Page 130 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

68 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

third a chevron pattern, in addition to a thin blue Hne on either

side of the edge. Sand adhering to the foot rim and faint radiating

lines scored in the base are indications of rough finish, and they

are clearly all the work of a private factory perhaps catering for

the export trade.

A variety of boxes figured in the Imperial lists, destined for

holding incense, vermilion, chess pieces, handkerchiefs, caps, sweet-

Ameats, cakes, etc. fair number of these have survived and

found their way into Western collections. Round, square, oblong

with rounded ends, and sometimes furnished with interior com-

partments, they are usually decorated with dragon designs in

dark blue, occasionally tricked out with touches of iron red; but

miscellaneous subjects also occur in their decoration, as in a

fine example exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910, ^

which has figure subjects on the cover and a landscape with water-

fall, probably from a picture of the celebrated mountain scenery

in Szechuan. Sometimes the covers of these boxes are perforated

as though to allow some perfume to escape. Other interesting

late Ming porcelains in the same exhibition were a pricket candle-

stick with cloud and dragon ornament and the Wan Li mark ; a

curious perfume vase (Plate 68, Fig. 1), which illustrates the design
of lions sporting with balls of brocade, an unmarked piece which

might even be as early as Chia Ching ; and a wide-mouthed vase
lent by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, with the familiar design

of fantastic lions moving among peonies and formal scrolls on the

body and panels of flowers separated by trellis diaper on the

shoulder. The last is a type which is not uncommon, but this

particular example is interesting because it belonged to one of the

oldest collections in England, presented to the Oxford Museum by

John Tradescant, and mostly collected before 1627.

The export trade with Western Asia was in full swing in the

reign of Wan Li, and the Portuguese traders had already made their

way to the Far East and brought back Chinese porcelain for Euro-

pean use. That it was, however, still a rare material in England

seems to be indicated by the sumptuous silver-gilt mounts in which

stray specimens were enshrined. Several of these mounted specimens

still exist, and seven of them were seen at the Burlington Fine Arts

Exhibition, 1910,^ the date of the mounts being about 1580-1590.

Taken, as they may fairly be, as typical specimens, they show on the

1 Cat., L 24. Ea Cat., 19-25.