Page 161 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

The Last of the Mings 89

impure.^ From the same unflattering characteristics another dish
in the British Museum, with large patches of the three on-biscuit

— —colours green, yellow and aubergine may be recognised as of

the T'ien Ch'i make. This is a specimen of the so-called tiger skin

—ware, of which K'ang Hsi and later examples are known a ware

which, even in the best-finished specimens with underglaze engraved

designs, is more curious than beautiful. On the other hand, one of

the delicate bowls with biscuit figures in high relief, already

described (p. 75), proves that the potters of the T'ien Ch'i period

Awere still capable of skilful work when occasion demanded.

pair of wine cups in the British Museum, with freely drawn designs
of geese and rice plants in pale greyish blue under a greyish glaze,
are the solitary representatives of the Ch'ung Cheng mark.

In the absence of Imperial patronage, and with the inevitable
trade depression which followed in the wake of the fierce dynastic
struggle, it was fortunate for the Ching-te Chen potters that a
large trade with European countries was developing. The Portu-
guese and Spanish had already established trading connections

—with the Chinese, and the other Continental nations notably the
—Dutch were now serious competitors. The Dutch East India

Company was an extensive importer of blue and white porcelain,
and we have already discussed one type of blue and white which
figures frequently in the Dutch pictures of the seventeenth century.

There is another group of blue and white which can be definitely

assigned to this period of dynastic transition, between 1620-1662.

A comparative study of the various blue and white types had already

led to the placing of this ware in the middle of the seventeenth
century, and Mr. Perzynski, in those excellent articles ^ to which
we have already alluded, has set out the characteristics of this
ware at some length, with a series of illustrations which culminate
in a dated example. There will be no difficulty in finding a few
specimens of this type in any large collection of blue and white.
It is recognised by a bright blue of slightly violet tint under a glaze
often hazy with minute bubbles, which suggested to Mr. Perzynski
the picturesque simile of " violets in milk." Other more tangible

^ other saucers of this kind have a decoration of radiating floral sprays, and there

are bowls of a familiar type with small sprays engraved and filled in wth coloured
glazes in a ground of green or aubergine purple. Some of these have a rough biscuit

suggesting the late Ming period ; others of finer finish apparently belong to the K'ang
Hsi period. They often have indistinct seal marks, known as " shop marks," in blue.

" Burlinglon Magazine, December, 1910, p. 169, and March, 1913, p. 311.

—II