The use of enamels over the glaze was greatly extended in the Wan Li period, though practically all the types in vogue at this time can be paralleled in the Chia Ching porcelain, and, indeed, have been discussed under that heading. There is the red family in which the dominant colour is an iron red, either of curiously sticky appearance and dark coral tint or with the surface dissolved in a lustrous iridescence. Yellow, usually a dark impure colour, though sometimes washed on extremely thin and consequently light and transparent, and transparent greens, which vary from leaf tint to emerald and bluish greens, occur in insignificant quantity. This red family is well illustrated by a splendid covered jar in the Salting Collection (Plate 80), and by three marked specimens in the British Museum, an ink screen, a bowl, and a circular stand. It also occurs on another significant piece in the latter collection, a dish admirably copying the Ming style but marked Shên tê t’ang po ku chih[201] (antique made for the Shên-tê Hall), a palace mark of the Tao Kuang period (1821–1850). It should be added that this colour scheme[202] is frequently seen on the coarsely made and roughly decorated jars and dishes with designs of lions in peony scrolls, etc., no doubt made in large quantities for export to India and Persia. They are not uncommon to-day, and in spite of their obvious lack of finish they possess certain decorative qualities, due chiefly to the mellow red, which are not to be despised.

But the characteristic polychrome of the period, the Wan Li wu ts’ai, combines enamelled decoration with underglaze blue, and this again can be divided into two distinctive groups. One of these is exemplified by Plate 81, an Imperial vase shaped after a bronze model and of the same massive build as its fellow in blue and white, which was described on p. 67. Here the underglaze blue is supplemented by the green, the impure yellow and the sticky coral red of the period, and the subject as on the blue and white example consists of dragons and phœnixes among floral scrolls with borders of rock and wave pattern. The object of the decorator seems to have been to distract the eye from the underlying ware, as if he were conscious of its relative inferiority, and the effect of this close design, evenly divided between the blue and the enamels, is rather checkered when viewed from a distance. But both form and decoration are characteristic of the Wan Li Imperial vases, as is shown by kindred specimens, notably by a tall vase in the Pierpont Morgan Collection, of which the design is similar and the form even more metal-like, having on the lower part the projecting dentate ribs seen on square bronze and cloisonné beakers of the Ming dynasty. Two other marked examples of this colour scheme, from which the absence of aubergine is noteworthy, are (1) a ewer in the British Museum with full-face dragons on the neck supporting the characters wan shou (endless longevity) and with floral sprays on a lobed body, and (2) a straight-sided box with moulded six-foil elevation, painted on each face with a screen before which is a fantastic animal on a stand, and a monkey, dog and cat in garden surroundings.

The second—and perhaps the more familiar—group of Wan Li wu ts’ai is illustrated by Fig. 1 of Plate 82, on which all the colours, including aubergine, are represented in company with the underglaze blue. There is no longer the same patchy effect, because the blue is more evenly balanced by broader washes of the enamel colours, particularly the greens. The design of this particular example is a figure subject taken from Chinese history (shih wu), supplemented by a brocade band of floral scroll work on the shoulder and formal patterns on the neck and above the base. The former and the latter positions are commonly occupied in these vases by a band of stiff leaves and a border of false gadroons, both alternately blue and coloured. The stiff leaves in this instance are replaced by floral sprays, and the coloured designs are outlined in a red brown pigment. The mark under the base is the “hare,” which has already been noticed on examples of late Ming blue and white.[203] Another late Ming mark, yü t’ang chia ch’i,[204] occurs on a dish in the British Museum, with design of the Eight Immortals paying court to the god of Longevity (pa hsien p’êng shou), painted in the same style but with a predominance of underglaze blue.

But it is not necessary to multiply instances, for the type is well known, and must have survived for a long period. Indeed, many competent authorities assign the bulk of this kind of porcelain to the Yung Chêng period (1723–1735); and it is undoubtedly true that imitations of Wan Li polychrome were made at this time, for they are specifically mentioned in the Yung Chêng list of Imperial wares.[205] But I am inclined to think that the number of these late attributions has been exaggerated, and that they do not take sufficiently into account the interval of forty-two years between the reigns of Wan Li and K’ang Hsi. It was a distracted time when the potters must have depended largely upon their foreign trade in default of Imperial orders, and it is probable that much of this ware, characterised by strong, rather coarse make, greyish glaze and boldly executed decoration in the Wan Li colour scheme, belongs to this intermediate period. The vases usually have the flat unglazed base which characterises the blue and white of this time.[206] Two handsome beakers, with figure subjects and borders of the peach, pomegranate and citron, and a beautiful jar with phœnix beside a rock and flowering shrubs, in the British Museum, seem to belong to this period, but there are numerous other examples, many of which are coarse and crude, and obviously made wholesale for the export trade.

Among the various examples of Wan Li polychrome exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910, there was one which calls for special mention, a box[207] with panels of floral designs surrounded by fruit and diaper patterns in the usual colours of the wu ts’ai, with the addition of an overglaze blue enamel. It is true that this blue enamel was clearly of an experimental nature and far from successful, but its presence on this marked and indubitable Wan Li specimen is noteworthy. For it has long been an article of faith with collectors that this blue enamel does not antedate the Ch’ing dynasty, being, in fact, a characteristic feature of the K’ang Hsi famille verte porcelain. The rule still remains an excellent one, and this solitary exception only serves to emphasise its general truth, showing as it does that so far the attempts at a blue enamel were a failure. But at the same time the discovery is a warning against a too rigid application of those useful rules of thumb, based on the generalisation from what must, after all, be a limited number of instances.

Marked examples of Wan Li monochromes are rarely seen, but we may assume that the glazes in use in the previous reigns continued to be made—blue, lavender, turquoise, violet and aubergine brown, yellow in various shades, leaf green, emerald green, apple green, celadon, coffee brown, and golden brown—besides the more or less accidental effects in the mottled and flambé glazes. The plain white bowls of the period had a high reputation,[208] and a good specimen in the British Museum, though far from equalling the Yung Lo bowl (Plate 59), is nevertheless a thing of beauty. The white wares of the Ting type made at this time have been already discussed.[209] The monochrome surfaces were not infrequently relieved by carved or etched designs under the glaze, but it must be confessed that monochromes are exceedingly difficult to date. Particular colours and particular processes continued in use for long periods, and the distinctions between the productions of one reign and the next, or even between those of the late Ming and the early Ch’ing dynasties, are often almost unseizable. At best these differences consist in minute peculiarities of form and potting, in the texture of the body and glaze, and the finish of the base, which are only learnt by close study of actual specimens and by training the eye to the general character of the wares until the perception of the Ming style becomes instinctive. But something further will be said on this subject in the chapter on Ming technique.

THE LAST OF THE MINGS

T’ai Ch’ang (1620)

T’ien Ch’i (1621–1627)

Ch’ung Chêng (1628–1643)

Chinese ceramic history, based on the official records, is silent on the subject of the three last Ming reigns, and we are left to infer that during the death struggles of the old dynasty and the establishment of the Manchu Tartars on the throne work at the Imperial factory was virtually suspended. The few existing specimens which bear the marks of T’ien Ch’i and Ch’ung Chêng (the T’ai Ch’ang mark is apparently unrepresented) are of little merit. A barrel-shaped incense vase with floral scrolls and a large bowl with four-clawed dragons of the former date in the British Museum are painted the one in dull greyish blue, and the other in a bright but rather garish tint of the same colour; both have a coarse body material with blisters and pitting in the glaze, and the painting of the designs is devoid of any distinction. Similarly, a polychrome saucer dish with the same mark and in the same collection, decorated with an engraved dragon design filled in with purple glaze in a green ground, carries on the early tradition of that type of Ming polychrome, but the ware is coarse, the design crudely drawn, and the colours impure.[210] From the same unflattering characteristics another dish in the British Museum, with large patches of the three on-biscuit colours—green, yellow and aubergine—may be recognised as of the T’ien Ch’i make. This is a specimen of the so-called tiger skin ware, of which K’ang Hsi and later examples are known—a ware which, even in the best-finished specimens with underglaze engraved designs, is more curious than beautiful. On the other hand, one of the delicate bowls with biscuit figures in high relief, already described (p. 75), proves that the potters of the T’ien Ch’i period were still capable of skilful work when occasion demanded. A pair of wine cups in the British Museum, with freely drawn designs of geese and rice plants in pale greyish blue under a greyish glaze, are the solitary representatives of the Ch’ung Chêng mark.

In the absence of Imperial patronage, and with the inevitable trade depression which followed in the wake of the fierce dynastic struggle, it was fortunate for the Ching-tê Chên potters that a large trade with European countries was developing. The Portuguese and Spanish had already established trading connections with the Chinese, and the other Continental nations—notably the Dutch—were now serious competitors. The Dutch East India Company was an extensive importer of blue and white porcelain, and we have already discussed one type of blue and white which figures frequently in the Dutch pictures of the seventeenth century.

There is another group of blue and white which can be definitely assigned to this period of dynastic transition, between 1620–1662. A comparative study of the various blue and white types had already led to the placing of this ware in the middle of the seventeenth century, and Mr. Perzynski, in those excellent articles[211] to which we have already alluded, has set out the characteristics of this ware at some length, with a series of illustrations which culminate in a dated example. There will be no difficulty in finding a few specimens of this type in any large collection of blue and white. It is recognised by a bright blue of slightly violet tint under a glaze often hazy with minute bubbles, which suggested to Mr. Perzynski the picturesque simile of “violets in milk.” Other more tangible characteristics appear in the designs, which commonly consist of a figure subject—a warrior or sage and attendant—in a mountain scene bordered by a wall of rocks with pine trees and swirling mist, drawn in a very mannered style and probably from some stock pattern. Other common features are patches of herbage rendered by pot-hook-like strokes, formal floral designs of a peculiar kind, such as the tulip-like flower on the neck of Fig. 4 of Plate 82; the band of floral scroll work on the shoulder of the same piece is also characteristic. In many of the forms, such as cylindrical vases and beakers, the base is flat and unglazed, and reveals a good white body, and European influence is apparent in some of the shapes, such as the jugs and tankards.

As for the dating of this group, an early example of the style of painting in the Salting Collection[212] has a silver mount of the early seventeenth century, and a tankard of typical German form in the Hamburg Museum has a silver cover dated 1642.[213] There is, besides, a curious piece in the British Museum, the decoration of which has strong affinities to this group. It is a bottle with flattened circular body and tall, tapering neck, with landscape and figures on one side and on the other a European design copied from the reverse of a Spanish dollar, and surrounded by a strap-work border. The dollar, from a numismatic point of view, might have been made equally well for Philip II. (1556–1598), Philip IV. (1621–1665), or Charles II. (1665–1700), but there can be little doubt from the style of the ware that it belonged to one of the two earlier reigns.

A comparison of the ware and the blue of this group leads to the placing of the fairly familiar type illustrated by Figs. 3 and 5 of Plate 82 in the same intermediate period, and similarly certain specimens of polychrome, with underglaze blue and the usual enamels, display the characteristic body and blue painting, and even some of the decorative mannerisms. These specimens, particularly when of beaker form, are often finished off with a band of ornament engraved under the glaze.