CHAPTER III

CH’ÊNG HUA [chch 2] (1465–1487) AND OTHER REIGNS

The Ch’êng Hua porcelain shares with that of the Hsüan Tê period the honours of the Ming dynasty, and Chinese writers are divided on the relative merits of the two. Unfortunately, no material remains on which we might base a verdict of our own, but we may safely accept the summing up which the _Po wu yao lan_, the premier authority on early Ming wares, gives as follows[51]: “In my opinion, the blue and white porcelain of the Ch’êng Hua period does not equal that of the Hsüan Tê, while the polychrome of the Hsüan period does not equal that of the 'model[52] emperor’s’ reign. The reason is that the blue of the Hsüan ware was _su-ni-p’o_[53] blue, whereas afterward it was all exhausted, and in the Ch’êng Hua period only the ordinary blue was used. On the other hand, the polychrome (_wu ts’ai_) decoration on the Hsüan ware was deep and thick, heaped and piled, and consequently not very beautiful; while on the polychrome wares of the Ch’êng Hua period the colours used were thin and subdued,[54] and gave the impression of a picture.”[55] Elsewhere we read that the Hsüan Tê porcelain was thick, the Ch’êng Hua thin, and that the blue of the Hsüan blue and white was pale, that of the Ch’êng Hua dark; but on this latter point there are many differences of opinion, and among the wares made at the Imperial factory in the Yung Chêng period we are told that there were “copies of Ch’êng Hua porcelain with designs pencilled in pale blue (_tan ch’ing_).”[56]

The only types of Ch’êng Hua porcelain considered worthy of mention by Chinese writers are the polychrome, the blue and white, and the red monochrome, though doubtless the other methods of previous reigns were still used. Stress is laid on the excellence of the designs which were supplied by artists in the palace,[57] and on the fine quality of the colours used, and an interesting list of patterns is given in the _T’ao shuo_,[58] which includes the following:

1. Stem-cups (_pa pei_), with high foot, flattened bowl, and spreading mouth; decorated in colours with a grape-vine pattern.

“Among the highest class of Ch’êng Hua porcelain these are unsurpassed, and in workmanship they far excel the Hsüan Tê cups.” Such is the verdict of the _Po wu yao lan_, but they are only known to us by later imitations.

A poor illustration of one of these is given in Hsiang’s Album,[59] and we are told in the accompanying text that the glaze is _fên pai_, “white like rice powder,” while the decoration, a band of oblique vine clusters and tendrils, is merely described as _wu ts’ai_ (polychrome), but it is obviously too slight to be executed by any other method than painting with enamels on the glaze. The price paid for this cup is stated as one hundred taels (or ounces) of silver.

2. Chicken cups (_chi kang_), shaped like the flat-bottomed, steep-sided, and wide-mouthed fish bowls (_kang_), and painted in colours with a hen and chickens beneath a flowering plant.

A valuable commentary on Ch’êng Hua porcelains is given by a late seventeenth-century writer in notes appended to various odes (e.g. on a “chicken cup” and on a Chün Chou vase). The writer is Kao Tan-jên, who also called himself Kao Chiang-ts’un, the name appended to a long dissertation on a Yüan dynasty silver wine cup, which now belongs to Sir Robert Biddulph and was figured in the _Burlington Magazine_.[60] “Ch’êng Hua wine cups,” he tells us, “include a great variety of sorts. All are of clever workmanship and decoration, and are delicately coloured in dark and light shades. The porcelain is lustrous and clear, but strong. The chicken cups are painted with a _mu tan_ peony, and below it a hen and chicken, which seem to live and move.” Another writer[61] of the same period states that he frequented the fair at the _Tz’ŭ-iên_ temple in the capital, where porcelain bowls were exhibited, and rich men came to buy. For Wan Li porcelain the usual price was a few taels of silver; for Hsüan Tê and Ch’êng Hua marked specimens two to five times that amount; but “chicken cups” could not be bought for less than a hundred taels, and yet those who had the means did not hesitate to buy, and porcelain realised higher prices than jade.

An illustration in Hsiang’s Album[62] gives a poor idea of one of these porcelain gems, which is described as having the sides thin as a cicada’s wing, and so translucent that the fingernail could be seen through them. The design, a hen and chicken beside a cock’s-comb plant growing near a rock, is said to have been in the style of a celebrated Sung artist. The painting is in “applied colours (_fu sê_), thick and thin,” and apparently yellow, green, aubergine and brown. Like that of the grape-vine cup, it is evidently in enamels on the glaze.

3. Ruby red bowls (_pao shao wan_)[63] and cinnabar red dishes (_chu sha p’an_). These were, no doubt, the same as the “precious stone red (_pao shih hung_) and cinnabar bowls red as the sun,” described in the chapter on Hsüan Tê porcelain. Kao Chiang-ts’un remarks on these that “among the Ch’êng wares are chicken cups, ruby red bowls, and cinnabar dishes, very cleverly made, and fine, and more costly than Sung porcelain.”

4. Wine cups with figure subjects and lotuses.

5. “Blue and white” (_ch’ing hua_) wine cups, thin as paper.

6. Small cups with plants and insects (_ts’ao ch’ung_).[64]

7. Shallow cups with the five sacrificial altar vessels (_wu kung yang_).

8. Small plates for chopsticks, painted in colours.

9. Incense boxes.

10. All manner of small jars.

All these varieties are mentioned in the _Po wu yao lan_, which gives the place of honour to the grape-vine stem-cups. The only kind specifically described as blue and white is No. 5, and the inference is that the other types were usually polychrome.

[Illustration: Plate 63.--Baluster Vase

With designs in raised outline, filled in with coloured glazes on the biscuit; dark violet blue background. About 1500. Height 14¾ inches.

_Grandidier Collection_ (_Louvre_).]

[Illustration: Plate 64.--Fifteenth-century Polychrome Porcelain.

Fig. 1.--Vase with grey crackle and peony scrolls in blue and enamels. Ch’èng Hua mark. Height 16¼ inches. _British Museum._

Fig. 2.--Vase with turquoise ground and bands of floral pattern and winged dragons incised in outline and coloured green, yellow and aubergine. Height 22 inches. _S. E. Kennedy Collection._

Fig. 3.--Box with bands of _ju-i_ clouds and pierced floral scrolls; turquoise and yellow glazes in dark blue ground. Diameter 10 inches. _Grandidier Collection._]

[Illustration: Plate 65.--Ming _san ts’ai_ Porcelain.

Fig. 1.--Vase with winged dragons, _san ts’ai_ glazes on the biscuit, dark blue ground. Dedicatory inscription on the neck, including the words “Ming dynasty.” Cloisonné handles. Height 22¼ inches. _S. E. Kennedy Collection._

Fig. 2.--Figure of Kuan-yin, turquoise, green and aubergine glazes, dark blue rockwork. Fifteenth century. Height 28 inches. _Grandidier Collection._

Fig. 3.--Vase with lotus scrolls, transparent glazes in three colours. Late Ming. Height 20 inches. _Grandidier Collection._]

The following designs are enumerated and explained by Kao Chiang-ts’un in the valuable commentary which has already been mentioned:--

11. Wine cups with the design known as “the high-flaming candle lighting up red beauty,” explained as a beautiful damsel holding a candle to light up _hai-t’ang_ (cherry apple) blossoms.

12. Brocade heap pattern[65]; explained as “sprays of flowers and fruit massed (_tui_) on all sides.”[66]

13. Cups with swings, with dragon boats, with famous scholars and with children.

The swings, we are told, represent men and women[67] playing with swings (_ch’iu ch’ien_): the dragon boats represent the dragon boat races[68]; the famous scholar (_kao shih_) cups have on one side Chou Mao-shu, lover of the lotus, and on the other T’ao Yüan-ming sitting before a chrysanthemum plant; the children (_wa wa_) consist of five small children playing together.[69]

14. Cups with grape-vines on a trellis, fragrant plants, fish and weeds, gourds, aubergine fruit, the Eight Buddhist Emblems (_pa chi hsiang_), _yu po lo_ flowers, and Indian lotus (_hsi fan lien_) designs.

None of these need explanation except the Buddhist Emblems, which are described on p. 298, and the _yu po lo_, which is generally explained as a transcription of the Sanskrit _utpala_, “the dark blue lotus.”

Though the reader will probably not have the opportunity of identifying these designs on Ch’êng Hua porcelain, they will help him in the description of later wares on which these same motives not infrequently occur. The nine illustrations[70] of Ch’êng Hua porcelain in Hsiang’s Album, for the most part feebly drawn and badly coloured, form an absurd commentary on the glowing descriptions in the text. Their chief interest lies in their bearing on the question of polychrome painting. In some cases the designs have all the appearance of on-glaze enamels; in others they suggest transparent glazes or enamels on the biscuit. The colours used are green, yellow and aubergine brown, the _san ts’ai_ or “three colours,” notwithstanding which the decoration is classed under the general term _wu ts’ai_ (lit. five colours), or polychrome. The phrases used to describe the colouring include _wu ts’ai_, _fu sê_, _t’ien yu_, of which _fu sê_[71] means “applied colours,” which might equally suggest on-glaze enamels or on-biscuit colours, and _t’ien yu_[72] decidedly suggests on-biscuit colouring. On the other hand, in one case[73] we are expressly told that the “colour of the glaze is lustrous white and the painting _upon it_[74] consists of geese, etc.,” an unequivocal description of on-glaze painting.

Though the Ch’êng Hua mark is one of the commonest on Chinese porcelain, genuine examples of Ch’êng Hua porcelain are virtually unknown in Western collections. The Imperial wares of the period were rare and highly valued in China in the sixteenth century, and we can hardly hope to obtain them in Europe to-day; but there must be many survivors from the wares produced by the private kilns at the time, and possibly some few examples are awaiting identification in our collections. Unfortunately, the promiscuous use of the mark on later wares, the confused accounts of the blue in the “blue and white,” and the conflicting theories on the polychrome decoration, have all helped to render identifications difficult to make and easy to dispute. The covered cake box in the Bushell collection, figured by Cosmo Monkhouse[75] as a Ch’êng Hua specimen, is closely paralleled in make and style of decoration by a beaker-shaped brush pot in the Franks Collection.[76] Both are delicately pencilled in pale blue; both have a peculiar brown staining in parts of the glaze and a slight warp in the foot rim. In the British Museum piece, however, the foot rim is grooved at the sides to fit a wooden stand, a feature which was not usual before the K’ang Hsi period, and something in the style of the drawing is rather suggestive of Japanese work. There is, however, another specimen in the Franks Collection[77] which is certainly Chinese of the Ming dynasty, and possibly of the Ch’êng Hua period, of which it bears the mark. It is a vase of baluster form, thick and strongly built, with great weight of clay at the foot, and unfortunately, like so many of the early polychrome vases which have come from China in recent years, it is cut down at the neck. It has a greyish crackled glaze, painted with a floral scroll design, outlined in brown black pigment and washed in with leaf green, yellow, manganese purple and bluish green enamels, which are supplemented by a little underglaze blue, and the mark is in four characters in blue in a sunk panel under the base.

Though too clumsy to belong to any of the groups of Imperial wares described in the _Po wu yao lan_, this vase is certainly an old piece, and possibly the production of one of the private factories of the Ch’êng Hua period. In the Eumorfopoulos and Benson Collections[78] there are a few examples of these massive-footed vases, most of them unfortunately incomplete above, decorated in polychrome glazes with engraved or relief-edged designs, but not, as a rule, in on-glaze enamels. These are clearly among our earliest examples of polychrome porcelain, and we should expect to find here, if anywhere, specimens of the coloured porcelain of the fifteenth century. See Plate 64.

Though the fifteenth century was distinguished by two brilliant periods, there are considerable gaps in the ceramic annals of the time. The reign of the Emperor Chêng T’ung,[79] who succeeded to the throne in 1436, was troubled by wars, and in his first year the directorate of the Imperial factory was abolished; and, as soldiers had to be levied, relief was given by stopping the manufacture of porcelain for the palace. In 1449 this emperor was actually taken captive by the Mongols, and his brother, who took his place from 1450 to 1456 under the title of Ching T’ai,[80] reduced the customary supplies of palace wares in 1454 by one third. The reign of Ching T’ai is celebrated for cloisonné enamel on metal.

In 1457, when Chêng T’ung was released and returned to the throne under the title of T’ien Shun[81] (1457–1464), the Imperial factory was re-established, and the care of it again entrusted to a palace eunuch. There are no records, however, of the wares made in these periods, though we may assume that the private factories continued in operation even when work at the Imperial pottery was suspended. The directorship was again abolished in 1486, and porcelain is not mentioned in the official records until the end of the reign of Hung Chih[82] (1488–1505).

In Hsiang’s Album[83] we are told that the pale yellow of the Hung Chih period was highly prized, and that the polychrome wares vied with those of the reign of Ch’êng Hua. Four examples are given: an incense burner, a cup moulded in sunflower design, and a spirit jar (all yellow), besides a gourd-shaped wine pot with yellow ground and accessories in green and brown, apparently coloured glazes or enamels applied to the biscuit. The yellow glazes are described as pale yellow (_chiao_[84] _huang_), and likened to the colour of steamed chestnuts (_chêng li_[85]) or the sunflower (_k’uei hua_[86]).

The yellow colour is of old standing in Chinese ceramics. We have found it on T’ang pottery, in the _mi sê_ of the Sung period, in the blackish yellow of the Yüan ware made at Hu-t’ien, and in the early Ming porcelains. Peroxide of iron or antimony are the usual metallic bases of the colour, and it was used either in high-fired glazes or in enamels of the muffle stove. The yellow for which the Hung Chih period was noted was a yellow glaze, applied direct to the biscuit, or added as an overglaze to the ordinary white porcelain. When applied to the biscuit it assumes a fuller and browner tint than when backed by a white glaze. These yellow glazes often have a slightly mottled or stippled look, the colour appearing as minute particles of yellow held in suspension in the glaze.

Marked examples, purporting to be Hung Chih yellow, are occasionally seen, but the most convincing specimen is a saucer dish in the Victoria and Albert Museum, of good quality porcelain, with a soft rich yellow glaze and the Hung Chih mark under the base in blue. Part of its existence was spent in Persia, where it was inscribed in Arabic with the date 1021 A.H., which corresponds to 1611 A.D.

A beautiful seated figure of the goddess Kuan-yin in the Pierpont Morgan Collection, not unlike Plate 65, Fig. 2, but smaller, is decorated with yellow, green and aubergine glazes on the biscuit, and bears a date in the Hung Chih period which corresponds to 1502.

A dish of fine white porcelain with the Hung Chih mark is in the British Museum, and examples of the blue and white of the period may be seen in the celebrated Trenchard bowls. These last are the earliest known arrivals in the way of Chinese porcelain in this country, and they were given by Philip of Austria, King of Castile, to Sir Thomas Trenchard in 1506. One of them is illustrated in Gulland’s _Chinese Porcelain_,[87] with a description written by Mr. Winthrop after a personal inspection. The decoration consists of floral scrolls outside and a fish medallion surrounded by four fishes inside. The account of the colour, however, is not very flattering: “One of the bowls bore this decoration very distinctly traced in blackish cobalt, while the other bowl had a very washed-out and faded appearance.” The ware itself is described as “rather greyish.” Probably these bowls were made for the export trade, and need not necessarily be regarded as typical of the Hung Chih blue and white.

_Chêng Tê_ [chch 2] (1506–1521)

The reign of Chêng Tê, though not mentioned in the _Po wu yao lan_ and but briefly noticed in the _T’ao shuo_, must have been an important period in the history of Chinese porcelain. The _yü ch’i ch’ang_ (Imperial ware factory) was rebuilt[88] and the direct supervision of a palace eunuch renewed. The porcelain, we are told in the _T’ao lu_, was chiefly blue painted and polychrome, the finest being in the underglaze red known as _chi hung_. An important factor in the blue decoration was the arrival of fresh supplies of the Mohammedan blue.[89] The story is that the governor of Yunnan obtained a supply of this _hui ch’ing_ from a foreign country, and that it was used at first melted down with stone for making imitation jewels. It was worth twice its weight in gold. When, however, it was found that it would endure the heat of the kiln, orders were given for its use in porcelain decoration, and its colour was found to be “antique and splendid.” Hence the great esteem in which the blue and white of the period was held.[90] The merit of this new Mohammedan blue was its deep colour, and the choicest kind was known as “Buddha’s head blue” (_Fo t’ou ch’ing_). Its use at this period was not confined to the Imperial factory, for we read that the workmen stole it and sold it to the private manufacturers. In the following reign a method of weighing the material was instituted, which put an end to this pilfering.

Some account has already been given[91] of this material and its use in combination with the commoner native mineral blue. It was, no doubt, the blue used on Persian, Syrian and Egyptian pottery of the period exported by the Arab traders. One of the oldest routes[92] followed by Western traders with China was by river (probably the Irrawady) from the coast of Pegu, reaching Yung-ch’ang, in Yunnan, and so into China proper. This will explain the opportunities enjoyed by the viceroy of Yunnan. There were, of course, other lines of communication between China and Western Asia by sea and land, and a considerable interchange of ideas had passed between China and Persia for several centuries, so that reflex influences are traceable in the pottery of both countries. Painting in still black under a turquoise blue glaze is one of the oldest Persian methods of ceramic decoration, and we have seen that it was closely paralleled on the Tz’ŭ Chou wares (vol. i, p. 103).

It is related that a thousand Chinese artificers were transplanted to Persia by Hulagu Khan (1253–1264), and it is probable that they included potters. At any rate, the Chinese dragon and phœnix appear on the Persian lustred tiles of the fourteenth century. At a later date Shah Abbas (1585–1627) settled some Chinese potters in Ispahan. Meanwhile, quantities of Chinese porcelain had been traded in the Near East, where it was closely copied by the Persian, Syrian and Egyptian potters in the sixteenth century. The Persian pottery and soft porcelain of this time so closely imitates the Chinese blue and white that in some cases a very minute inspection is required to detect the difference, and nothing is commoner than to find Persian ware of this type straying into collections of Chinese porcelain.[93] Conversely, the Persian taste is strongly reflected in some of the Chinese decorations, not only where it is directly studied on the wares destined for export to Persia, but in the floral scrolls on the Imperial wares of the Ming period. The expressions _hui hui hua_ (Mohammedan ornament or flowers) and _hui hui wên_ (Mohammedan designs) occur in the descriptions of the porcelain forwarded to the palace, and there can be little doubt that they refer to floral arabesque designs in a broad sense, though it would, of course, be possible to narrow the meaning to the medallions of Arabic writing not infrequently seen on Chinese porcelain, which was apparently made for the use of some of the numerous Mohammedans in China.

An interesting series of this last-mentioned type is exhibited in the British Museum along with a number of bronzes similarly ornamented. Many of these are of early date, and five of the porcelains bear the Chêng Tê mark and unquestionably belong to that period. These comprise a pair of vases with spherical tops which are hollow and pierced with five holes, in form resembling the peculiar Chinese hat stands; the lower part of a cut-down vase, square in form; an ink slab with cover, and a brush rest in the form of a conventional range of hills. The body in each case is a beautiful white material, though thickly constructed, and the glaze, which is thick and of a faint greenish tinge, has in three of these five pieces been affected by some accident of the firing, which has left its surface dull and shrivelled in places like wrinkled skin.[94] The designs are similar throughout--medallions with Arabic writing surrounded by formal lotus scrolls or cloud-scroll designs, strongly outlined and filled in with thin uneven washes of a beautiful soft Mohammedan blue. The glaze being thick and bubbly gives the brush strokes a hazy outline, and the blue shows that tendency to run in the firing which we are told was a peculiarity of the Mohammedan blue if not sufficiently diluted with the native mineral cobalt. The inscriptions are mainly pious Moslem texts, but on the cover of the ink slab is the appropriate legend, “Strive for excellence in penmanship, for it is one of the keys of livelihood,” and on the brush rest is the Persian word _Khāma-dān_ (pen rest). In the same case are three cylindrical vases, apparently brush pots, decorated in the same style but unmarked. One has dark Mohammedan blue and probably belongs to the next reign. The other two, I venture to think, are earlier. They are both of the same type of ware, a fine white material, which takes a brownish red tinge in the exposed parts, and the glaze, which is thick and of a soft greenish tint, has a tendency to scale off at the edges. The bases are unglazed and show the marks of a circular support. The larger piece is remarkably thick in the wall, and has a light but vivid blue of the Mohammedan sort; the smaller piece is not quite so stoutly proportioned, but the blue is peculiarly soft, deep, and beautiful, though it has run badly into the glaze, and where it has run it has changed to a dark indigo.[95] One would say that this is the Mohammedan blue, almost pure; and if, as I have suggested, these two specimens are earlier types, they can only belong to the Hsüan Tê period.

Another blue and white example with Chêng Tê mark in the British Museum is of thinner make and finer grain; but, as it is a saucer-dish, this refinement was only to be expected. It is painted in a fine bold style, worthy of the best Ming traditions, with dragons in lotus scrolls, but the blue is duller and greyer in tone than on the pieces just described.

Two specimens of Chêng Tê ware are figured in Hsiang’s Album,[96] one a tripod libation cup of bronze form and the other a lamp supported by a tortoise, and the glaze of both is “deep yellow, like steamed chestnuts.”

[Illustration: Plate 66.--Porcelain with Chêng Tê mark.

Fig. 1.--Slop Bowl with full-face dragons holding _shou_ characters, in underglaze blue in a yellow enamel ground. Height 3½ inches. _British Museum._

Fig. 2.--Vase with engraved cloud designs in transparent coloured glazes on the biscuit, green ground. Height 8⅛ inches. _Charteris Collection._]

[Illustration: Plate 67.--Blue and White Porcelain. Sixteenth Century.

Fig. 1.--Bowl with Hsüan Tê mark. Diameter 4 inches. _Dresden Collection._

Fig. 2.--Covered Bowl with fish design. _Dresden Collection._

Fig. 3.--Bottle, peasant on an ox. Height 8½ inches. _Eumorfopoulos Collection._

Fig. 4.--Bottle with lotus scrolls in mottled blue. Height 9 inches. _Alexander Collection._]

The Chêng Tê mark is far from common, but it occurs persistently on certain types of polychrome porcelain. One is a saucer-dish with carved dragon designs under a white glaze, the depressions of the carving and a few surrounding details being washed over with light green enamel. The design consists of a circular medallion in the centre enclosing a dragon among clouds, and two dragons on the outside, the space between them faintly etched with sea waves. The ware is usually thin and refined. These dishes are not uncommon, and it is difficult to imagine that they can all belong to such an early period. On the other hand, one also meets with copies of the same design with the Ch’ien Lung mark (1736–1795), which display unmistakable difference in quality. Another type has the same green dragon design with engraved outlines set in a yellow ground, and in most cases its antiquity is open to the same doubts. It is certain, however, that these pieces represent a style which was in vogue in the Chêng Tê period. A small vase of this kind was the only piece with the Chêng Tê mark in the exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910,[97] and it had the appearance of a Ming specimen. A good example of this Chêng Tê polychrome belonging to the Hon. Evan Charteris is illustrated in Fig. 2 of Plate 66. It has the designs etched in outline, filled in with transparent green, yellow and aubergine glazes, the three colours or _san ts’ai_ of the Chinese; and the Chêng Tê mark is seen on the neck.[98] And a square bowl in the British Museum, similar in body and glaze to the blue and white specimens with Arabic inscriptions, is painted in fine blue on the exterior with dragons holding _Shou_ (longevity) characters in their claws, the background filled in with a rich transparent yellow enamel. This piece (Plate 66, Fig. 1) has the mark of Chêng Tê in four characters painted in Mohammedan blue, and is clearly a genuine specimen.

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