Page 131 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

Wan Li (1573-1619) 69

whole a porcelain of indifferent quality, with all the defects and

—virtues of export ware the summary finish of skilful potters who

worked with good material but for an uncritical public, and rapid, bold

draughtsmanship in an ordinary quality of blue usually of greyish

or indigo tint. The most finished specimen was a bowl from the

Pierpont Morgan Collection, with a design of phoenixes and lotus

scrolls finely drawn in blue of good quality. Unlike the others,

it had a reign mark (that of Wan Li), and probably it was made at
the Imperial factory. A bottle mounted as a ewer from the same

collection had a scale pattern on the neck, flowering plants and birds

on the body, and a saucer dish was painted in the centre with a

typical late Ming landscape, with mountains, pine trees, pagoda, a

pleasure boat, and sundry figures. The blue of this last piece was

of fair quality but rather dull, and it had a double ring under the

base void of mark. Another boAvl had on the exterior panel designs

with deer in white reserved in a blue ground, in a style somewhat

similar to that of the bottle illustrated on Plate 76, Fig. 3. There

is a bowl in the British Museum, momited with silver-gilt foot and

winged caryatid handles of about 1580 (Plate 69, Fig. 1). The

porcelain is of fine white material with thick lustrous glaze of

slightly bluish tint and "pin-holed" here and there; and the

design painted in blue with a faint tinge of indigo consists of a

vase with a lotus flower and a lotus leaf and three egrets, in a

medallion inside and four times repeated on the exterior. This is

Wanclearly an early Li specimen, if, indeed, it is not actually as old

as Chia Ching,

The most remarkable collection of Chinese export porcelain is

illustrated by Professor Sarre ^ from a photograph which he was able

to make of the Chini-hane or porcelain house attached to the mosque

of Ardebil, in Persia. Ranged on the floor are some five hundred

—specimens jars, vases, ewers, and stacks of plates, bowls and

dishes, many of which had formerly occupied niches in the walls

of the building erected by Shah Abbas the Great ^ (1587-1628).

Unfortunately, the conditions were not favourable to photography,

and the picture, valuable as it is, only permits a clear view of the

nearer objects, the rest being out of focus and represented by mere

shadows of themselves. They are, we are told, mainly blue and

^ Denkmdler Persischer Baukunst, Plate lii.. Text p. 41 and Fig. 44.
* The same emperor showed his appreciation for Chinese ceramics by importing
a number of Chinese potters into Persia. See p. 30.