Page 149 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

Wan Li (1573-1619) 8i

the dominant colour is an iron red, either of curiously sticky appear-
ance and dark coral tint or with the surface dissolved in a lustrous
iridescence. Yellow, usually a dark impure colour, though some-
times washed on extremely thin and consequently light and trans-
parent, and transparent greens, which vary from leaf tint to emerald
and bluish greens, occur in insignificant quantity. This red family
is well illustrated by a splendid covered jar in the Salting Collection
(Plate 80), and by three marked specimens in the British Museum,
an ink screen, a bowl, and a circular stand. It also occurs on another
significant piece in the latter collection, a dish admirably copying
the Ming style but marked Shen te fang po ku chih ^ (antique made
for the Shen-te Hall), a palace mark of the Tao Kuang period
(1821-1850). It should be added that this colour scheme^ is fre-
quently seen on the coarsely made and roughly decorated jars and
dishes with designs of lions in peony scrolls, etc., no doubt made
in large quantities for export to India and Persia. They are not

uncommon to-day, and in spite of their obvious lack of finish they

possess certain decorative qualities, due chiefly to the mellow red,
which are not to be despised.

But the characteristic polychrome of the period, the Wan Li
wu ts^ai, combines enamelled decoration with underglaze blue, and

this again can be divided into two distinctive groups. One of these
is exemplified by Plate 81, an Imperial vase shaped after a bronze
model and of the same massive build as its fellow in blue and
white, which was described on p. 67. Here the underglaze blue is
supplemented by the green, the impure yellow and the sticky coral
red of the period, and the subject as on the blue and white example
consists of dragons and phoenixes among floral scrolls with borders
of rock and wave pattern. The object of the decorator seems to
have been to distract the eye from the underlying ware, as if he
were conscious of its relative inferiority, and the effect of this close
design, evenly divided between the blue and the enamels, is rather
checkered when viewed from a distance. But both form and

decoration are characteristic of the Wan Li Imperial vases, as

is shown by kindred specimens, notably by a tall vase in the
Pierpont Morgan Collection, of which the design is similar and the

1 See vol. i., p. 219.

* The fact that the enamellers' shops at Ching-t6 Chen to this day are known as
hung tien (red shops) points to the predominance of this red family in the early history

of enamelled decorations.

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