Page 221 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

K'ang Hsi Blue and White 133

bronzes, and of ogre-head designs from a similar source ; of suc-
cessive belts of arabesque scrolls and dragon designs covering cylin-
drical jars ; of a mosaic of small blossoms, or of network diapers
recalling the pattern of a crackled porcelain. The white on blue
process is constant in a well known decoration in which archaic
dragons, floral arabesques, roses or peonies are arranged in " admired
disorder " over the whole surface of a cylinder vase or a triple gourd,
as on Plate 91. Sometimes the roses occupy the greater part of the
design, and among them are small oval or round blank medallions,
which have earned for the pattern the name of " rose and ticket."

This type of ware is represented in almost every variety in the
Dresden collection, and there are examples of the " rose and ticket "
jars in the Porzellan-zimmer of the Charlottenburg Palace. Both
these collections are mainly composed of the export porcelain sent
from China in the last decades of the seventeenth century, and the

latter is practically limited to the presents made by the English
East India Company to Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia (1688-
1705). The white on blue patterns are also freely used in com-
bination with blue and white to form borders and to fill in the
ground between panels.

As for the blue on white designs, they are legion. There are the
old Ming favourites such as the Court scenes, historical and mytho-

logical subjects, pictorial designs, such as ladies looking at the

garden flowers by candlelight.^ There are landscapes after Sung and
Ming paintings, the usual dragon and phoenix patterns, animal,
bird, and fish designs, lions and mythical creatures, the familiar
group of a bird (either a phoenix or a golden pheasant) on a rock
beside which are peony, magnolia, and other flowering plants. Panel
decoration, too, is frequent, the panels sometimes petal-shaped and
emphasised by lightly moulded outlines, or again mirror-shaped,
circular, fan-shaped, leaf-shaped, oval, square, etc., and surrounded
by diapers and " white in blue " designs. The reserves are suitably
filled with figure subjects from romance, history, or family life,

mythical subjects such as the adventures of Taoist sages, the story

of Wang Chi watching the game of chess, Tung-fang So and his

peaches, or, if numerical sequences are needed, with the Four
Accomplishments (painting, calligraphy, music and chess), the

1 " Flaming silver candle lighting up rosy beauty," a Ch'eng Hua design (see p. 25)
but often found in K'ang Hsi porcelain, which usually has, by the way, the Ch'fing
Hua mark to keep up the associations.