Page 143 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

Wan Li (1573-1619) 77

certainly in the reign of Wan Li, and which has continued to modern

times. This is the decoration in white clay varying in thickness from

substantial reliefs to translucent brush work in thin slip or liquid

clay, which allows the colour of the backgi-ound to appear through

it. The designs are painted or modelled in white against dark or

—light-coloured grounds of various shades lustrous coffee brown {tzu

chin), deep blue, slaty blue, lavender, celadon, plain white, and

—crackled creamy white and they are usually slight and artistic-

ally executed. The process, which is the same in principle as in

the modern pate siir pate, consisted of first covering the ground with

colouring matter, then tracing the design in white slip (i.e. liquid
clay) or building it up with strips of clay modelled with a wet brush,

and finally covering it with a colourless glaze. In this case the

white design has a covering of glaze. When a celadon green ground

is used the design is applied direct to the biscuit and the celadon

glaze covers the whole, but being quite transparent it does not

obscure the white slip beneath. Sometimes, however, as in Fig. 3

of Plate 75, the design is unglazed and stands out in a dry white
" biscuit." Elaborate and beautiful examples of slip decoration were
made in the K'ang Hsi and later periods, and Pere d'Entrecolles,

writing in 1722, describes their manufacture, stating that steatite

and gypsum were used to form the white slip.^ The Ming specimens
are usually of heavier make and less graceful form, and distin-

guished by simplicity and strength of design, the backgrounds

being usually lustrous brown or different shades of blue. They

consist commonly of bottles, jars, flower pots, bulb bowls, dishes,
and narghili bowls, and many of them were clearly made for export
to Persia and India, where they are still to be found. On rare

examples the slip decoration is combined with passages of blue

and white.

There is little to guide us to the dating of these wares, and marks

are exceptional. ^ There is, however, a flower pot in the British

Museum with white design of chH-lin on a brown ground which has

the late Ming mark yiX fang chia ch'P ; and a specimen with an
Elizabethan metal mount was exhibited at the Burlington Fine
Arts Club in 1910.^ These are, no doubt, of Ching-te Chen make

;

but there is a curious specimen in the British Museum which seems

to be of provincial manufacture. It is a dish with slaty blue ground

1 See p. 196. * I have seen occasional specimens with the Wan Li mark.

» See vol. i., p. 218. * Cat., J 21.