CHINESE POTTERY AND PORCELAIN

Statue of a Lohan or Buddhist Apostle, T'ang dynasty
(618–906 A.D.)

Height with stand 50 inches.  British Museum.

CONTENTS

LIST OF PLATES

INTRODUCTION

In dealing with porcelain as distinct from pottery, we have a simpler proposition. The bulk of what we see in Europe is not older than the Ming dynasty and was made at one of two large centres, viz. Ching–tê Chên in Kiangsi, and Tê–hua in Fukien. Topographical arrangement, then, is an easy matter, and there is a considerable amount of information available to guide us in chronological considerations.

The antiquity of Chinese porcelain, its variety and beauty, and the wonderful skill of the Chinese craftsmen, accumulated from the traditions of centuries, have made the study of the potter's art in China peculiarly absorbing and attractive. There is scope for every taste in its inexhaustible variety. Compared with it in age, European porcelain is but a thing of yesterday, a mere two centuries old, and based from the first on Chinese models. Even the so–called European style of decoration which developed at Meissen and Sèvres, though quite Western in general effect, will be found on analysis to be composed of Chinese elements. It would be useless to compare the artistic merits of the Eastern and Western wares.

It is so much a matter of personal taste. For my own part, I consider that the decorative genius of the Chinese and their natural colour sense, added to their long training, have placed them so far above their European followers that comparison is irrelevant. Even the commoner sorts of old Chinese porcelain, made for the export trade, have undeniable decorative qualities, while the specimens in pure Chinese taste, and particularly the Court wares, are unsurpassed in quality and finish.

The merits and beauty of porcelain have always been recognised by the Chinese, who ranked it from the earliest days among their precious materials. Chinese poets make frequent reference to its dainty qualities, its jade–like appearance, its musical ring, its lightness and refinement. The green cups of Yüeh Chou ware in the T´ang dynasty were likened to moulded lotus leaves; and the white Ta–yi bowls surpassed hoar–frost and snow. Many stanzas were inspired by the porcelain bowls used at the tea and wine symposia, where cultivated guests capped each other's verses. In a pavilion at Yün–mên, in the vicinity of Ching–tê Chên, is a tablet inscribed, "The white porcelain is quietly passed all through the night, the fragrant vapour (of the tea) fills the peaceful pavilion," an echo of a symposium held there by some distinguished persons in the year 1101 A. D., and no doubt alluding to wares of local make. Elsewhere[1] we read of a drinking–bout in which the wine bowls of white Ting Chou porcelain inspired a verse–capping competition. "Ting Chou porcelain bowls in colour white throughout the Empire," wrote one. Another followed, "Compared with them, glass is a light and fickle mistress, amber a dull and stupid female slave." The third proceeded: "The vessel's body is firm and crisp; the texture of its skin is yet more sleek and pleasing."

The author of the P´ing hua p´u, a late Ming work on flower vases, exhorts us: "Prize the porcelain and disdain gold and silver. Esteem pure elegance."

In their admiration of antiques the Chinese yield to none, and nowhere have private collections been more jealously guarded and more difficult of access. Even in the sixteenth century relatively large sums were paid for Sung porcelains, and £30 was not too much for a "chicken wine cup" barely a hundred years old. The ownership of a choice antique—say, of the Sung dynasty—made the possessor a man of mark; perhaps even a marked man if the local ruler chanced to be of a grasping nature.

A story is told on p. 75 of this volume of a Ko ware incense burner (afterwards sold for 200 ounces of gold), which brought a man to imprisonment and torture in the early Ming period; and, if the newspaper account was correct, there was an incident in the recent revolution which should touch the collector's heart. A prominent general, who, like so many Chinese grandees, was an ardent collector, was expecting a choice piece of porcelain from Shanghai. In due course the box arrived and was taken to the general's sanctum. He proceeded to open it, no doubt with all the eagerness and suppressed excitement which collectors feel in such tense moments, only to be blown to pieces by a bomb! His enemies had known too well the weak point in his defence.

Collecting is a less dangerous sport in England; but if it were not so, the ardent collector would be in no way deterred. Warnings are wasted on him, and he would follow his quarry, even though the path were strewn with fragments of his indiscreet fellows. Still less is he discouraged by difficulties of another kind, as illustrated 'by the story[2] of T´ang's white Sung tripod, which was so closely imitated that its owner, one of the most celebrated collectors of the sixteenth century, could not distinguish the copy from the original. An eighteenth century Chinese writer points the moral of the story: "When connoisseurs point with admiration to a vessel, calling it Ting ware, or, again, Kuan ware, how can we know that it is not a 'false tripod' which deceives them?" The force of this question will be appreciated by collectors of Sung wares, especially of the white Ting porcelains and the green celadons; for there is nothing more difficult to classify correctly than these long–lived types. There are, however, authentic Sung examples within reach, and we can train our eyes with these, so that nothing but the very best imitations will deceive us; and, after all, if we succeed in obtaining a really first–rate Ming copy of a Sung type we shall be fortunate, for if we ever discover the truth—which is an unlikely contingency—we may console ourselves with thoughts of the enthusiast who eventually bought T´ang's false tripod for £300 and "went home perfectly happy."

In spite of all that has been written in the past on Oriental ceramics, the study is still young, and it will be long before the last word is said on the subject. Still our knowledge is constantly increasing, and remarkable strides have been made in recent years. The first serious work on Chinese porcelain was Julien's translation of the Ching–tê Chên t´ao lu, published in 1856. The work of a scholar who was not an expert, it was inevitably marred by misunderstanding of the material, and subsequent writers who followed blindly were led into innumerable confusions. The Franks Catalogue, issued in 1876, was one of the first attempts to classify Oriental wares on some intelligible system; but it was felt that not enough was known at that time to justify a chronological classification of the collection, and the somewhat unscientific method of grouping by colours and processes of decoration was adopted as a convenient expedient. At the end of last century Dr. S.W. Bushell revolutionised the study of Chinese porcelain by his Oriental Ceramic Art, a book, unfortunately, difficult to obtain, and by editing Cosmo Monkhouse's excellent History and Description of Chinese Porcelain. These were followed by the South Kensington Museum Handbook and by the translation and reproduction of the sixteenth century Album of Hsiang Yüan–p´ien, and later by the more important translation of the T´ao shuo.

It would be impossible to over–estimate the importance of Bushell's pioneer work; and I hasten to make the fullest acknowledgment of the free use I have made of his writings, the more so because I have not hesitated to criticise freely his translations where necessary. The Chinese language is notoriously obscure and ambiguous, and differences of opinion on difficult passages are inevitable. In fact, I would say that it is unwise to build up theories on any translation whatsoever without verifying the critical passages in the original. For this reason I found it necessary to work laboriously through the available Chinese ceramic literature, a task which would have been quite impossible with my brief acquaintance with the language had it not been for the invaluable aid of Dr. Lionel Giles, who helped me over the difficult ground. I have, moreover, taken the precaution of giving the Chinese text in all critical passages, so that the reader may satisfy himself as to their true meaning.

While Dr. Bushell's contributions have greatly simplified the study of the later Chinese porcelains, little or no account was taken in the older books of the pottery and early wares. The materials necessary for the study of these were wanting in Europe. Stray examples of the coarser types and export wares had found their way into our collections, but not in sufficient numbers or importance to arouse any general interest, and the condition of the Western market for the early types was not such as to tempt the native collector to part with his rare and valued specimens. In the last few years the position has completely changed. The opening up of China and the increased opportunities which Europeans enjoy, not only for studying the monuments of ancient Chinese art, but for acquiring examples of the early masterpieces in painting, sculpture, bronze, jade, and ceramic wares, have given the Western student a truer insight into the greatness of the earlier phases of Chinese art, and have awakened a new and widespread enthusiasm for them. An immense quantity of objects, interesting both artistically and archæologically, has been discovered in the tombs which railway construction has incidentally opened; and although this rich material has been gathered haphazard and under the least favourable conditions for accurate classification, a great deal has been learnt, and it is not too much to say that the study of early Chinese art has been completely revolutionised. Numerous collections have been formed, and the resulting competition has created a market into which even the treasured specimens of the Chinese collectors are being lured. Political circumstances have been another factor of the situation, and the Western collector has profited by the unhappy conditions which have prevailed in China since the revolution in 1912.

The result of all this, ceramically speaking, is that we are now familiar with the pottery of the Han dynasty; the ceramic art of the T´ang period has been unfolded in wholly unexpected splendour; the Sung problems no longer consist in reconciling ambiguous Chinese phrases, but in the classification of actual specimens; the Ming porcelain is seen in clearer perspective, and our already considerable information on the wares of the last dynasty has been revised and supplemented by further studies. So much progress, in fact, has been made, that it was high time to take stock of the present position, and to set out the material which has been collected, not, of course, with any thoughts of finality, but to serve as a basis for a further forward move. That is the purpose of the present volumes, in which I have attempted merely to lay before the reader the existing material for studying Chinese ceramics as I have found it, adding my own conclusions and comments, which he may or may not accept.

The most striking additions to our knowledge in recent years, have without doubt been those which concern the T´ang pottery. What was previously a blank is now filled with a rich series covering the whole gamut of ceramic wares, from a soft plaster–like material through faïence and stoneware up to true porcelain. The T´ang potters had little to learn in technical matters. They used the soft lead glazes, coloured green, blue, amber, and purplish brown by the same metallic oxides as formed the basis of the cognate glazes on Ming pottery. They used high–fired feldspathic glazes, white, brownish green, chocolate brown, purplish black, and tea–dust green, sometimes with frothy splashes of grey or bluish grey, as on the Sung wares. Sometimes these glazes were superposed as on the Japanese tea jars, which avowedly owed their technique to Chinese models. It is evident that streaked and mottled effects appealed specially to the taste of the time, and marbling both of the glaze and of the body was practised. Carving designs in low relief, or incising them with a pointed instrument and filling in the spaces with coloured glazes, stamping small patterns on the body, and applying reliefs which had been previously pressed out in moulds, were methods employed for surface decoration. Painted designs in unfired pigments appear on some of the tomb wares, and it is now practically certain that painting in black under a green glaze was used by the T´ang potters. Moreover, the existence of porcelain proper in the T´ang period is definitely established.

One of the most remarkable features of T´ang pottery is the strong Hellenistic flavour apparent in the shapes of the vessels and in certain details of the ornament, particularly in the former. Other foreign influences observable in T´ang art are Persian, Sassanian, Scytho–Siberian, and Indian, and one would say that Chinese art at this period was in a peculiarly receptive state. As compared with the conventional style of later ages which we have come to regard as characteristically Chinese, the T´ang art is quite distinctive, and almost foreign in many of its aspects.

The revelation of T´ang ceramics has provided many surprises, and doubtless there are more in store for us. There are certainly many gaps to fill and many apparent anomalies to explain. We are still in the dark with regard to the potter's art of the four hundred years which separate the Han and T´ang dynasties. The Buddhist sculptures of this time reveal a high level of artistic development, and we may assume that the minor arts, and pottery among them, were not neglected. When some light is shed from excavation or otherwise upon this obscure interval, no doubt we shall see that we have fixed our boundaries too rigidly, and that the Han types must be carried forward and the T´ang types carried back to bridge the gap. Meanwhile, we can only make the best of the facts which have been revealed at present, keeping our classification as elastic as possible. Probably the soft lead glazes belong to the earlier part of the T´ang period and extend back to the Sui and Wei, linking up with the green glaze of the Han pottery, while the high–fired glazes tended to supersede these in the latter part of the dynasty.

The high–fired feldspathic glazes seem to have held the field entirely in the Sung dynasty, and the lead glazes, as far as our observation goes, do not reappear until the Ming dynasty.

The Sung is the age of high–fired glazes, splendid in their lavish richness and in the subtle and often unforeseen tints which emerge from their opalescent depths. It is also an age of bold, free potting, robust and virile forms, an age of pottery in its purest manifestation. Painted ornament was used at certain factories in black and coloured clays, and, it would seem, even in red and green enamels; but painted ornament was less esteemed than the true ceramic decoration obtained by carving, incising, and moulding—processes which the potters worked with the clay alone.

If we could rest content with a comprehensive classification of the Sung wares, as we have had perforce to do in the case of the T´ang, one of the chief difficulties in this part of our task would be avoided. But the Chinese have given us a number of important headings, under which it has become obligatory to try and group our specimens. Some of these types have been clearly identified, but there are others which still remain vague and ill–defined; and there are many specimens, especially among the coarser kinds of ware, which cannot be referred to any of the main groups. But the true collector will not find the difficulties connected with the Sung wares in any way discouraging. He will revel in them, taking pleasure in the fact that he has new ground to break, many riddles to solve, and a subject to master which is worthy of his steel.