Page 190 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

no Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

cannot be older than 1650. I need hardly say that owners of Fukien
porcelain, particularly of the figures, habitually give themselves
the benefit of this ever present doubt, and that these pieces are
usually listed in sale catalogues as Ming or early Ming according
to taste. This attitude is fundamentally illogical, for the ware

is still made at the present day, and the Ming specimens in modern
collections are likely to be the exception, and not, as optimistic
owners would lead one to suppose, the rule. But in any case it
will be more convenient to deal with the ware as a whole in the

present chapter than to attempt the difficult task of treating its
different periods separately, even though the bulk of our examples

belong to the Ch'ing dynasty.

Te-hua porcelain can be conveniently studied in the British

Museum, where there is a fairly representative collection comprising

more than a hundred specimens. It includes a number of the

figures for which the factories were specially noted, of deities and

sages such as Kuan-yin, goddess of Mercy ; Kuan-yii, god of War
;

Bodhidharma, the Buddhist apostle; Manjusri, of the Buddhist

Trinity; Hsi-wang-mu, the Taoist queen of the west; the Taoist
Immortals ; besides small groups representing romantic or mytho-

logical subjects such as Wang Chih watching the two spirits of the

pole stars playing chess. But the favourite subject of the Te-hua
modeller was the beautiful and gracious figure of Kuan-yin, repre-
sented in various poses as standing on a cloud base with flowing
robes, seated in contemplation on a rocky pedestal, or enthroned

—between her two attributes, the dove which often carries a neck-
—lace of pearls and the vase of nectar, while at her feet on either

side stand two diminutive figures representing ^ her follower Lung
Nii (the dragon maid), holding a pearl, and the devoted comrade
of her earthly adventures Chen Tsai. The Kuan-yin of this
group is reputed to have been the daughter of a legendary
eastern King named Miao-chuang, but other accounts make the
deity a Chinese version of the Buddhist Avalokitesvara, and it
is certain that her representations as the Kuan-yin with eleven
heads and again with a " thousand " hands reflect Indian

traditions. In the latter manifestations the sex of the deity
is left in doubt, but there can be no question on that head

when she is represented with a babe in her arms as " Kuan-yin

the Maternal," to whom childless women pray, a figure strangely

1 According to de Groot, Annales du Musee Guinet, vol. xi., p. 195.