Page 255 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

K'ang Hsi Polychrome Porcelains 155

soft apple green of great beauty ; and the aubergine is less claret
coloured and often of a decidedly pinkish tone.

But perhaps the most distinctive feature of this san ts'ai of the
muffle kiln is the careful tracing of the design in a brown black
pigment on the biscuit. The transparent enamels are washed on
over these black outlines, and give appropriate colours without
obscuring the design which is already complete in itself.^ The same
brown black pigment - is also used over wide areas, laid on thickly
and washed with transparent green to form the fine green black
which is so highly prized. Like so much of the porcelain with coloured
ornament applied to the biscuit this large group has been indis-
criminately assigned to the Ming dynasty. The lack of documentary
evidence has made it difficult to combat this obvious fallacy, obvious
because the form and style of decoration of the finest specimens are
purely K'ang Hsi in taste and feeling; but, while fully recognising
that the scheme of decoration was not a new one, but had been in
use in the Ming porcelains, I would point a warning finger again ^
to the ink slab in the British Museum with its design of aubergine
plum blossoms on conventional green waves, its borders of lozenge
and hexagon diaper, all enamelled on the biscuit, and in the charac-
teristic st3de habitually described as Ming in sale catalogues, but
actually dated 1692. Another consideration is the quantity of
these pieces in the Dresden collection which consists mainly of
K'ang Hsi wares, and the presence of several examples (e.g. bamboo
vases such as Fig. 2 of Plate 95) in the rooms of the Charlotten-
burg Palace, w^hich were furnished mainly with presents made by
the British East India Company to Queen Sophia Charlotte (1668-

1705).

Marks are rare on this group, as a whole, though they occur fairly
frequently on the large vases, the commonest being the date mark

of the Ch'eng Hua period. No one would, however, seriously
argue a fifteenth century date from this mark which is far more
common than any other on K'ang Hsi porcelain ; and I have actually
seen the K'ang Hsi mark on one or two specimens which appeared
to be perfectly genuine. Curiously enough the K'ang Hsi mark

is more often a sign of a modern imitation, but this in view of the
perverse methods of marking Chinese porcelain is in itself evidence

1 The same technique is employed on some of the Japanese Kaga wares.
' Apparently derived from manganese.

3 See p. 80.