Page 185 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

The Technique of the Ming Porcelain 105

this, so far from being a peculiarity of the Ming technique, is much

more conspicuous on the porcelains of the early eighteenth century^
when it was the constant practice to dress the foot rim of the
crackled wares with a brown ferruginous earth in imitation of the
" iron foot " of their Sung prototypes.

The work at the Imperial factory ^ was divided between twenty-
three departments, nine of which were occupied with accessories,,
such as the making of ropes and barrels, general carpentry, and
even boat building. Five separate departments were employed in
making the large bowls, the wine cups, the plates, the large round
dishes, and the tea cups ; another in preparing the " paste " or
body material, and another in making the " seggars " or fireclay
cases in which the ware was packed in the kiln. Five more were
occupied in the details of decoration, viz. the mark and seal depart-
ment, the department for engraving designs, the department for
sketching designs, the department for writing, and the department

for colouring.

It does not appear that the work of decoration was so minutely
subdivided in the Ming period as in later times, when we are told
that a piece of porcelain might pass through more than seventy
hands ; but it is clear, at least, that the outlining and filling in of
the designs were conducted in separate sheds. This is, indeed, self-
apparent from the Ming blue and white porcelains, the designs of
which are characterised by strong and clear outlines filled in with

flat washes of colour.

With regard to the actual designs, we are told that in the Ch'eng
Hua period they were drawn by the best artists at the Court, and

from another passage ^ it is clear that the practice of sending the
patterns from the palace continued in later reigns as well. Such
designs would no doubt accumulate, and probably they were col-
lected together from time to time and issued in the form of pattern
books. 2 Another method in which the painters of Ming blue and
white were served with patterns is related in the T^ao shuo * ;

" For painting in blue, the artists were collected each day at dawn
and at noon, and the colour for painting was distributed among

1 See Tao shuo, bk. iii., fol. 10 verso.

' See p. 55.

' e.g. The Chieh izu yuan ma chuan of the K'ang Hsi period, mentioned by Perzyn-

ski, Burlington Magazine, March, 1913, p. 310.
* Bushell's translation, op. cit., p. 71.

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