Page 244 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

148 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

of workmanship and technical perfection of the ware. The best-

known examples are thin, beautifully potted rice bowls, with

slightly everted rim, and a design of five-clawed Imperial dragons

traced with a point and filled in with a colour contrasting with

that of the ground, e.g. green on yellow, or green on aubergine,

all the possible changes being rung on the three colours. Being

Imperial wares these bowls are usually marked with the nien hao

of their period, but such is the trimness of their make that collectors

are tempted to regard them as specimens of a later reign. But here

again the Dresden collection gives important evidence, for it contains

a bowl of this class with dragons in a remarkable purplish black

colour (probably an accidental variety of the aubergine) in a yellow

ground. It bears the mark of the K'ang Hsi period.

—The application of similar plumbo-alcaline glazes to a commoner

type of porcelain is described by Pere d'Entrecolles ^ : " There

is a kind of coloured porcelain which is sold at a lower rate than

the enamelled ware just described. . . . The material required
for this work need not be so fine. Vessels which have already been

baked in the great furnace without glaze, and consequently white

and lustreless, are coloured by immersion in a bowl filled with the

colouring preparation if they are intended to be monochrome.

But if they are required to be polychrome like the objects called

hoam lou houan,'^ which are divided into kinds of panels, one green,

one yellow, etc., the colours are laid on with a large brush. This

is all that need be done to this type of porcelain, except that after

the firing a little vermilion is applied to certain parts such as the

beaks of birds, etc. This vermilion, however, is not fired, as it

would evaporate in the kiln, and consequently it does not last.

When the various colours have been applied, the porcelain is refired

in the great furnace with the other wares which have not yet been

baked but care is taken to place it at the bottom of the furnace
;

and below the vent-hole where the fire is less fierce ; otherwise

the great heat would destroy the colours."

In this interesting passage, written in 1722, we have a precise

^ Loc. cit., second letter, section xiv.

* Apparently huang lu huan, yellow and green (?) circles. But without the Chinese
characters it is impossible to say which huan is intended. The description seems
to apply to the " tiger skin " ware, where yellow, green and aubergine glazes have
been applied in large patches. Bushell (0. C. A., p 331) makes this expression refer
to the specimens with engraved designs in colour contrasting with the surrounding
ground, such as Fig, 1 of Plate 79 ; but this does not seem to suit the word huan.