Page 102 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

48 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

Two interesting ewers in the Dresden collection (Figs. 1 and 2

of Plate 71) probably belong to this period, or at any rate to the
sixteenth century. They are fantastically shaped to represent a
phoenix and a lobster, and are decorated with green, yellow, auber-
gine and a little turquoise applied direct to the biscuit. Parts
of the surface have been lightly coated with gilding, which has
almost entirely disappeared. These pieces are mentioned in an
inventory of 1640, and a lobster ewer precisely similar was included
in the collection made by Philipp Hainhofer in the early years
of the seventeenth century. ^

Among the examples of on-glaze enamels of this period are

those in which the coral red derived from iron oxide (/an hung) is
the most conspicuous colour. This red is often highly iridescent,
displaying soft ruby reflections like Persian lustre ; at other times
it is richly fluxed, and has a peculiarly vitreous and almost sticky
appearance. The former effect is well seen in a small saucer in
the British Museum, which has a wide border of deep lustrous red
surrounding a medallion with lions and a brocade ball in green.
The latter is seen on a square, covered vase in the same case,
decorated on each side with full-faced dragons in red and the usual
cloud accessories in inconspicuous touches of green and yellow.
The yellow enamel of the period is often of an impure, brownish
tint and rather thickly applied, but these peculiarities of both

yellow and red continued in the Wan Li period.

The combination of enamel colours with underglaze blue, which

was so largely used in the Wan Li period as to be generally known
by the name Wan li wu ts'ai (Wan Li polychrome), is not unknown

on Chia Ching wares. The wide-mouthed jar, for instance, from the
collection of Mr. S. E. Kennedy ^ (Plate 69, Fig. 2) is decorated
with a design of fish among water plants in deep Chia Ching blue
combined with green, yellow and iron red enamels; and a small
bottle-shaped vase in the British Museum has the same blue com-
bined with on-glaze red, green, yellow and aubergine, the design
being fish, waves, and water plants. The greens of this and the

—Wan Li period include various shades bright leaf green, pale

^ See J. Bottger, Philipp Hainhofer und der Kunstsclirank Gusiav Adolfs in Upsala,

Stockholm, 1909, Plate 71. The same interesting collection includes a marked Wan

Li dish with cloud and stork pattern in underglaze blue, two cups, and a set of Indian

lacquer dishes with centres made of the characteristic Chinese export porcelain

described on p. 70.

D= Cat. B. F.A., 17.