CHAPTER XV
NINETEENTH CENTURY PORCELAINS
_Chia Ch’ing_ [chch 2] (1796–1820)
There is little to distinguish the porcelain of this reign from that of Ch’ien Lung. The old traditions were followed and the high standard of technical skill was maintained to a great extent, though in the absence of original ideas the natural tendency was towards a gradual decline. The blue and white is a mere echo of the Ch’ien Lung blue and white, as is shown by a square jar in the Franks Collection, which bears the date corresponding to 1819. Another dated specimen in the same collection is a little bowl with design of the “Eight Ambassadors of the Tribes of Man” mounted on strange beasts, painted in thin garish blue under a bubbly glaze. There are well-finished monochromes of the Ch’ien Lung type, conspicuous among which is an intense brick red (derived from iron), which has all the depth and solidity of a glaze. The enamelled wares are in no way inferior to their late Ch’ien Lung models, and the medallion bowls with engraved enamel grounds are particularly choice. Plate 132, a richly decorated vase belonging to the Lady Wantage, illustrates a type common to both periods. The design of ladies of the harem in an Imperial pleasure ground is carefully painted in mixed colours and enclosed by rich borders of dark ruby pink enamel, brocaded with polychrome floral scrolls. Another vase in the same collection (marked Chia Ch’ing) has a movable inner lining and pierced outer shell richly enamelled in the same style. The blue green enamel of the Ch’ien Lung porcelain was freely used to finish off the base and mouth of the vases of this time.
Bushell[470] describes as a speciality of the Chia Ch’ing period, vases with elaborate scrollwork of various kinds in underglaze blue enhanced by a richly gilded background; and the mark of this reign will be found on many of the choicer snuff bottles, including those sumptuous little vessels with richly carved and pierced outer casing as finely tooled as Su Chou or Peking lacquer.
We have already seen that rice-grain decoration was effectively used at this time, and no doubt many specimens of the kindred “lacework” were also made. In fact in a general classification of Chinese porcelain it would be almost superfluous to separate the Chia Ch’ing from the Ch’ien Lung groups.
_Tao Kuang_ [chch 2] (1821–1850)
The reign of Tao Kuang is the last period of which collectors of Chinese ceramics take any account. It is true that the general deterioration which was already remarked in the previous reign became more and more conspicuous towards the middle of the nineteenth century. It seemed as though the wells of inspiration in China had dried up and the bankrupt arts continued to exist only by virtue of their past. Curiously enough the same wave of decadence was felt all the world over at this period, and if we compare the porcelain of Tao Kuang with the contemporary English and Continental productions we must confess that the decadence of China was Augustan beside the early Victorian art. The Tao Kuang porcelain in the main is saved from utter banality by the high traditions on which it was grounded and by the innate skill of the Chinese potters. Indeed there are not a few out of the numerous specimens of this period in our collections which have a certain individuality and distinction entitling them to a place beside the eighteenth-century wares.
But, speaking generally, the porcelain is a weak edition of the Yung Chêng types. The forms are correct but mechanical, the monochromes are mere understudies of the fine old colours, and the enamels are of exaggerated softness and weak in general effect.
There are numerous marked specimens of all varieties in the Franks Collection. These include a blue and white vase with bronze designs of ogre heads, etc., in the K’ang Hsi style, but painted in pale, lifeless grey blue, and a bowl with lotus designs and symbols surrounding four medallions with the characters _shan kao shui ch’ang_[471] neatly painted in the same weak blue and signed by Wen Lang-shan in the year 1847. Among the monochromes is a dignified vase of bronze form with deep turquoise glaze dated 1844, besides coffee brown bowls, full yellow bowls, vases with curiously bubbled glaze of dark liver red, and a coral red jar and cover. There is also a large bowl with “tiger skin” glaze patched with yellow, green, aubergine and white. All of these pieces are lacking in quality and distinction, though I have seen far superior specimens of lemon yellow monochrome and tea dust glaze.
The enamelled wares are much more attractive, and many of the rice bowls are prettily decorated in soft colours. The Peking or medallion bowls, for instance, are little if anything below the standard of previous reigns, and in addition to the medallions in engraved enamel grounds of pink, green, grey, etc., outside, the interior is often painted in underglaze blue. There are tasteful bowls with white bamboo designs reserved in a ground of coral red, and there are dishes with blackthorn boughs with pink blossom in a white ground. The Yung Chêng style of underglaze blue outlines with washes of thin-transparent enamels was also affected, but the most characteristic enamelling of the period is executed in a mixture of transparent and opaque enamels, a blend of _famille verte_ and _famille rose_. This colouring, soft and subdued, but often rather sickly in tone, is frequently seen on bowls and tea wares with Taoist subjects, such as the Eight Immortals, the fairy attendants of Hsi Wang Mu in boats, or the goddess herself on a phœnix passing over the sea to the _t’ien t’ang_ or cloud-wrapt pavilions of Paradise, preceded by a stork with a peach of longevity in its beak. The sea is usually rendered by a conventional wave pattern delicately engraved in greenish white, and sometimes the ground of the design is washed with the same thin, lustrous, greenish white, which was remarked on a group of porcelains described on page 151. The porcelain of these bowls has a white, if rather chalky, body and a greenish white glaze of exaggerated oily sheen, and of the minutely bubbled, “muslin-like” texture which is common to Japanese porcelains. But the ordinary Tao Kuang wares are of poor material, greyish in tone and coarser in grain, with the same peculiarities in the texture of the glaze in an exaggerated degree.
[Illustration: Plate 131.--Eighteenth Century Painted Porcelain.
Fig. 1.--Plate painted in black and gold, European figures in a Chinese interior. Yung Chêng period. Diameter 9 inches. _British Museum._
Fig. 2.--Dish with floral scrolls in _famille rose_ enamels in a ground of black enamel diapered with green foliage scrolls. Ch’ien Lung period. Diameter 23¼ inches. _Wantage Collection._]
[Illustration: Plate 132.--Vase painted in mixed enamels, an Imperial park and a bevy of ladies. _Wantage Collection._
Deep ruby pink borders with coloured floral scrolls and symbols. Ch’ien Lung mark. About 1790. Height 30 inches.]
A typical example of the fine Tao Kuang rice bowl with Taoist design in the Franks Collection, delicately painted in mixed colours, which recall the Ku-yüeh-hsüan ware of the early Ch’ien Lung period, has the palace mark, _Shên tê t’ang_,[472] in red under the base. A specimen with this mark in the Hippisley Collection[473] is inscribed with a poem by the Emperor Tao Kuang, definitely fixing the date of this hall mark, which is found on choice porcelains made for Imperial use. It occurs on a vase of fine workmanship in the British Museum, decorated with polychrome five-clawed dragons in a lavender enamel ground, of which the base and interior are coated with blue green enamel; and we have already[474] commented on an interesting dish with archaic designs in Ming red and green, which is explained in the mark as an “imitation of the antique made for the _Shên-tê_ Hall.”
It is worthy of note that most of the porcelain with hall and studio marks in red belong to the nineteenth century, chiefly to the Tao Kuang period. Several of these marks are figured and explained on p. 220 (vol. i.), but it may be useful if we describe here a few of the specimens on which they occur. The hall mark, _Ch’êng tê t’ang_, appears on a shallow bowl in the Franks Collection painted inside with a coiled dragon in green and a border of bats in red, while outside is a landscape carefully painted in mixed colours in a style similar to Plate 125, Fig. 3. The latter has the Imperial hall mark, _Hsü hua t’ang_, with addition of the word _tsêng_ (for presentation), and it has besides an inscription proclaiming that it is the “cup of him who departed as General and returned as Grand Secretary” (_ch’u chiang ju hsiang chih pei_). It is painted with a scene in the palace grounds with the Emperor receiving a military officer.[475] A pretty bowl in the Franks Collection with rockery, flowering plants, fungus, etc., in colours has the palace mark, _ssŭ pu t’ang_; and there are two saucer dishes with Buddhist decoration of palmettes in cruciform arrangement, and a border of Sanskrit characters painted in underglaze blue with washes of transparent enamels marked respectively _Ts’ai jun t’ang_, and _Ts’ai hua t’ang_ (hall of brilliant colours and hall of brilliant decoration), which are probably synonymous.
A distinctive group of porcelain, which seems to belong to the Tao Kuang period, consists of small boxes and of vases with landscapes and similar elaborate ornament deeply carved in the manner of red lacquer. The surface is usually covered with an opaque green or yellow monochrome enamel, but occasionally it is left in white biscuit. These pieces have almost always a maker’s mark, such as Wang Ping-jung, Wang Tso-t’ing (see vol. i., p. 223), and probably come from one factory. Bushell[476] also alludes to white unglazed porcelain made at this time, and recalling the English Parian ware. It is chiefly seen on small objects for the writing table.
The collector will always be glad to secure specimens of the palace porcelains of the Tao Kuang period, and of the smaller objects on which the weakness of the colouring is not noticeable. There are, for instance, many exquisite snuff bottles with the mark of this reign, with carved, monochrome and enamelled ornament. On the other hand quantities of these little objects coarsely manufactured and sketchily decorated were made at this time, and among them the crude specimens with a floral spray on one side, a line of verse in grass characters on the other, and a granulated border coated with opaque yellowish or bluish green enamel, whose supposed discovery in ancient Egyptian tombs made a sensation some sixty years ago. It is not difficult to guess how these objects traded among the Arabs found their way into the tombs which were in course of excavation, but for a time they were believed to prove the existence of Chinese porcelain in the second millennium before Christ.[477]
Three other types of indifferent ware may be mentioned here in passing. They belong to the middle of the nineteenth century, and in part at least to the Tao Kuang period. One is painted with a large pink peony and foliage in a bright green enamel ground; the second has cut flowers, butterflies and insects in strong rose colours on a celadon green glaze; and the third has rectangular panels with crowded figure subjects in red and pink enclosed by a brocade pattern of flowers, fruit and insects as in the second type. This third class is often represented by large and rather clumsily shaped vases with two handles of conventionalised dragon form, and the border patterns are sometimes backed with gilding; but it also occurs in quite recent manufacture in tea and toilet services made for the export trade. The porcelain in all these cases is of a rough, coarse-grained make, and the reader might have been spared a description of them were it not that in spite of their inferior quality they are the subject of frequent inquiries.
_Hsien Fêng_ [chch 2] (1851–1861)
In the third year of Hsien Fêng the T’ai p’ing rebels captured Ching-tê Chên and burnt down the Imperial factory, which was not rebuilt till 1864. The potters themselves were killed or scattered; and, naturally, marked examples of this reign are scarce. Such, however, as do exist are of little account, and may be regarded as continuations of the Tao Kuang manufacture. Bushell[478] mentions vases of good form painted in soft colours with nine five-clawed dragons on a white background, which is etched in the paste with scrolled waves, and a dinner service of bowls, cups and saucer dishes painted in colours with processional figures of the eighteen Lohan. And in the British Museum there is a large globular bowl on a high foot painted with green dragon designs and a bowl with medallions of lanterns and vases separated by lotus ornament, neither of which are in any way different from the Tao Kuang wares. No doubt a good deal of porcelain was made at the private factories even during this troubled period, but the specimens which I have seen are not worthy of description.
_T’ung Chih_ [chch 2] (1862–1873)
When the T’ai p’ing rebels had been expelled from the province of Kiangsi by the celebrated viceroy, Li Hung-chang, in 1864, the Imperial factory was rebuilt on the old lines by the new director, Ts’ai Chin-ch’ing. In the same year a list of the porcelain forwarded to the Emperor was drawn up, and it is published in the _Chiang hsi t’ung chih_[479] immediately after Hsieh Min’s list. It consists mainly of bowls, wine and tea cups, saucer dishes and plates classified as _yüan ch’i_ (round ware), and a few vases under the general heading, _cho ch’i_; and though there is little originality in the designs, lists of this kind are so rare and so instructive that I have no hesitation in giving it in full below, following Bushell’s[480] renderings in most cases.
Actual examples of T’ung Chih porcelain are not inspiring. Those in the British Museum include a covered bowl with coloured sprays in a ground of red diaper; a bowl with enamelled sprays on a pale brown (_tzŭ chin_) glaze; a saucer with dragons etched under a transparent green glaze, the exterior in unglazed biscuit painted in black; a cup with red dragons in a ground of black enamel and the cyclical date 1868; a low, octagonal bowl with the Eight Trigrams in relief outside, the interior of this and of the preceding specimen as well being coated with blue green enamel; and a basin enamelled with the Eight Ambassadors of the Tribes of Man. The most favourable specimen of the ware in the same collection is a carefully painted wedding bowl with canary yellow ground and medallions of appropriate symbols, the peach-and dragon-headed staff of longevity, the double fish symbol of conjugal felicity, and the group of pencil brush, cake of ink and _ju-i_ sceptre forming the rebus _pi ting ju i_, “may things be as you wish.”
LIST OF IMPERIAL PORCELAINS SUPPLIED IN THE THIRD YEAR OF T’UNG CHIH (1864)
VASES (_cho ch’i_)
1. Quadrangular vases with apricot medallions and two tubular handles with Chün glaze. [For the shape see Plate 123, and for the glaze see p. 1.]
2. Vases of the same form with Ko glaze.
3. Quadrangular vases with the Eight Trigrams (_pa kua_), and Ko glaze. [The form is quadrangular body with round neck and foot, moulded in relief with the trigrams; for the Ko glaze see vol. i., p. 71.]
4. Vases in form of jade ewers (_yü hu ch’un_) with _chi hung_ (or copper red) glaze.
5. Vases of the same form, with blue and white decoration and raised threads. [Bushell explains that the surface is divided into patterns or sections by raised rings.]
6. Vases of the same form, with blue and white decoration with balcony (_lan kan_). [Bushell explains, “garden scenes enclosed by railings.”]
7. Paper-beater (_chih ch’ui_) vases with the _t’ai chi_ symbol and the glaze of the Imperial factory decorated in colours. [The form is the club-shape or _rouleau_; and the symbol is apparently the _yin-yang_, the Confucian symbol for the Absolute.]
8. Quadrangular vase with elephant symbol of great peace (_t’ai ping yu hsiang_, a rebus meaning “augury of great peace”). [These are apparently square vases with two handles in form of elephant (_hsiang_) heads.]
ROUND WARES (_yüan ch’i_)
9. Medium-sized bowls with dragons in purple brown (_tzŭ_).
10. Medium-sized bowls with _chi hung_ glaze.
11. Large bowls (_wan_) with Indian lotus (_hsi lien_) in blue.
12. Five-inch dishes (_p’an_), similarly decorated.
13. Medium-sized bowls with storks and Eight Trigrams (_pa kua_).
14. Wine cups with narcissus flowers (_shui hsien hua_) in enamels.
15. Wine cups with spreading rim painted with dragons in red.
16. Dishes (_p’an_) a foot in diameter decorated in blue with a pair of dragons filling the surface.
17. Soup bowls (_t’ang wan_) with incised dragons under a dark yellow monochrome glaze. [These, according to Bushell, are smaller and shallower than rice bowls.]
18. Medium-sized bowls, barrel shaped, with dragons engraved under a yellow monochrome glaze.
19. Yellow monochrome tea cups.
20. Medium-sized bowls with dragons engraved under a yellow monochrome glaze.
21. Medium-sized bowls with the three fruits in groups (_pan tzŭ_[481]) painted in blue. [The fruits are peach, pomegranate and finger citron.]
22. Soup bowls with expanding rim and dragons incised under yellow monochrome glaze.
23. Six-inch bowls with a pair of dragons in blue.
24. One-foot dishes painted in blue with silkworm scrolls (_ts’an wên_) and longevity characters.
25. Tea cups decorated in blue with _mu hsi_ flowers (a small variety of the _olea fragrans_).
26. Medium-sized bowls with precious lotus in enamel colours.
27. Tea cups with white bamboo on a painted red ground.
28. Six-inch dishes painted in blue with the “three friends” (_san yu_) and figure subjects. [The three friends in floral language are the pine, bamboo and prunus. It is also a name given to the group of Confucius, Buddha, and Lao-tzŭ, who are often represented examining a picture scroll or standing in conversation.]
29. Tea dishes (_ch’a p’an_) with a pair of dragons in blue. [Bushell describes these as “little trays with upright borders, of oblong, four-lobed, and fluted outline.” They must in fact have closely resembled the old teapot stands of European services.]
30. Six-inch dishes with green dragons on a ground of engraved water-pattern painted in colour.
31. One-foot dishes painted in blue with archaic phœnixes (_k’uei fêng_). [These designs are ornaments of bird form, terminating in scrolls such as appear on ancient bronzes.]
32. Nine-inch dishes with blue ground and dragons in clouds painted in yellow.
33. Medium-sized bowls with pure white glaze and ruby red (_pao shao_) phœnix medallions.
34. Tea cups with dragons and clouds painted in yellow in a blue ground.
35. Six-inch dishes with _chi hung_ (copper red) glaze.
36. Medium-sized bowls with _chi ch’ing_ (deep violet blue) glaze.
37. Nine-inch dishes with _chi hung_ glaze.
38. Soup bowls, barrel shaped, with lustrous brown glaze.
39. Medium-sized bowls with red phœnix medallions in a celadon (_tung ch’ing_) glaze.
40. Nine-inch dishes with silkworm scrolls and _ju-i_[482] ornament in enamel colours.
41. Tea cups enamelled in colours with mandarin ducks and lotus flowers.
42. Tea bowls (_ch’a wan_) with _chi ch’ing_ glaze.
43. Tea bowls decorated in colours with the _pa pao_ (eight attributes of the Taoist Immortals; see p. 287).
44. Large bowls with the Eight Immortals in blue on red enamelled waves.
45. Medium-sized bowls, blue and white inside, and with coloured lotus flowers outside.
46. Bowls with the Eight Buddhist symbols of happy augury (_pa chi hsiang_).
47. Porcelain bowls with green designs and peach yellow ground.
48. Five-inch dishes with purple and green dragons in a yellow monochrome ground.
49. Three-inch platters with similar ornament.
50. Soup bowls of the fourth size (_ssŭ hao_) with green monochrome glaze.
51. Five-inch dishes with phœnixes in clouds.
52. Medium-sized bowls with dragons and phœnixes among flowers in coloured enamels.
53. Four-inch platters (_tieh_) with purple and green dragons in yellow monochrome ground.
54. Nine-inch dishes painted in colours with the eight Buddhist symbols among flowers.
55. Large bowls painted in colours with archaic phœnixes (_k’uei fêng_) among flowers.
_Kuang Hsü_ [chch 2] (1875–1909)
Marked examples of this modern ware in the Franks Collection include a saucer with coloured sprays in a cloudy pink enamel ground; a covered cup with spout decorated in red with cartouches of seal characters accompanied by translations in the ordinary script, and a dish with blackthorn bough and pink blossoms in Tao Kuang style. In every case the ware is coarse-grained and rough to the touch, while the glaze is of the lustrous surface and “musliny” texture, which is characteristic of the nineteenth century porcelains; and the painting is mechanical and devoid of any distinction. There are two little saucers of better quality both in material and painting, with stork and lotus designs in mixed enamels and marks[483] which show that they are palace pieces made for the Empress Dowager.
But the collector’s interest in Kuang Hsü porcelain is of a negative kind. When it is frankly marked he sees and avoids it. But the Chinese potters towards the close of the century evidently recovered some part of the skill which the ravages of the T’ai p’ing rebels seemed to have effectually dissipated; for they succeeded in making many excellent _sang de bœuf_ reds and crackled emerald green monochromes which have deceived collectors of experience. Even the best, however, of these wares should be recognised by inferiority of form and material, and in the case of red the fluescent glaze will be found in the modern pieces to have overrun the foot rim, necessitating grinding of the base rim. There are also fair imitations of the K’ang Hsi blue and white and the enamelled vases of _famille verte_ or on-biscuit colours, and even of the fine black and green grounds. But here again the inferior biscuit, the lack of grace in the form and the stiffness of the designs will be at once observed by the trained eye. When marked most of these imitations have the _nien hao_ of K’ang Hsi, and this is almost invariable on the modern blue and white.
There is, of course, a great quantity of modern porcelain, chiefly enamelled and blue and white, made for the export trade and sold at prices which compete successfully with those of the European wares. It is chiefly in the style of the K’ang Hsi and Ch’ien Lung wares, and is marked accordingly; but the ware is coarse-grained, and the decorations summary, and there is no excuse for mistaking these obvious reproductions for anything but what they are and, in fact, what they pretend to be.
The brief reign of Hsüan T’ung [chch 2] (1909–1911) is a blank so far as ceramic history is concerned; and with the fall of the Ch’ing dynasty in 1912 the Imperial works ceased its activity, and it remains to be seen whether Ching-tê Chên will again have the advantage of a state factory to set a standard for the industry in general.
##