Page 180 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

102 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

Gilding, which was apparently in use throughout ^ the Ming
period, was applied to the finished porcelain and fired in the muffle
kiln. The gold leaf, combined with one-tenth by weight of car-

bonate of lead, was mixed with gum and painted on with a brush.

The effect, as seen on the red and green bowls (Plate 74), was
light and filmy, and though the gold often has the unsubstantial
appearance of size-gilding, in reality it adheres firmly ^ and is not

easily scratched.

Of the other processes described in the T'ao shuo,^ embossed
(iui JH) decoration was effected by applying strips or shavings of
the body material and working them into form with a wet brush.
Some of the more delicate traceries, in scarcely perceptible relief,
are painted in white slip. Engraved {chui ff|) decoration was
effected by carving with an iron graving-tool on the body while
it was still soft. And so, too, with the openwork {ling lung), which
has already been described.^ All these processes were in use in
one form or another from the earliest reigns of the Ming dynasty,
and some of them, at any rate, have been encountered on the Sung
wares. High reliefs, such as the figures on the bowls described
on p. 74, would be separately modelled and " luted " on by means
of liquid clay ; and, as already noted, these reliefs were often left
in the biscuit state, though at times we find them covered with
coloured glazes. It is hardly necessary to add that the same pro-

cesses were applied to pottery, and that the reliefs took many

other forms besides figures, e.g. dragon designs, foliage, scrollwork,

symbols, etc.

The crackled glazes of the Sung period were still made, though
the Ming tendency was to substitute painted decoration for mono-
chrome ; and we have already noted the crackled blue and lavender
in which a second glaze is added to a grey white crackle. This
process is particularly noticeable in the " apple green " mono-
chromes (Plate 85), both of the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties, in which
a green overglaze itself uncrackled is washed on to a crackled stone
grey porcelain. The green is often carried down over the slightly
browned biscuit of the foot rim, forming a band of brown. But

1 See p. 2.

" The Tao lu (bk. ix., fol. 17 verso) quotes an infallible method for fixing the gold
on bowls so that it would never come off ; it seems to have consisted of mixing garlic
juice with the gold before painting and firing it in the ordinary way.

3 Loc. cit., and Bushell, 0. C. A., p. 268.
^ See p. 75.