Page 101 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

Chia Ching (1522-1566) 47

1910 by Mrs. Halsey. It included a few Chia Ching specimens,

and among them a melon-shaped jar with lotus scrolls in the dark

blue of the period. This melon form has been popular with the

Chinese potters from T'ang times, and it occurs fairly often in

Athe Ming export porcelains. companion piece, for instance, at

the same exhibition was decorated with handsome pine, bamboo,

and plum designs. Others, again, are appropriately ornamented with

a melon vine pattern, a gourd vine, or a grape vine with a squirrel-

like animal on the branches. The drawing of these pieces is usually

rough but vigorous, the form is good, and the blue as a rule soft

and pleasing; and though entirely wanting in the superfine finish

of the choice K'ang Hsi blue and white, they have a decorative

value which has been sadly underrated.

The polychrome porcelains of the Chia Ching period are rarer

than the blue and white, but still a fair number of types are repre-

sented in English collections. Of the colours applied direct to

—the biscuit the early glazes of the demi-grand feu turquoise, auber-
—gine violet, green and yellow were doubtless applied as in the

previous century to the large wine jars, vases and figures in the

round. An unusual specimen of this class is the marked Chia

Ching cake box in the Victoria and Albert Museum, illustrated on

— —Plate 70. The design Imperial dragons among floral scrolls is

traced with a point in the paste and covered with a delicate tur-

quoise glaze, the background being filled with violet aubergine.

Similarly engraved designs coloured by washes of transparent glazes

— —in the three colours green, yellow and aubergine brown are^

found with the Chia Ching mark as with that of Cheng Te, and

Plate 73 illustrates two singularly beautiful bowls with designs
outlined in brown and washed in with transparent glazes. The

one has flowering branches of prunus, peach and pomegranate in

white, green and aubergine in a yellow ground, and the other

phoenixes and floral scrolls in yellow, green and white in a ground

of pale aubergine. Both have the Chia Ching mark. Fig. 2 of

Plate 71 is another member of the same group, with a beautiful design

of cranes and lotus scrolls in a yellow ground. There are, besides,
examples of these yellow and aubergine glazes in monochrome.

A good specimen of the latter with Chia Ching mark in the British

Museum has fine transparent aubergine glaze with iridescent surface,

the colour pleasantly graded, which contrasts with the uniform

smooth glaze and trim finish of a Ch'ien Lung example near to it.