Page 162 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

90 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

characteristics appear in the designs, which commonly consist of

— —a figure subject a warrior or sage and attendant in a mountain

scene bordered by a wall of rocks with pine trees and swirling mist,
drawn in a very mannered style and probably from some stock

pattern. Other common features are patches of herbage rendered
by pot-hook-like strokes, formal floral designs of a peculiar kind,

such as the tulip-like flower on the neck of Fig. 4 of Plate 82
;

the band of floral scroll work on the shoulder of the same piece is
also characteristic. In many of the forms, such as cylindrical vases
and beakers, the base is flat and unglazed, and reveals a good white
body, and European influence is apparent in some of the shapes,
such as the jugs and tankards.

As for the dating of this group, an early example of the style
of painting in the Salting Collection^ has a silver mount of the
early seventeenth century, and a tankard of typical German form
in the Hamburg Museum has a silver cover dated 1642. ^ There
is, besides, a curious piece in the British Museum, the decoration

of which has strong affinities to this group. It is a bottle with
flattened circular body and tall, tapering neck, with landscape and
figures on one side and on the other a European design copied from
the reverse of a Spanish dollar, and surrounded by a strap-work
border. The dollar, from a numismatic point of view, might have
been made equally well for Philip II. (1556-1598), Philip IV. (1621-
1665), or Charles II. (1665-1700), but there can be little doubt
from the style of the ware that it belonged to one of the two earlier

reigns.

A comparison of the ware and the blue of this group leads to

the placing of the fairly familiar type illustrated by Figs. 3 and 5
of Plate 82 in the same intermediate period, and similarly certain
specimens of polychrome, with underglaze blue and the usual
enamels, display the characteristic body and blue painting, and
even some of the decorative mannerisms. These specimens, par-
ticularly when of beaker form, are often finished off with a band
of ornament engraved under the glaze.

1 Figured in Monkhouse, op. cit., Fig. 2. The date of the mount is disputed, some

authorities placing it at the end of the sixteenth century.

A2 Figured by Perzynski, Burlington Magazine, March, 1913, vase of this style

with tulip design in the palace at Charlottenburg has a cyclical date in the decoration,

which represents 1639 or 1699 (probably the former) in our chronology.