Transcriber's Notes:
1. Items marked wth an asterisk (*): Pieces mentioned here from the British Museum collection.
2. The items marked with two asterisks (**) are stated to have been copied from old specimens in the palace collections.]

CHINESE POTTERY AND PORCELAIN

This Edition is limited to 1500
copies, of which this is
No. 669

Covered Jar or Potiche, painted with coloured enamels on the biscuit. Eight petal-shaped panels with flowering plants, birds and insects on the sides; with a band of smaller petals below enclosing lotus flowers, and borders of red wave pattern and floral sprays. Base unglazed. Early part of the K’ang Hsi period (1662–1722)

Height 25 inches.

British Museum.

Chinese Pottery
and Porcelain

AN ACCOUNT OF THE POTTER’S ART IN CHINA
FROM PRIMITIVE TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY

BY

R. L. HOBSON, B.A.

Assistant in the Department of British and Mediæval Antiquities and
Ethnography, British Museum. Author of the “Catalogne of the
Collection of English Pottery in the Department of British
and Mediæval Antiquities of the British Museum”;
“Porcelain: Oriental, Continental, and British”;
“Worcester Porcelain”; etc; and Joint Author
of “Marks on Pottery.”

Forty Plates, in Colour and Ninety-six in Black and White

VOL. II

Ming and Ch’ing Porcelain

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1915

CONTENTS

LIST OF PLATES

CHINESE POTTERY AND PORCELAIN

CHAPTER I
THE MING

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

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

(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.

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.

CHAPTER II
HSÜAN TÊ

(1426–1435)

In this short reign, which Chinese writers regard as the most brilliant period of their porcelain industry, the number of kilns occupied with the Imperial orders had increased to fifty-eight, the majority of them being outside the Imperial factory and distributed among the private factories. According to the T’ao lu,[16] the clay used at this time was red and the ware like cinnabar, a statement which is difficult to reconcile with the glowing description of the jade-like white altar cups and other exquisite objects for which the reign was celebrated. It is, of course, possible that a dark coloured body was employed in some of the wares, as was done at other periods, or it may be that the words are hyperbolically used to describe a porcelain of which the exposed parts of the body assumed a red colour in the firing. This latter peculiarity is noticeable on specimens of later Ming porcelain, particularly the blue and white of the Chia Ching period. But in any case a red biscuit cannot have been invariable or even characteristic of the period, for no mention is made of such a feature in the Po wu yao lan, which gives by far the fullest account of the Hsüan Tê porcelain.

The description in the Po wu yao lan,[17] which seems to have been generally accepted, and certainly was largely borrowed by subsequent Chinese works, may be freely rendered as follows:

“Among the wares of the Hsüan Tê period there are stem-cups[18] decorated with red fish. For these they used a powder made of red precious stones from the West to paint the fish forms, and from the body there rose up in relief in the firing the precious brilliance of the fresh red ravishing the eye. The brown and blackish colours which resulted from imperfect firing of the red are inferior. There were also blue decorated wares, such as stem-cups with dragon pine and plum designs, wine stem-cups with figure subjects[19] and lotus designs, small cinnabar pots and large bowls in colour red like the sun, but with white mouth rim, pickle pots and small pots with basket covers and handles in the form of bamboo joints, all of which things were unknown in ancient times. Again, there were beautiful objects of a useful kind, all small and cleverly made with finely and accurately drawn designs. The incense vases, trays and dishes[20] were made in large numbers, and belong to a common class. The flat-sided jars with basket covers, and the ornamented round pots with flanged[21] mouth for preserving honey, are very beautiful and mostly decorated in colours (wu ts’ai). The white cups, which have the character t’an (altar) engraved inside the bowl, are what are known as 'altar cups.’ The material of these things is refined and the ware thick, and the form beautiful enough to be used as elegant vases in the true scholar’s room. There are besides white cups for tea with rounded body,[22] convex[23] base, thread-like foot, bright and lustrous like jade, and with very finely engraved[24] dragon and phœnix designs which are scarcely inferior to the altar cups. At the bottom the characters ta ming hsüan tê nien chih[25] are secretly engraved in the paste, and the texture of the glaze is uneven, like orange peel.[26] How can even Ting porcelain compare with these? Truly they are the most excellent porcelains of this reign, and unfortunately there have not been many to be seen since then. Again, there are the beautiful barrel-shaped seats, some with openwork ground, the designs filled in with colours (wu ts’ai), gorgeous as cloud brocades, others with solid ground filled in with colours in engraved floral designs, so beautiful and brilliant as to dazzle the eye; both sorts have a deep green (ch’ing) background. Others have blue (lan) ground, filled in with designs in colours (wu ts’ai), like ornament carved in cobalt blue (shih ch’ing, lit. stone blue). There is also blue decoration on a white ground and crackled grounds like ice. The form and ornament of these various types do not seem to have been known before this period.”

Plate 60.—Reputed Hsüan Tê Porcelain.

Fig. 1.—Flask with blue decoration, reputed to be Hsüan Tê period. Height 3¼ inches. British Museum.

Fig. 2.—Brush Rest. (?) Chang Ch’ien on a log raft; partly biscuit. Inscribed with a stanza of verse and the Hsüan Tê mark. Length 6 inches.

Grandidier Collection.

Plate 61.—Porcelain with san ts’ai glazes on the biscuit.

Fig. 1.—Wine Jar with pierced casing, the Taoist Immortals paying court to the God of Longevity, turquoise blue ground. Fifteenth century. Height 11½ inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Fig. 2.—Screen with design in relief, horsemen on a mountain path, dark blue ground. About 1500. Height 14 inches. Benson Collection.

It will be seen from the above that the Hsüan Tê porcelains included a fine white, blue and white and polychrome painted wares, underglaze red painted wares, and crackle. The last mentioned is further specified in the Ch’ing pi tsang as having “eel’s blood lines,”[27] and almost rivalling the Kuan and Ju wares. The ware was thick and strong, and the glaze had the peculiar undulating appearance (variously compared to chicken skin, orange peel, millet grains, or a wind ruffled surface) which was deliberately produced on the eighteenth century porcelains.

Another surface peculiarity shared by the Hsüan Tê and Yung Lo wares was “palm eye” (tsung yen) markings, which Bushell explains as holes in the glaze due to air bubbles. It is hard to see how these can have been other than a defect. Probably both these and the orange peel effects were purely fortuitous at this time.

Of the various types which we have enumerated, the white wares need little comment. The glaze was no doubt thick and lustrous like mutton fat jade, and though Hsiang in his Album usually describes the white of his examples as “white like driven snow,” it is worthy of note that in good imitations of the ware particular care seems to have been given to impart a distinct greenish tint to the glaze.

The honours of the period appear to have been shared by the “blue and white” and red painted wares. Out of twenty examples illustrated in Hsiang’s Album, no fewer than twelve are decorated chiefly in red, either covering the whole or a large part of the surface or painted in designs, among which three fishes occur with monotonous frequency. The red in every case is called chi hung, and it is usually qualified by the illuminating comparison with “ape’s blood,” and in one case it is even redder than that!

The expression chi hung has evidently been handed down by oral traditions, for there is no sort of agreement among Chinese writers on the form of the first character. The T’ao lu uses the character

, which means “sacrificial,” and Bushell[28] explains this “as the colour of the sacrificial cups which were employed by the Emperor in the worship of the Sun.” Hsiang uses the character

which means “massed, accumulated.” And others use the character

which means “sky clearing,” and is also applied to blue in the sense of the “blue of the sky after rain.” In the oft quoted list of the Yung Chêng porcelains we find the item, “Imitations of Hsüan chi hung wares, including two kinds, hsien hung (fresh red) and pao shih hung (ruby red).” There can be little doubt that both these were shades of underglaze red derived from copper oxide, a colour with which we are quite familiar from the eighteenth century and later examples.

For in another context we find the hsien hung contrasted with fan hung, which is the usual term for overglaze iron red, and the description already given of the application of pao shih hung leaves no doubt whatever that it was an underglaze colour. The two terms are probably fanciful names for two variations of the same colour, or perhaps for two different applications of it, for we know that it was used as a pigment for brushwork as well as in the form of a ground colour incorporated in the glaze. The secret of the colour seems to have been well kept, and the general impression prevailing outside the factories was that its tint and brilliancy were due to powdered rubies, the red precious stone from the West which gave the name to the pao shih hung.[29] It is known that in some cases such stones as cornelian (ma nao) have been incorporated in the porcelain glazes in China to increase the limpidity of the glaze. This is reputed to have happened in the case of the Ju yao, but neither cornelian nor ruby could serve in any way as a colouring agent, as their colour would be dissipated in the heat of the furnace. The real colouring agent of the chi hung is protoxide of copper. If there were nothing else to prove this, it would be clear from the fact hinted in the Po wu yao lan that the failures came out a brownish or blackish tint. This colour has always proved a difficult one to manage, and in the early part of the last dynasty, when it was freely used after the manner of the Hsüan Tê potters, the results were most unequal, varying from a fine blood red to maroon and brown, and even to a blackish tint.

The peculiar merits of the Hsüan Tê red were probably due in some measure to the clay of which the ware was composed, and which contained some natural ingredient favourable to the development of the red. At any rate, we are told[30] that in the Chia Ching period (1522–1566) “the earth used for the hsien hung ran short.”

Among the favourite designs[31] expressed in the Hsüan Tê red were three fishes, three fruits,[32] three funguses, and the character fu (happiness) repeated five times.[33] All these are mentioned among the Yung Chêng imitations. A good idea of the fish design is given by a cylindrical vase in the Franks Collection, which is plain except for two fishes in underglaze red of good colour, and rising in slight relief in the glaze. The glaze itself is of that faint celadon green which was apparently regarded as a necessary feature of the Hsüan Tê copies, and which incidentally seems to be favourable to the development of the copper red. The sang de bœuf red of the last dynasty is avowedly a revival of the Hsüan Tê red in its use as a glaze colour. Indeed, certain varieties of the sang de bœuf class are still distinguished as chi hung. The large bowls, “red as the sun and white at the mouth rim,” as mentioned in the Po wu yao lan, have a counterpart in the large bowl of the last dynasty with sang de bœuf glaze, which, flowing downwards, usually left a colourless white band at the mouth.

The Hsüan Tê period extended only to ten years, and specimens of Hsüan red are excessively rare to-day, even in China. It is doubtful if a genuine specimen exists outside the Middle Kingdom, but with the help of the old Chinese descriptions and the clever imitations of a later date,[34] there is no difficulty in imagining the vivid splendours of the “precious stone red” of this brilliant period.

Among the “blue and white” wares of all periods, the Hsüan Tê porcelain is unanimously voted the first place by Chinese writers, and its excellence is ascribed principally to the superior quality of an imported mineral variously described as su-ni-p’o, su-p’o-ni and su-ma-ni. These outlandish names are, no doubt, attempts to render in Chinese the foreign name of the material, which was itself probably the name of the place or people whence it was exported. There is little doubt that this mysterious substance was the same species as the Mohammedan blue (hui hui ch’ing) of the following century. Indeed, this latter name is applied to it in Hsiang’s Album. The Mohammedan blue was obtained from Arab traders, and its use for painting on pottery had been familiar in the Near East, in Persia and Syria for instance, at least as early as the twelfth century.[35] The su-ni-p’o blue was no doubt imported in the form of mineral cobalt, and though there was no lack of this mineral in the neighbourhood of Ching-tê Chên, the foreign material was of superior quality. It was, however, not only expensive but unsuited for use in a pure state. If applied by itself, it had a tendency to run in the firing, and it was necessary to blend it with proportions of the native mineral varying from one in ten for the finest quality to four in six for the medium quality. The native mineral used by itself tended to be heavy and dull in tone, owing to its inability to stand the intense heat of the kiln, and was only employed alone on the coarser wares. The supply of Mohammedan blue was uncertain and spasmodic. It ceased to arrive at the end of the Hsüan Tê period, and it was not renewed till the next century (see p. [29]). Its nature, too, seems to have varied, for we are expressly told that the Hsüan Tê blue was pale in tone while the Mohammedan blue of the sixteenth century was dark. Possibly, however, this was not so much due to the nature of the material as to the method of its application, for Chinese writers are by no means unanimous about the paleness of the Hsüan Tê blue. The Ch’ing pi ts’ang, for instance, states that “they used su-p’o-ni blue and painted designs of dragons, phœnixes, flowers, birds, insects, fish and similar forms, deep and thickly heaped and piled and very lovely.”

Authentic specimens of Hsüan Tê blue and white are virtually unknown, but the mark of the period is one of the commonest on Chinese porcelain of relatively modern date. In most cases this spurious dating means nothing more than that the period named was one of high repute; but there is a type of blue and white, usually bearing the period mark of Hsüan Tê, which is so mannered and characteristic that one feels the certainty that this really represents one kind at least of the Hsüan porcelain. It is usually decorated in close floral scrolls, and the blue is light dappled with darker shades, which are often literally “heaped and piled” (tui t’o) over the paler substratum.

I have seen examples of this style belonging to various periods, mostly eighteenth century, but some certainly late Ming[36] (see Plate [67], Fig. 4). Seven examples of Hsüan blue and white porcelain are figured in Hsiang’s Album,[37] comprising an ink pallet, a vase shaped like a section of bamboo, a goose-shaped wine jar, a vase with an elephant on the cover, a tea cup, a sacrificial vessel, and a lamp with four nozzles. In five of these the blue is confined to slight pencilled borders, merely serving to set off the white ground, which is compared to driven snow. The glaze is rich and thick, and of uneven surface, rising in slight tubercles likened to “grains of millet.” This is the “orange skin” glaze. The blue in each case is hui hu[38] ta ch’ing (deep Mohammedan blue). Of the two remaining instances, one is painted with a dragon in clouds, and the other with “dragon pines,” and in the latter case the glaze is described as “lustrous like mutton fat jade,” and the blue as “of intensity and brilliance to dazzle the eye.”

The impression conveyed by all these examples is that they represent a type quite different from that described as “heaped and piled,” a type in which delicate pencilling was the desideratum, the designs being slight and giving full play to the white porcelain ground. It is, in fact, far closer in style to the delicately painted Japanese Hirado porcelain than to the familiar Chinese blue and white of the K’ang Hsi period.

Plate [60] illustrates a little flask-shaped vase in the Franks Collection, which purports to be a specimen of Hsüan Tê blue and white porcelain. It has a thick, “mutton fat” glaze of faint greenish tinge, and is decorated with a freely drawn peach bough in underglaze blue which has not developed uniformly in the firing. The colour in places is deep, soft and brilliant, but elsewhere it has assumed too dark a hue.[39] Its certificate is engraved in Chinese fashion on the box into which it has been carefully fitted—hsüan tz’ŭ pao yüeh p’ing, “precious moon vase of Hsüan porcelain”—attested by the signature Tzŭ-ching, the studio name of none other than Hsiang Yüan-p’ien, whose Album has been so often quoted. Without attaching too much weight to this inscription, which is a matter easily arranged by the Chinese, there is nothing in the appearance of this quite unpretentious little vase which is inconsistent with an early Ming origin.

On the same plate is a brush rest in form of a log raft, on which is a seated figure, probably the celebrated Chang-Ch’ien, floating down the Yellow River. The design recalls a rare silver cup of the Yüan dynasty, which was illustrated in the Burlington Magazine (December, 1912). Here the material is porcelain biscuit with details glazed and touched with blue, and the nien hao of Hsüan Tê is visible on the upper part of the log beside two lines of poetry. Whether this brush rest really belongs to the period indicated or not, it is a rare and interesting specimen. Two other possible examples of Hsüan Tê blue and white are described on p. [32].

PLATE 62

Barrel shaped Garden Seat: porcelain with coloured glazes on the biscuit, the designs outlined in slender fillets of clay. A lotus scroll between an upper band of clouds and a lower band of horses in flying gallop and sea waves. Lion mask handles. About 1500 A.D.

Height 14¼ inches.

British Museum.

As to the other types of Hsüan ware named in the Po wu yao lan, with one exception I can find no exact counterpart of them in existing specimens, though parts of the descriptions are illustrated by examples of apparently later date. Thus the form of the white tea cups, “with rounded body, convex base, and thread-like foot,” is seen in such bowls as Fig. 1 of Plate [74], which is proved by its mount to be not later than the sixteenth century. Other examples of these bowls will be discussed later. They are characterised by a convexity in the centre which cannot be shown in reproductions.

The secret decoration (an hua) consists of designs faintly traced usually with a sharp-pointed instrument in the body and under the glaze. There is an excellent example of this in a high-footed cup in the Franks Collection which has the Hsüan Tê mark, the usual faintly greenish glaze, beneath which is a delicately etched lotus scroll so fine that it might easily be overlooked and is quite impossible to reproduce by photographic methods. It is, no doubt, an early eighteenth-century copy of Hsüan ware.

The one exception mentioned above is the type represented by the “barrel-shaped seats.” The description of these leaves no room for doubt that they belonged to a fairly familiar class of Ming ware, whose strength and solidity has preserved it in considerable quantity where the more delicate porcelains have disappeared. Plate [62] gives a good idea of the Ming barrel-shaped garden seat, “with solid ground filled in with colours in engraved floral designs.” The other kind, “with openwork ground, the designs filled in with colours (wu ts’ai), gorgeous as cloud brocades,” must have been in the style of Plate [61]. These styles of decoration are more familiar to us on potiche-shaped wine jars and high-shouldered vases than on garden seats, but the type is one and the same. Quite a series of these vessels was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910, and they are fully described in the catalogue. Some had an outer casing in openwork; others had the designs outlined in raised threads of clay, which contained the colours like the ribbons of cloisonné enamel[40]; in others, again, the patterns were incised with a point. The common feature of all of them was that the details of the pattern were defined by some emphatic method of outlining which served at the same time to limit the flow of the colours. The colours themselves consist of glazes containing a considerable proportion of lead, and tinted in the usual fashion with metallic oxides. They include a deep violet blue (sometimes varying to black or brown), leaf green, turquoise, yellow,[41] and a colourless glaze or a white slip which served as white colour, though at times the white was represented merely by leaving the unglazed body or biscuit to appear. These coloured glazes differ from the on-glaze painted enamels in that they are applied direct to the body of the ware, and are fired at a relatively high temperature in the cooler parts of the great kiln, a circumstance expressed by the French in the concise phrase, couleurs de demi-grand feu.[42]

The central ornament consisted chiefly of figures of sages or deities in rocky landscape, or seated under pine trees amid clouds, dragons in clouds, or beautiful lotus designs; and these were contained by various borders, such as floral scrolls, gadroons, ju-i head patterns, fungus scrolls, and symbols hanging in jewelled pendants. As a rule, the larger areas of these vases are invested with a ground colour and the design filled in with contrasting tints. Sometimes the scheme of decoration includes several bands of ornament, and in this case—as on Plate [62]—more than one ground colour is used. The Po wu yao lan speaks of green (ch’ing) and dark blue (lan) grounds, and existing specimens indicate that the dark violet blue was the commonest ground colour. Next to this, turquoise blue is the most frequently seen; but besides these there is a dark variety of the violet which is almost black, and another which is dark brown, both of which colours are based on cobaltiferous oxide of manganese. It has already been observed that this type of decoration was frequently used on a pottery body as well as on porcelain.

The question of the antiquity of the above method of polychrome decoration is complicated by the contradictory accounts which Dr. Bushell has given of a very celebrated example, the statuette of the goddess Kuan-yin in the temple named Pao kuo ssŭ at Peking. The following reference to this image occurs in the T’ung ya, published in the reign of Ch’ung Chêng (1625–1643): “The Chün Chou transmutation wares (yao pien) are not uncommon to-day. The Kuan-yin in the Pao kuo ssŭ is a yao pien.” Dr. Bushell, who visited the temple several times, gives a minute description of the image, which contains the following passage[43]: “The figure is loosely wrapped in flowing drapery of purest and bluest turquoise tint, with the wide sleeves of the robe bordered with black and turned back in front to show the yellow lining; the upper part of the cloak is extended up behind over the head in the form of a plaited hood, which is also lined with canary yellow.” To the ordinary reader, such a description would be conclusive. A fine example of Ming porcelain, he would say, decorated with the typical coloured glazes on the biscuit. Bushell’s comment, however, is that the “colours are of the same type as those of the finest flower pots and saucers of the Chün Chou porcelain of the Sung dynasty.” It should be said that the temple bonzes insist that they can trace the origin of the image back to the thirteenth century. If these are indeed the typical Chün Chou glazes, then all our previous information on that factory, including Bushell’s own contributions, is worthless. In another work,[44] however, the same writer states that it (the image in question) is “really enamelled in 'five colours’—turquoise, yellow, crimson, red brown and black.” This is precisely what we should have expected, and it can only be imagined that Bushell in the other passage was influenced by the statement in the T’ung ya that it was a furnace transmutation piece, a statement probably based on the superstition that it was a miraculous likeness of the goddess, who herself descended into the kiln and moulded its features. As to the other temple tradition, that it was made in the thirteenth century, it is not necessary to take that any more seriously than the myth concerning its miraculous origin, which derives from the same source.

It is hardly necessary to state that all the existing specimens of this class (and they are fairly numerous) do not belong to the Hsüan Tê period. Indeed, it is unlikely that more than a very small percentage of them were made in this short reign. Whether the style survived the Ming dynasty is an open question; but it is safe to assume that it was largely used in the sixteenth century.

The discussion of this group of polychrome porcelain leads naturally to the vexed question of the introduction of enamel painting over the glaze. By the latter I mean the painting of designs on the finished white glaze in vitrifiable enamels, which were subsequently fixed in the gentle heat of the muffle kiln (lu)—couleurs de petit feu, as the French have named them. No help can be got from the phraseology of the Chinese, for they use wu ts’ai or wu sê (lit. five colours) indifferently for all kinds of polychrome decoration, regardless of the number of colours involved or the mode of application. There is, however, no room for doubt that the delicate enamel painting, for which the reign of Ch’êng Hua (1465–1487) was celebrated, was executed with the brush over the fired glaze. It is inconceivable that the small, eggshell wine cups with peony flowers and a hen and chicken “instinct with life and movement” could have been limned by any other method. If this is the case, then what could the Chinese writers mean when they contrasted the wu ts’ai ornament of the Hsüan Tê and Ch’êng Hua periods, but that the same process of painting was in use in both reigns? The Ch’êng Hua colours were more artistic because they were thin and delicately graded, while the Hsüan Tê wu ts’ai were too thickly applied.[45] For this reason, if for no other, we may rightly infer that painting in on-glaze enamels was practised in the Hsüan Tê period, if, indeed, it had not been long in use.[46]

There is another and an intermediate method of polychrome decoration in which the low-fired enamels (de petit feu) are applied direct to the biscuit, as in the case of the demi-grand feu colours, but with the difference that they are fixed in the muffle kiln. This method was much employed on the late Ming and early Ch’ing porcelains, and it will be discussed later; but it is mentioned here because there are several apparent examples of it in Hsiang’s Album, one[47] of which is dated Hsüan Tê. The example in question is a model of the celebrated Nanking pagoda, and it is described as wu ts’ai, the structure being white, the roofs green, the rails red, and the doors yellow, while the date is painted in blue. I have hesitated to assume that this is intended to represent an on-glaze painted piece, though there is much in the description to indicate such a conclusion; but it is certainly either this or a member of the class under discussion, viz. decorated in enamels of the muffle kiln applied to the biscuit.[48] In either case it proves the knowledge of vitrifiable enamels at this period to all who accept the evidence of Hsiang’s Album.

Examples of Hsüan Tê polychrome porcelain enumerated in the T’ao shuo included wine pots in the form of peaches, pomegranates, double gourds, a pair of mandarin ducks and geese; washing dishes (for brushes) of “gong-shaped outline,” with moulded fish and water-weeds, with sunflowers and with lizards; and lamp brackets, “rain-lamps,” vessels for holding bird’s food, and cricket[49] pots (see vol. i, p. [188]).

Specimens of on-glaze painted porcelain with the Hsüan Tê mark are common enough, but I have not yet seen one which could be accepted without reserve. Perhaps the nearest to the period is a specimen in the Franks Collection, a box made of the lower part of a square vase which had been broken and cut down. It was fitted with a finely designed bronze cover in Japan, and it is strongly painted in underglaze blue and the usual green, yellow, red and purple on-glaze enamels. The mark is in a fine dark blue, and the porcelain has all the character of a Ming specimen.

There is, in the same collection, a dish of a different type, but with the Hsüan Tê mark in Mohammedan blue and other evidences of Ming origin. The glaze is of a faintly greenish white and of considerable thickness and lustre, and the design consists of lotus scrolls in gold. Painting in gold in the Hsüan Tê period is mentioned in the T’ao shuo[50] in connection with the pots for holding the fighting crickets alluded to above.

CHAPTER III
CH’ÊNG HUA

(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.

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).

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.

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

(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.”

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.

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.

CHAPTER IV
CHIA CHING

(1522–1566) AND LUNG CH’ING

(1567–1572)

The Imperial potteries at Ching-tê Chên were busy in the long reign of Chia Ching, grandson of Ch’êng Hua, under the supervision of one of the prefects of the circuit who took charge in place of the palace eunuch of previous reigns. Chinese accounts of the porcelain of this important period, summarised in the T’ao shuo, include passages from the late Ming and therefore almost contemporary works, the Shih wu kan chu and the Po wu yao lan. In the former we are told that the Mohammedan blue was largely used, but that the material for the “fresh red” (hsien hung)[99] was exhausted, and that the method of producing the red colour was no longer the same as of old, the potters being capable only of making the overglaze iron red called fan hung. The Po wu yao lan gives a more intimate description of the ware, and the passage[100]—the last in that work on the subject of porcelain—may be rendered as follows:—

“Chia Ching porcelain includes blue-decorated and polychrome wares of every description; but unfortunately the clay brought to the place from the neighbouring sources in Jao Chou gradually deteriorated, and when we compare these two classes of porcelain with the similar productions of the earlier periods of the dynasty the (Chia Ching) wares do not equal the latter. There are small white bowls (ou) inscribed inside with the character ch’a

(tea), the character chiu

(wine), or the characters tsao t’ang

(decoction of dates), or chiang t’ang[101]

(decoction of ginger); these are the sacrificial altar vessels regularly used by the Emperor Shih Tsung (i.e. Chia Ching), and they are called white altar cups, though in form and material they are far from equalling the Hsüan Tê vessels. The Chia Ching shallow wine cups with rimmed mouth,[102] convex centre,[103] and foot with base rim,[104] decorated outside in three colours with fish design, and the small vermilion boxes, no bigger than a “cash,” are the gems of the period. As for the small boxes beautifully painted with blue ornament, I fear that the Imperial factories of after times will not be able to produce the like. Those who have them prize them as gems.”

A few supplementary comments in the T’ao shuo further inform us that the Mohammedan blue of the Chia Ching period was preferred very dark (in contrast with the pale blue of the Hsüan Tê porcelain), that it was very lovely, and that supplies of this blue arrived providentially at the time when the “fresh red” failed[105]; and also that the supplies of earth from Ma-ts’ang were daily diminishing till they were nearly exhausted, and consequently the material of the ware was far from equalling that of the Hsüan Tê period. The T’ao lu adds practically nothing to the above statements.

Fortunately, there are still to be found a fair number of authentic specimens of Chia Ching porcelain, but before considering these in the light of the Chinese descriptions, it will be helpful as well as extremely interesting to glance at the lists of actual porcelain vessels supplied to the palace at this time. From the eighth year of this reign, the annual accounts of the palace porcelains have been preserved in the Annals of Fou-liang, from which they were copied in the provincial topographies. Two of these lists (for the years 1546 and 1554) are quoted by Bushell,[106] and a general summary of them is given in the T’ao shuo.[107] To quote them in full here would take too much space, but the following notes may be useful to the reader, who, with his knowledge of the later porcelains, should have no difficulty in reconstructing for himself the general appearance of the court wares of the time.

The actual objects[108] supplied consisted chiefly of fish bowls (kang), covered and uncovered jars (kuan), of which some were octagonal, bowls (wan), dinner bowls (shan wan) of larger size, saucer dishes (tieh) and round dishes (p’an), tea cups (ch’a chung), tea cups (ou), wine cups (chiu chan), and libation cups (chüeh) with hill-shaped saucers (shan p’an) to support their three feet, various vases (p’ing), slender ovoid jars for wine (t’an), ewers or wine pots (hu p’ing), and wine seas (chiu hai) or large bowls. A large number of complete dinner-table sets (cho ch’i) occur in one of the lists, and we learn from the T’ao shuo that uniform sets with the same pattern and colours throughout were an innovation of the Ming dynasty. A set[109] comprised 27 pieces, including 5 fruit dishes (kuo tieh), 5 food dishes (ts’ai tieh), 5 bowls (wan), 5 vegetable dishes (yün tieh), 3 tea cups (ch’a chung), 1 wine cup (chiu chan), 1 wine saucer (chiu tieh), 1 slop receptacle (cha tou), and 1 vinegar cruse (ts’u chiu). The slop receptacle appears to have been a square bowl used for the remnants of food (see Plate [66], Fig. 1).

The sacrificial vessels of the period included tazza-shaped bowls and dishes (pien tou p’an), large wine jars (t’ai tsun), with swelling body and monster masks for handles, “rhinoceros” jars (hsi tsun) in the form of a rhinoceros carrying a vase on its back, besides various dishes, plates, cups, and bowls of undefined form.

The decorations are grouped in six headings:—

(1) Blue and white (ch’ing hua pai ti, blue ornament on a white ground), which is by far the largest.

(2) Blue ware, which included blue bowls (ch’ing wan), sky-blue bowls (t’ien ch’ing wan), and turquoise bowls (ts’ui ch’ing wan). In some cases the ware is described as plain blue monochrome, and in one item it is “best blue monochrome” (t’ou ch’ing su), while in others there are designs engraved under the glaze (an hua). In others, again, ornament such as dragons and sea waves is mentioned without specifying how it was executed. Such ornament may have been etched with a point in the blue surface,[110] or pencilled in darker blue on a blue background or reserved in white in a blue ground. Another kind is more fully described as “round dishes of pure blue (shun ch’ing) with dragons and sea waves inside, and on the exterior a background of dense cloud scrolls[111] with a gilt[112] decoration of three lions and dragons.” Bushell[113] speaks of the “beautiful mottled blue ground for which this reign is also remarkable,” and which, he says, was produced by the usual blend of Mohammedan and native blue suspended in water.

(3) Wares which were white inside and blue outside.

(4) White ware, plain[114] or with engraved designs under the glaze (an hua, lit. secret ornament).

(5) Ware with brown glaze in two varieties, tzŭ chin (golden brown), and chin huang (golden yellow), with dragon designs engraved under the glaze. These are the well-known lustrous brown glazes, the former of dark coffee brown shade, and the latter a light golden brown.

(6) Ware with mixed colours (tsa sê), which included bowls and dishes decorated in iron red[115] (fan hung) instead of the “fresh red” (hsien hung); others with emerald green colour (ts’ui lü sê); bowls with phœnixes and flowers of Paradise in yellow in a blue ground; cups with blue cloud and dragon designs in a yellow ground; boxes with dragon and phœnix designs engraved under a yellow glaze; dishes with design of a pair of dragons and clouds in yellow within a golden brown (tzŭ chin) ground; and globular bowls with embossed[116] ornament in a single-coloured ground.

To these types Bushell adds from other similar lists crackled ware (sui ch’i), tea cups of “greenish white porcelain” (ch’ing pai tz’ŭ), which seems to be a pale celadon, and large fish bowls with pea green (tou ch’ing) glaze.

The source of the designs of the porcelain is clearly indicated in the following passage in the T’ao shuo[117]: “Porcelain enamelled in colours was painted in imitation of the fashion of brocaded silks, and we have consequently the names of blue ground, yellow ground, and brown gold (tzŭ chin) ground. The designs used to decorate it were also similar, and included dragons in motion (tsou lung), clouds and phœnixes, ch’i-lin, lions, mandarin ducks, myriads of gold pieces, dragon medallions (p’an lung, lit. coiled dragons), pairs of phœnixes, peacocks, sacred storks, the fungus of longevity, the large lion in his lair, wild geese in clouds with their double nests, large crested waves, phœnixes in the clouds, the son-producing lily, the hundred flowers, phœnixes flying through flowers, the band of Eight Taoist Immortals, dragons pursuing pearls, lions playing with embroidered balls, water weeds, and sporting fishes. These are the names of ancient brocades, all of which the potters have reproduced more or less accurately in the designs and colouring of their porcelain.”

The following analysis of the designs named in the Chia Ching lists will show that the blue and white painters of the period took their inspiration from the same source:—

Floral Motives.

Celestial flowers (t’ien hua), supporting the characters shou shan fu hai

, “longevity of the hills and happiness (inexhaustible as) the sea.”

Flowers of the four seasons (the tree peony for spring, lotus for summer, chrysanthemum for autumn, and prunus for winter).

Flowering and other plants (hua ts’ao).

The myriad-flowering wistaria (wan hua t’êng).

The water chestnut (ling).

The pine, bamboo, and plum.

Floral medallions (t’uan hua).

Indian lotus (hsi fan lien).

Knots of lotus (chieh tzŭ lien[118]).

Interlacing sprays of lotus supporting the Eight Precious Symbols or the Eight Buddhist Emblems.[119]

Branches of ling chih[120] fungus supporting the Eight Precious Symbols.

Ling chih fungus and season flowers.

Lotus flowers, fishes, and water weeds.

Floral arabesques (hui hui hua).

Flowers of Paradise (pao hsiang hua)

.

The celestial flowers and the flowers of Paradise are no doubt similar designs of idealised flowers in scrolls or groups.[121] The pao hsiang hua, which is given in Giles’s Dictionary as “the rose,” is rendered by Bushell “flowers of Paradise” or “fairy flowers.” Judging by the designs with this name in Chinese works, and also from the fact that the rose is a very rare motive on Chinese wares before the Ch’ing dynasty, whereas the pao hsiang hua is one of the commonest in the Ming lists, Bushell’s rendering is probably correct in the present context.

Animal Motives, mythical or otherwise.

Dragons, represented as pursuing jewels (kan chu); grasping jewels (k’ung chu); in clouds; emerging from water; in bamboo foliage and fungus plants; among water chestnut flowers; among scrolls of Indian lotus; emerging from sea waves and holding up the Eight Trigrams (pa kua); holding up the characters fu

(happiness) or shou

(longevity), as on Fig. 1 of Plate [66].

Dragons of antique form. These are the lizard-like creatures (ch’ih) with bifid tail which occur so often in old bronzes and jades.

Dragon medallions (t’uan lung).

Nine dragons and flowers.

Dragons and phœnixes moving through flowers.

Dragon, and phœnixes with other birds.

Phœnixes flying through flowers.

A pair of phœnixes.

Lions[122] rolling balls of brocade.

Flying lions.

Hoary[123] lions and dragons.

Storks in clouds.

Peacocks (k’ung ch’iao) and mu-tan peonies.

Birds flying in clouds.

Fish and water weeds.

Four fishes.[124]

Human Motives.

Children (wa wa) playing.

Three divine beings (hsien) compounding the elixir of Immortality.

Two or four Immortals.

The Eight Immortals (pa hsien) crossing the sea; or paying court to the god of Longevity (p’êng shou), or congratulating him (ch’ing shou).

A group of divine beings (hsien) paying court to the god of Longevity.

Two designs of doubtful meaning may be added here:

(1) “Jars decorated with chiang hsia pa chün,”[125] a phrase which means “the eight elegant (scholars) of Chiang-hsia (i.e. below the river),” but has been translated by Bushell, using a variant reading,[126] as “the eight horses of Mu Wang.” The latter rendering ignores the presence of chiang hsia, and the former, though a correct reading of the original, is not explained in any work of reference to which I have had access.

(2) “Bowls with man ti ch’iao,” lit. “graceful (designs) filling the ground.” The meaning of ch’iao is the difficulty, and Bushell in one translation[127] has rendered it “graceful sprays of flowers,” which sorts well with rest of the phrase, but in another[128] he has assumed that it means “graceful beauties” in reference to the well-known design of tall, slender girls, which the Dutch collectors named lange lijsen (see Plate [92], Fig. 2). The latter rendering, however, goes badly with man ti, “filling the ground,” which is certainly more applicable to some close design, such as floral scroll work. This is, however, a good example of the difficulty of translating the Chinese texts, where so much is left to the imagination, and consequently there is so much room for differences of opinion.

Plate 68.—Blue and White Porcelain. Sixteenth Century.

Fig. 1.—Perfume Vase, lions and balls of brocade. Height 8¾ inches. V. & A. Museum.

Fig. 2. Double Gourd Vase, square in the lower part. Eight Immortals paying court to the God of Longevity, panels of children (wa wa). Height 21 inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Fig. 3.—Bottle with medallions of ch’i-lin and incised fret pattern between. Late Ming. Height 9 inches. Halsey Collection.

Plate 69.—Sixteenth Century Porcelain.

Fig. 1.—Bowl of blue and white porcelain with silver gilt mount of Elizabethan period. Height 3¾ inches. British Museum.

Fig. 2.—Covered Jar, painted in dark underglaze blue with red, green and yellow enamels; fishes and water plants. Chia Ching mark. Height 17 inches. S. E. Kennedy Collection.

Plate 70.—Porcelain with Chia Ching mark.

Fig. 1.—Box with incised Imperial dragons and lotus scrolls; turquoise and dark violet glazes on the biscuit. Diameter 9½ inches. V. & A. Museum.

Fig. 2.—Vase with Imperial dragons in clouds, painted in yellow in an iron red ground. Height 8½ inches. Cologne Museum.

Plate 71.—Sixteenth Century Porcelain.

Figs. 1 and 2.—Two Ewers in the Dresden Collection, with transparent green, aubergine and turquoise glazes on the biscuit, traces of gilding. In form of a phœnix (height 11 inches), and of a crayfish (height 8¼ inches).

Fig. 3.—Bowl with flight of storks in a lotus scroll, enamels on the biscuit, green, aubergine and white in a yellow ground. Chia Ching mark. Diameter 7 inches. Alexander Collection.

Emblematic Motives.

Heaven and Earth, and the six cardinal points (ch’ien k’un liu ho[129]), or “emblems of the six cardinal points of the Universe.”

Ch’ien and k’un are the male and female principles which are represented by Heaven and Earth, and together make up the Universe. The identification of these emblems is obscure. They might simply be the Eight Trigrams (pa kua), which are explained next, for two of these are known as ch’ien and k’un, and together with the remaining six they are arranged so as to make up eight points of the compass. But in that case, why not simply say pa kua as elsewhere?

On the other hand, we know that certain emblems were used in the Chou dynasty[130] in the worship of the six points of the Universe, viz. a round tablet with pierced centre (pi) of bluish jade for Heaven; a yellow jade tube with square exterior (ts’ung) for Earth; a green tablet (kuei), oblong with pointed top, for the East; a red tablet (chang), oblong and knife-shaped, for the South; a white tablet, in the shape of a tiger (hu), for the West; and a black jade piece of flat semicircular form (huang) for the North. All these objects are illustrated in Laufer’s Jade, but as they have not, to my knowledge, appeared together in porcelain decoration, the question must for the present be left open.

The pa-kua

or Eight Trigrams, supported by dragons or by waves and flames.

These are eight combinations of triple lines. In the first the lines are unbroken, and in the last they are all divided at the centre, the intermediate figures consisting of different permutations of broken and unbroken lines (see p. [290]). These eight diagrams, by which certain Chinese philosophers explained all the phenomena of Nature, are supposed to have been constructed by the legendary Emperor Fu Hsi (B.C. 2852) from a plan revealed to him on the back of the “dragon horse” (lung ma) which rose from the Yellow River.[131] Among other things, they are used to designate the points of the compass, one arrangement making the first figure represent the South (also designated ch’ien

or Heaven), and the last figure the North (also designated k’un

or Earth), the remaining figures representing South-West, West, North-West, North-East, East, and South-East.

The pa pao

, or Eight Precious Symbols, supported by fungus sprays.

These are usually represented by (1) a sphere or jewel, which seems to have originally been the sun disc; (2) a circle enclosing a square, which suggests the copper coin called a “cash”; (3) an open lozenge, symbol of victory or success; (4) a musical stone (ch’ing); (5) a pair of books; (6) a pair of rhinoceros horns (cups); (7) a lozenge-shaped picture (hua); (8) a leaf of the artemisia, a plant of good omen, which dispels sickness. (See p. [299].)

The pa chi hsiang

, or Eight Buddhist Symbols, supported on lotus scrolls.

These symbols, which appeared among the auspicious signs on the foot of Buddha, comprise (1) the wheel (chakra), which is sometimes replaced by the hanging bell; (2) the shell trumpet of Victory; (3) the umbrella of state; (4) the canopy; (5) the lotus flower; (6) the vase; (7) the pair of fish, emblems of fertility; (8) the angular knot (representing the entrails), symbol of longevity. (See p. [298].)

The hundred forms of the character shou (longevity)—pai shou tz’ŭ.