CHAPTER IX

K’ANG HSI BLUE AND WHITE

Western collectors have agreed to give the place of honour to the K’ang Hsi blue and white. The Ming wares of the same kind, mainly from lack of adequate representation, have not yet been fully appreciated; and in the post-K’ang Hsi periods the blue and white took an inferior status, owing to the growing popularity of enamelled wares. The peculiar virtues of the K’ang Hsi blue and white are due to simple causes. Blue was still regarded as the best medium for painted designs, and the demand for it, both in China and abroad, was enormous. The body material was formed of carefully selected clay and stone, thoroughly levigated and freed from all impurities. No pains were spared in the preparation of the blue, which was refined over and over again until the very quintessence had been extracted from the cobaltiferous ore. Naturally this process was costly, and the finest cobalt was never used quite pure; even on the most expensive wares it was blended with a proportion of the lower grades of the mineral, and this proportion was increased according to the intended quality of the porcelain. But the choicest blue and white of this period was unsurpassed in the purity and perfection of the porcelain, in the depth and lustre of the blue, and in the subtle harmony between the colour and the white porcelain background; and the high standard thus established served to raise the quality of the manufacture in general.

Vast quantities of this blue and white were shipped to Europe by the Dutch and the other East India companies, who sent extensive orders to Ching-tê Chên. It need hardly be said that this export porcelain varied widely in quality, but it included at this time wares of the highest class. Indeed, in looking through our large collections there are surprisingly few examples of the choice K’ang Hsi blue and white which cannot be included in the export class, as indicated by the half-Europeanised forms of plates, jugs, tankards, and other vessels, and by the fact that the vases are made in sets of five. But considering that it was made to suit purchasers of such varied tastes and means, it is surprising how little of this K’ang Hsi porcelain is bad. Even the roughest specimens have a style and a quality not found on later wares, and all have an unquestionable value as decoration.

It would be futile to attempt to describe exhaustively the different kinds of K’ang Hsi blue and white and the innumerable patterns with which they are decorated. We must confine our descriptions to a few type specimens, but first it will be useful to give the points of a choice example. Such a vessel, whatever its nature, will be potted with perfect skill, its form well proportioned and true. The surface will be smooth, because the material is thoroughly refined and the piece has been carefully trimmed or finished on the lathe, and finally all remaining inequalities have been smoothed away with a moist feather brush before the glazing. The ware will be clean and white, and the glaze[276] pure, limpid, and lustrous, but with that faint suspicion of green which is rarely absent from Chinese porcelain. The general effect of the body and glaze combined is a solid white like well set curds. The base, to which the connoisseur looks for guidance, is deeply cut and washed in the centre with glaze which reaches about half-way down the sides of the foot rim. This patch of glaze is usually pinholed, as though the nemesis of absolute perfection had to be placated by a few flaws in this inconspicuous part. The rim itself is carefully trimmed, and in many cases grooved or beaded, as though to fit a wooden stand,[277] and the unglazed edge reveals a smooth, close-grained biscuit whose fine white material is often superficially tinged with brown in the heat of the furnace. The decoration is carefully painted in a pure sapphire blue of great depth and fire, and singularly free from any strain of red or purple--a quality of blue only obtained by the most elaborate process of refining. The designs, as on the Ming porcelains, are first drawn in outline; but, unlike the strong Ming outlines, these are so faint as to be practically unobserved; and the colour is filled in, not in flat washes, as on the Ming blue and white, but in graded depths of pulsating blue. This procedure is clearly shown by two interesting bowls in the British Museum. They are identical in form and were intended to match in pattern; but in one the design (the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup) is completed, while on the other it remains in outline only, giving us a wonderful illustration of the beautiful firm touch with which the artists traced these faint outlines. The work of decoration was systematically subdivided in the Chinese factory, and Père d’Entrecolles tells us that “one workman is solely occupied with the ring which one sees on the border of the ware; another outlines the flowers, which a third paints; one does the water and the mountains, another the birds and animals.”[278] Whatever the advantages and disadvantages of this divided labour, the designs on the blue and white were admirably chosen to show off the fine qualities of the colour; and it is to the blue that the collector looks first. The distinction between the various qualities of blue hardly admit of verbal definition. It can only be learnt by comparing the actual specimens, and by training the eye to distinguish the best from the second best.

The patterns are not always blue on a white ground. Many of the most beautiful results were obtained by reserving the design in white in a blue ground, and both styles are often combined on the same piece. The second is fairly common on the K’ang Hsi porcelains, being specially suited to the lambrequins, arabesques, and formal patterns which were a favourite decoration at this time. See Plates 89 and 91.

[Illustration: PLATE 89

Three examples of K’ang Hsi Blue and White Porcelain in the British Museum

Fig. 1.--Ewer with leaf-shaped panels of floral arabesques, white in blue, enclosed by a mosaic pattern in blue and white: stiff plantain leaves on the neck and cover. Silver mount with thumb-piece. Height 7⅛ inches.

Fig. 2.--Deep bowl with cover, painted with “tiger-lily” scrolls. Mark, a leaf. Height 7½ inches.

Fig. 3.--Sprinkler with panels of lotus arabesques, white in blue, and _ju-i_ shaped border patterns. A diaper of small blossoms on the neck. Mark, a leaf. Height 7⅛ inches.]

The choicest materials were lavished on the porcelains with these formal designs, which consisted now of bands of _ju-i_ shaped lappets[279] filled with arabesque foliage, forming an upper and lower border, between which are floral sprays, now of a belt of three or four palmette-like designs, similarly ornamented, and linked together round the centre of a vase or bottle; of large, stiff, leaf-shaped medallions borrowed, like the patterns which fill them, from ancient bronzes, and of ogre-head designs from a similar source; of successive belts of arabesque scrolls and dragon designs covering cylindrical jars; of a mosaic of small blossoms, or of network diapers recalling the pattern of a crackled porcelain. The white on blue process is constant in a well known decoration in which archaic dragons, floral arabesques, roses or peonies are arranged in “admired disorder” over the whole surface of a cylinder vase or a triple gourd, as on Plate 91. Sometimes the roses occupy the greater part of the design, and among them are small oval or round blank medallions, which have earned for the pattern the name of “rose and ticket.”

This type of ware is represented in almost every variety in the Dresden collection, and there are examples of the “rose and ticket” jars in the _Porzellan-zimmer_ of the Charlottenburg Palace. Both these collections are mainly composed of the export porcelain sent from China in the last decades of the seventeenth century, and the latter is practically limited to the presents made by the English East India Company to Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia (1688–1705). The white on blue patterns are also freely used in combination with blue and white to form borders and to fill in the ground between panels.

As for the blue on white designs, they are legion. There are the old Ming favourites such as the Court scenes, historical and mythological subjects, pictorial designs, such as ladies looking at the garden flowers by candlelight.[280] There are landscapes after Sung and Ming paintings, the usual dragon and phœnix patterns, animal, bird, and fish designs, lions and mythical creatures, the familiar group of a bird (either a phœnix or a golden pheasant) on a rock beside which are peony, magnolia, and other flowering plants. Panel decoration, too, is frequent, the panels sometimes petal-shaped and emphasised by lightly moulded outlines, or again mirror-shaped, circular, fan-shaped, leaf-shaped, oval, square, etc., and surrounded by diapers and “white in blue” designs. The reserves are suitably filled with figure subjects from romance, history, or family life, mythical subjects such as the adventures of Taoist sages, the story of Wang Chi watching the game of chess, Tung-fang So and his peaches, or, if numerical sequences are needed, with the Four Accomplishments (painting, calligraphy, music and chess), the flowers of the Four Seasons, the Eight Taoist Immortals, the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup, etc. Another favourite panel design is a group of vases, furniture, and symbolical objects from the comprehensive series known as the Hundred Antiques.[281] Sometimes the whole surface of a vase is divided into rows of petal-shaped compartments filled with floral designs, figure subjects, birds and flowers or landscapes. Plate 91, Fig. 3, from a set of five, is one of the large vases in the Dresden collection which, tradition says, were obtained by Augustus the Strong from the King of Prussia in exchange for a regiment of dragoons. It is decorated with panels illustrating the stories of the Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety.

Some of the purely floral patterns strike perhaps a more distinctive note. The “aster pattern,” for instance, is a design of stiff, radiating, aster-like flowers usually in a dark tone of blue and displayed on saucer dishes or deep covered bowls. Some of the specimens of this class appear to be a little earlier than K’ang Hsi. The so-called “tiger-lily” pattern illustrated by Fig. 2 of Plate 89 is usually associated with deep cylindrical covered bowls of fine material and painted in the choicest blue. A beaker (Plate 91, Fig. 2) shows a characteristic treatment of the magnolia, parts of the blossoms being lightly sculptured in relief and the white petals set off by a foil of blue clouding. It evidently belongs to a set of five (three covered jars and two beakers) made as a _garniture de cheminée_ for the European market.

The squat-bodied bottle (Plate 92, Fig. 1) illustrates a familiar treatment of the lotus design, with a large blossom filling the front of the body.

But perhaps the noblest of all Chinese blue and white patterns is the prunus design (often miscalled hawthorn) illustrated by Plate 90, a covered vase once in the Orrock Collection and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The form is that of the well-known ginger jar, but these lovely specimens were intended for no banal uses. They were filled with fragrant tea or some other suitable gift, and sent, like the round cake boxes, by the Chinese to their friends at the New Year, but it was not intended that the jars or boxes should be kept by the recipients of the compliment.

The New Year falls in China from three to seven weeks later than in our calendar, and it was seasonable to decorate these jars with sprays and petals of the flowering prunus fallen on the ice, which was already cracked and about to dissolve. The design is symbolic of the passing of winter and the coming of spring; and the vibrating depths of the pure sapphire blue broken by a network of lines simulating ice cracks form a lovely setting for the graceful prunus sprays reserved in the pure curd-like white of the ware.

The prunus pattern has been applied to every conceivable form, whether to cover the whole surface or to serve as secondary ornament in the border of a design or on the rim of a plate, and the prunus jar appears in all qualities of blue and on porcelain good and bad, old and new. The graceful sprays have become stereotyped and the whole design vulgarised in many instances; and in some cases the blossoms are distributed symmetrically on a marbled blue ground as a mere pattern. But nothing can stale the beauty of the choice K’ang Hsi originals, on which the finest materials and the purest, deepest blue were lavished. The amateur should find no difficulty in distinguishing these from their decadent descendants. The freshness of the drawing, the pure quality of the blue, and the excellence of body, glaze, and potting are unmistakable. The old examples have the low rim round the mouth unglazed where the rounded cap-shaped cover fitted, and the design on the shoulders is finished off with a narrow border of dentate pattern. The original covers are extremely rare, and in most cases have been replaced with later substitutes in porcelain or carved wood.

There are, besides, a number of types specially prevalent among the export porcelains, some purely Chinese in origin, others showing European influence. Take, for example, the well-known saucer dish with mounted figures of a man and a woman hunting a hare--a subject usually known as the “love chase”--a free and spirited design, rather sketchily painted in pale silvery blue. The porcelain itself is scarcely less characteristic, a thin, crisp ware, often moulded on the sides with petal-shaped compartments, and in many ways recalling the earlier type described on p. 70. It is, however, distinguished from the latter class by slight differences in tone and finish which can only be learnt by comparison of actual specimens. It is, moreover, almost always marked with a _nien hao_ in six characters, whereas marks on the other type are virtually unknown. The _nien hao_ is usually that of Ch’êng Hua, but an occasional example with the K’ang Hsi mark gives the true date of the ware.

A quantity of this porcelain was brought up by divers from wrecks of old East Indiamen in Table Bay, among which was the _Haarlem_, lost in 1648,[282] though most of the ships were wrecked at later dates. It is a thin and sharply moulded ware, often pure eggshell, and the blue varies from the pale silvery tint to vivid sapphire. The usual forms are of a utilitarian kind--plates, saucer dishes, cups and saucers, small vases and bottles, jugs, tankards, and the like--and the designs are not confined to the “love chase,” but include other figure subjects (e.g. a warrior on horseback carrying off a lady,[283] and various scenes from romance and family life), floral designs, deer, phœnixes, fish, birds, etc., and perhaps most often the tall female figures, standing beside flowering shrubs or pots of flowers, which are vulgarly known as “long Elizas,” after the Dutch _lange lijsen_ (see Plate 92, Fig. 2).

Graceful ladies (_mei jên_) are familiar motives in Chinese decoration, but this particular type, usually consisting of isolated figures in small panels or separated from each other by a shrub or flowerpot, and standing in a stereotyped pose, are, I think,[284] peculiar to the export wares of the last half of the seventeenth century.

This same type of thin, crisply moulded porcelain was also painted with similar designs in _famille verte_ enamels over the glaze. It has a great variety of marks, the commonest being the apocryphal Ch’êng Hua date-mark, while others are marks of commendation,[285] such as _ch’i chên ju yü_ (a rare gem like jade), _yü_ (jade), _ya_ (elegant), and various hall-marks.

[Illustration: PLATE 90

Covered Jar for New Year gifts, with design of blossoming prunus (_mei hua_) sprays in a ground of deep sapphire blue, which is reticulated with lines suggesting ice cracks: dentate border on the shoulders

Height 10 inches. _Victoria and Albert Museum._]

Yet another group of superior quality is obviously connected with the European trade by a peculiar mark (see vol. i., p. 228) resembling the letter C or G. It is most commonly represented by pairs of bottles with globular body and tall, tapering neck, decorated with flowing scrolls of curious rosette-like flowers, a design stated with much probability to have been copied from Dutch delft. As the Dutch design in question had evidently been based on a Chinese original, the peculiar nature of the flowers explains itself. There are other instances of patterns bandied in this way between the Far East and the West. The same peculiar floral scroll appears in _famille verte_ associated with the same mark; and the same G mark occurs on two rare bottles in the collection of Mr. J. C. J. Drucker, which have blue and white painting on the neck and _famille verte_ designs in the finest enamels on the body. A deep bowl in the Eumorfopoulos collection with _famille verte_ panels of symbols from the Hundred Antiques, and a ground of green “prunus” pattern, bears the same mark. Neither of these last examples can be even remotely connected with Dutch influence, so that we may dismiss the suggestion that the letter in the mark is intended to be a D, standing for D(elft), for this reason quite apart from the fact that such a mark on Delft ware is non-existent. I imagine that the true explanation is that this peculiar mark is a merchant’s sign placed by order on the goods made for some particular trader.

A close copy of the “wing handles” of Venetian glass on certain blue and white bottles (Plate 92, Fig. 3), the appearance of Prince of Wales’s feathers in the border of a plate and of an heraldic eagle in the well of a salt cellar, no less than many forms obviously Western in origin, further emphasise the close relations between the Ching-tê Chên potters and European traders.[286] An immense quantity of indifferent blue and white was made for the European table services, and summarily decorated with baskets of flowers, the usual flowering plant designs, close patterns of small blossoms, floral scrolls with large, meaningless flowers, ivy scrolls, passion flowers, and numerous stereotyped designs, such as dragons in sea waves, prunus pattern borders, pine tree and stork, a garden fence with rockery and flowering shrubs, groups from the Hundred Antiques, a parrot on a tree stump, etc. The blue of these pieces is usually rather dull and heavy, but the ware has the characteristic appearance of K’ang Hsi porcelain, and was evidently made for the most part about the year 1700. If marked at all, the marks are usually symbols, such as the double fish, the lozenge, the leaf, a tripod vase, and a strange form of the character _shou_ known as the “spider mark” (see vol. i., p. 225). The plates are often edged with lustrous brown glaze to prevent that chipping and scaling to which the Chinese glaze was specially liable on projecting parts of the ware.[287]

Something has already been said[288] of another very distinctive class of blue and white for which the misleading name of “soft paste” has been widely adopted. The term is of American origin and has been too readily accepted, for it is not only inaccurate as a description, but is already current in Europe for a totally different ware, which it describes with greater exactitude, viz. the artificial, glassy porcelains made at Sèvres and Chelsea and other factories, chiefly in France and England, in the middle of the eighteenth century. In actual fact the Chinese ware to which the term “soft paste” is applied has an intensely hard body. The glaze, however, which is softer than that of the ordinary porcelain, contains a proportion of lead, and if not actually crackled from the first becomes so in use, the crackle lines being usually irregular and undecided.

A detailed description of the manufacture of this ware is given by Père d’Entrecolles,[289] though he is probably at fault in supposing that its chief ingredient was a recent discovery in 1722. It was made, he says, with a mineral called _hua shih_ (in place of kaolin), a stone of glutinous and soapy nature, and almost certainly corresponding to the steatite or “soapy rock” which was used by the old English porcelain makers at Bristol, Worcester and Liverpool. “The porcelain made with _hua shih_,” to quote Père d’Entrecolles, “is rare and far more expensive than the other porcelain. It has an extremely fine grain; and for purposes of painting, when compared with ordinary porcelain, it is almost as vellum to paper. Moreover, this ware is surprisingly light to anyone accustomed to handle the other kinds; it is also far more fragile than the ordinary, and there is difficulty in finding the exact temperature for its firing. Some of the potters do not use _hua shih_ for the body of the ware, but content themselves with making a diluted slip into which they dip their porcelain when dry, so as to give it a coating of soapstone before it is painted and glazed. By this means it acquires a certain degree of beauty.” The preparation of the _hua shih_ is also described, but it is much the same as that of the kaolin, and the composition of the steatitic body is given as eight parts of _hua shih_ to two of porcelain stone (_petuntse_).

There are, then, two kinds of steatitic porcelain, one with the body actually composed of _hua shih_ and the other with a mere surface dressing of this material. The former is light to handle, and opaque; and the body has a dry, earthy appearance, though it is of fine grain and unctuous to touch. It is variously named by the Chinese[290] _sha-t’ai_ (sand bodied) and _chiang-t’ai_ (paste bodied), and when the glaze is crackled it is further described as _k’ai pien_ (crackled).

The painting on the steatitic porcelain differs in style from that of the ordinary blue and white of this period. It is executed with delicate touches like miniature painting, and every stroke of the brush tells, the effects being produced by fine lines rather than by graded washes. The ware, being costly to make, is usually painted by skilful artists and in the finest blue. Fig. 3, of Plate 93, is an excellent example of the pure steatitic ware, an incense bowl in the Franks collection, of which the base and a large part of the interior is unglazed and affords a good opportunity for the study of the body material. The glaze is thin and faintly crackled, and the design--Hsi Wang Mu and the Taoist Immortals--is delicately drawn in light, clear blue.

The second type, which has only a dressing of steatite over the ordinary body, has neither the same lightness nor the opacity of the true steatitic ware, but it has the same soft white surface, and is painted in the same style of line drawing.

There are, besides, other opaque and crackled wares painted in underglaze blue, which are also described as “soft paste,” and, indeed, deserve the name far more than the steatitic porcelain. The creamy, crackled copies of old Ting wares, for instance, made with _ch’ing tien_ stone,[291] are occasionally enriched with blue designs; and the ordinary stone-coloured crackle with buff staining is also painted at times with underglaze blue,[292] or with blue designs on pads of white clay in a crackled ground.

On the other hand, there are numerous wares of the Yung Chêng and Ch’ien Lung periods which are probably composed in part, at least, of steatite. They are usually opaque, and the surface is sometimes dead white, sometimes creamy and often undulating like orange peel, and in addition to blue decoration, enamel painting is not infrequent on these later types. The purely steatitic porcelains are generally of small size, which was appropriate to the style of painting as well as to the expensive nature of the material. The furniture of the scholar’s table, with its tiny flower vases for a single blossom, its brush washers and water vessels of fanciful forms, its pigment boxes, etc., were suitable objects for the material, and many of these little crackled porcelains are veritable gems. Snuff bottles are another appropriate article, and a representative collection of snuff bottles will show better than anything the great variety of these mixed wares and so-called “soft pastes.”

It has been already observed that crackled blue and white porcelain of the steatitic kind is found with the date marks of Ming Emperors, and there can be little doubt that it was made from early Ming times, but as the style of painting seems to have known no change it will be always difficult to distinguish the early specimens. It is safe to assume that almost all the specimens in Western collections belong to the Ch’ing dynasty, a few to the K’ang Hsi period, but the bulk of the better examples to the reigns of Yung Chêng and Ch’ien Lung. Modern copies of the older wares also abound.

[Illustration: Plate 91.--Blue and White K’ang Hsi Porcelain.

Fig. 1.--Triple Gourd Vase, white in blue designs of archaic dragons and scrolls of season flowers. Height 36½ inches. _Dresden Collection._

Fig. 2.--Beaker, white magnolia design slightly raised, with blue background. Height 18 inches. _British Museum._

Fig. 3.--“Grenadier Vase,” panels with the Paragons of Filial Piety. Height 44 inches. _Dresden Collection._]

[Illustration: Plate 92.--Blue and White K’ang Hsi Porcelain.

Fig. 1.--Sprinkler with lotus design. Height 6¼ inches. _British Museum._

Fig. 2.--Bottle with biscuit handles, design of graceful ladies (_mei jen_). Height 11 inches. _Fitzwilliam Museum (formerly D. G. Rosetti Collection)_.

Fig. 3.--Bottle with handles copied from Venetian glass. Height 6¼ inches. _British Museum._]

[Illustration: Plate 93.--Blue and White Porcelain.

Fig. 1.--Tazza with Sanskrit characters. Ch’ien Lung mark. Height 4¼ inches. _British Museum._

Fig. 2.--Water Pot, butterfly and flowers, steatitic porcelain. Wan Li mark. Height 1⅞ inches. _Eumorfopoulos Collection._

Fig. 3.--Bowl, steatitic porcelain. Immortals on a log raft. K’ang Hsi period. Diameter 5¾ inches. _British Museum._]

[Illustration: Plate 94.--Porcelain decorated in enamels on the biscuit.

Fig. 1.--Ewer in form of the character _Shou_ (Longevity); blue and white panel with figure designs. Early K’ang Hsi period. Height 8¾ inches. _Salting Collection._

Fig. 2.--Ink Palette, dated 31st year of K’ang Hsi (1692 A.D.). Length 5¼ inches. _British Museum._]

An interesting passage in the first letter[293] of Père d’Entrecolles describes a curious kind of porcelain, of which the secret had already been lost. It was known as _chia ch’ing_ or “blue put in press,” and it was said that the blue designs on the cups so treated were only visible when the vessel was filled with water. The method of the manufacture is described as follows: “The porcelain to be so decorated had to be very thin; when it was dry, a rather strong blue was applied, not to the exterior in the usual manner, but on the interior to the sides. The design usually consisted of fish, as being specially appropriate to appear when the cup was filled with water. When the colour was dry a light coating of slip, made with the body material, was applied, and this coating enclosed the blue between two layers of clay. When this coating was dry, glaze was sprinkled inside the cup, and shortly afterwards the porcelain was placed on the wheel. As the body had been strengthened on the interior, the potter proceeded to pare it down outside as fine as possible without actually penetrating to the colour. The exterior was then glazed by immersion. When completely dry it was fired in the ordinary furnace. The work is extremely delicate, and requires a dexterity which the Chinese seem no longer to possess. Still, they try from time to time to recover the secret of this magical painting, but without success. One of them told me recently that he had made a fresh attempt, and had almost succeeded.”

No example of this mysterious porcelain is known to exist, and it is probable that the whole story is based on some ill-grounded tradition. It is true that water will bring out the faded design on certain old potteries, but this is due to the action of the water in restoring transparency to a soft decayed glaze. But how the water or any other liquid could affect the transparency of a hard, impenetrable porcelain glaze, still less influence the colour concealed beneath a layer of clay and glaze, is far from clear. Indeed, the whole story savours of the “tall tales” quoted in chap. x. of vol. i.

But perhaps it will not be inappropriate to mention here another peculiar type of blue and white, which, if we may judge by the early date mark usually placed upon it, throws back to some older model. The design, usually a dragon, is delicately traced with a needle point on the body of the ware, and a little cobalt blue is dusted into the incisions.[294] The glaze is then applied, and when the piece is fired and finished the dragon design appears faintly “tattooed” in pale blue. The effect is light and delicate, but of small decorative value, and the few examples which I have seen are redeemed from insignificance by a peculiarly beautiful body of pure glassy porcelain. They bear an apocryphal Ch’êng Hua mark, but evidently belong to the first half of the eighteenth century, to the Yung Chêng, or perhaps the late K’ang Hsi period.

##