and refired. “Consequently the glaze was lustrous (_jung_) like massed lard.” These phrases are now so trite that one is tempted to regard them as mere Chinese conventionalities, but there is no doubt that the material used in the Ming period (which, as we shall see presently, gave out in the later reigns) was of peculiar excellence. The raw edge of the base rim of early specimens does, in fact, reveal a beautiful white body of exceedingly fine grain and smooth texture, so fat and unctuous that one might almost expect to squeeze moisture out of it.

The best ware, we are told, was white, but other kinds are mentioned. A short contemporary notice in the _Ko ku yao lun_,[4] written in 1387, says, “Of modern wares (made at Ching-tê Chên) the good examples with white colour and lustrous are very highly valued. There are, besides, _ch’ing_[5] (blue or green) and black (_hei_) wares with gilding, including wine pots and wine cups of great charm.” Such pieces may exist in Western collections, but they remain unidentified, and though there are several specimens with the Hung Wu mark to be seen in museums, few have the appearance of Ming porcelain at all. There is, however, a dish in the British Museum which certainly belongs to the Ming dynasty, even if it is a century later than the mark implies. The body is refined and white, though the finish is rather rough, with pits and raised spots here and there in the glaze and grit adhering to the foot rim; but it is painted with a free touch in a bright blue, recalling the Mohammedan blue in colour, the central subject a landscape, and the sides and rim divided into panels of floral and formal ornament. It must be allowed that the style of the painting is advanced for this early period, including as it does white designs reserved in blue ground as well as the ordinary blue painting on a white ground.

_Yung Lo_ [chch 2] (1403–1424)

The usual formulæ are employed by the _T’ao lu_ in describing the Imperial ware of this reign. It was made of plastic clay and refined material, and though, as a rule, the porcelain was thick, there were some exceedingly thin varieties known as _t’o t’ai_[6] or “bodiless” porcelains. Besides the plain white specimens, there were others engraved with a point[7] or coated with vivid red (_hsien hung_). The _Po wu yao lan_,[8] reputed a high authority on Ming porcelains and written in the third decade of the seventeenth century, adds “blue and white” to the list and gives further details of the wares. The passage is worth quoting in full, and runs as follows: “In the reign of Yung Lo were made the cups which fit in the palm of the hand,[9] with broad mouth, contracted waist, sandy (_sha_) foot, and polished base. Inside were drawn two lions rolling balls. Inside, too, in seal characters, was written _Ta Ming Yung Lo nien chih_[10] in six characters, or sometimes in four[11] only, as fine as grains of rice. These are the highest class. Those with mandarin ducks, or floral decoration inside, are all second quality. The cups are decorated outside with blue ornaments of a very deep colour, and their shape and make are very refined and beautiful and in a traditional style. Their price, too, is very high. As for the modern imitations, they are coarse in style and make, with foot and base burnt (brown), and though their form has some resemblance (to the old), they are not worthy of admiration.”

As may be imagined, Yung Lo porcelain is not common to-day, and the few specimens which exist in our collections are not enough to make us realise the full import of these descriptions. There are, however, several types which bear closely on the subject, some being actually of the period and others in the Yung Lo style. A fair sample of the ordinary body and glaze of the time is seen in the white porcelain bricks of which the lower story of the famous Nanking pagoda was built. Several of these are in the British Museum, and they show a white compact body of close but granular fracture; the glazed face is a pure, solid-looking white, and the unglazed sides show a smooth, fine-grained ware which has assumed a pinkish red tinge in the firing. The coarser porcelains of the period would, no doubt, have similar characteristics in body and glaze. The finer wares are exemplified by the white bowls, of wonderful thinness and transparency, with decoration engraved in the body or traced in delicate white slip under the glaze and scarcely visible except as a transparency. Considering the fragility of these delicate wares and the distant date of the Yung Lo period, it is surprising how many are to be seen in Western collections. Indeed, it is hard to believe that more than a very few of these can be genuine Yung Lo productions, and as we know that the fine white “egg shell” porcelain was made throughout the Ming period and copied with great skill in the earlier reigns of the last dynasty, it is not necessary to assume that every bowl of the Yung Lo type dates back to the first decades of the fifteenth century.

[Illustration: Plate 59.--White Eggshell Porcelain Bowl with Imperial dragons faintly traced in white slip under the glaze.

Mark of the Yung Lo period (1403–1424) incised in the centre in archaic characters. 1. Exterior. 2. Interior view. Diameter 8¾ inches. _British Museum._]

It is wellnigh impossible to reproduce adequately these white porcelains, but Plate 59 illustrates the well-known example in the Franks Collection, which has long been accepted as a genuine Yung Lo specimen. It represents the _ya shou pei_ in form, with wide mouth and small foot--the contracted waist of the _Po wu yao lan_; the foot rim is bare at the edge, but not otherwise sandy, and the base is glazed over, which may be the sense in which the word “polished”[12] is used in the _Po wu yao lan_. The ware is so thin and transparent that it seems to consist of glaze alone, as though the body had been pared away to vanishing point before the glaze was applied--in short, it is _t’o t’ai_ or “bodiless.” When held to the light it has a greenish transparency and the colour of melting snow, and there is revealed on the sides a delicate but exquisitely drawn design of five-clawed Imperial dragons in white slip (not etched, as has too often been stated), showing up like the water-mark in paper. On the bottom inside is the date-mark of the period etched with a point in four archaic characters (see vol. i, p. 213). A more refined and delicate ceramic work could hardly be imagined.

Close to this bowl in the Franks Collection there are two smaller bowls or, rather, cups which in many ways answer more nearly the description of the _ya shou pei_,[13] though they are thick in substance and of coarser make. They have straight spreading sides, wide at the mouth, with foliate rim, and contracted at the foot. The foot rim is bare of glaze, but the base is covered. They are of an impure white ware with surface rather pitted, and inside is a lotus design traced in white slip under the glaze and repeated in radiating compartments. These are perhaps a product of the private factories. The same form is observed among the blue and white porcelain in two small cups, which are painted in blue with a landscape on the exterior and with bands of curled scrolls inside and the Yung Lo mark in four characters. The base is unglazed, and though they are undoubtedly intended to represent a Yung Lo type, these not uncommon bowls can hardly be older than the last dynasty. Another blue and white bowl in the Franks Collection has the Yung Lo mark and the scroll decoration inside, and on the exterior a long poem by Su Shih, covering most of the surface. It is painted in a grey blue, and the ware, though coarse, has the appearance of Ming manufacture, perhaps one of the late Ming copies which are mentioned without honour in the _Po wu yao lan_. It is, however, of the ordinary rounded form.[14]

Hsiang Yüan-p’ien illustrates in his Album one Yung Lo specimen, a low cylindrical bowl of the “bodiless” kind, “thin as paper,” with a very delicate dragon and phœnix design, which is seen when the bowl is held to the light and carefully inspected. This style of ornament is described as _an hua_ (secret decoration), but it is not stated whether, in this case, it was engraved in the paste or traced in white slip.

The mention of “fresh red” (_hsien hung_), which seems to have been used on the Yung Lo porcelain as well as in the succeeding Hsüan Tê period, brings to mind a familiar type of small bowl with slight designs in blue inside, often a figure of a boy at play, the exterior being coated with a fine coral red, over which are lotus scrolls in gold. There are several in the British Museum, and one, with a sixteenth-century silver mount, was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910.[15] The term _hsien hung_ is certainly used for an underglaze copper red on the Hsüan Tê porcelain, and it is doubtful whether it can have been loosely applied to an overglaze iron red on the earlier ware. For the bowls to which I refer have an iron red decoration, though it is sometimes wonderfully translucent and, being heavily fluxed, looks like a red glaze instead of merely an overglaze enamel (see Plate 74). Several of these red bowls have the Yung Lo mark, others have merely marks of commendation or good wish. Their form is characteristic of the Ming period, and the base is sometimes convex at the bottom, sometimes concave. They vary considerably in quality, the red in some cases being a translucent and rather pale coral tint, and in others a thick, opaque brick red. Probably they vary in date as well, the former type being the earlier and better. It is exemplified by an interesting specimen in the Franks Collection marked _tan kuei_ (red cassia), which indicates its destination as a present to a literary aspirant, the red cassia being a symbol of literary success. This piece has, moreover, a stamped leather box of European--probably Venetian--make, which is not later than the sixteenth century. This, if any of these bowls, belongs to the Yung Lo period, but it will be seen presently that the iron red was used as an inferior but more workable substitute for the underglaze red in the later Ming reigns, and, it must be added, these bowls are strangely numerous for a fifteenth-century porcelain. That they are a Yung Lo type, however, there is little doubt, for this red and gold decoration (_kinrande_ of the Japanese) is the adopted style which won for the clever Kioto potter, Zengoro Hozen, the art name _Ei raku_, i.e. Yung Lo in Japanese.

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