Page 192 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

112 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

parrot, mostly fitted with tubes to hold incense sticks ; and there
are a pair of well modelled figures of Chou dogs.

As for the vessels of Te-hua porcelain, they consist chiefly of
incense vases and incense burners, libation cups shaped after bronze
or rhinoceros horn models, brush pots, wine cups, water vessels
for the study table and the like (often beautifully modelled in the
form of lotus leaves or flowers), boxes, tea and wine pots, cups
and bowls, and more rarely vases.

An extensive trade was done with the European merchants,
whose influence is apparent in many of the wares, such as coffee
cups with handles, mugs of cylindrical form or globular with straight
ribbed necks in German style, and "barber-surgeons' bowls" with

flat pierced handles copied from silver models. Indeed, the super-
ficially European appearance of some of these pieces has led
serious students to mistake them for early Meissen porcelain and
even for that nebulous porcelain supposed to have been made by
John Dwight, of Fulham, at the end of the seventeenth century.
Pere d'Entrecolles ^ incidentally mentions the fact that some
Ching-te Chen potters had in the past removed to Fukien in the
hope of making profits out of the European traders at Amoy,
and that they had taken their plant and even their materials
with them, but that the enterprise was a failure.

Conversely, the influence of the Te-hua wares is obvious in

many of the early European porcelains, such as those made at Meis-

sen, St. Cloud, Bow, and Chelsea, which were often closely modelled
on the Fukien white. There is, indeed, a striking similarity between
the creamy soft-paste porcelain of St. Cloud and the creamy variety
of the blanc de chine, both having the same mellow, melting appear-
ance in the glaze.

It would be possible to guess from these European copies, if
we had no other means, the character of the Te-hua porcelain of
the K'ang Hsi period with its quaintly moulded forms, its relief
decoration of prunus sprigs, figures of Immortals, deer, etc., the
only conspicuously absent type being the incised ^ ornament which
was unsuited to the European ware. But there is no lack of actual

1 In the letter dated from Jao Chou, September, 1712, loc. cit.
* Incised designs on Fukien wares consist of the ordinary decoration etched in the
body of the ware and of inscriptions which have evidently been cut through the glaze
before it was fired. The latter often occur on wine cups, and are usually poetical
sentiments or aphorisms, e.g. " In business be pure as the wind " ; " Amidst the green
wine cups we rejoice."