Page 291 - 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 169

colours rather pale but of perfect purity. Such are the well-known
" birthday plates " with the reign mark of K'ang Hsi on the

—back and the birthday salutation in seal characters on the border :

wan shou wu chiang " a myriad longevities without ending ! " They
are reputed to have been made for the Emperor's sixtieth birthday

which fell in the year 1713, but the story is supported by no evidence

of any kind, and they would have been equally appropriate for any

Imperial birthday. The character of these wares is more suggestive

of the Yung Cheng period, and it is probable that they belong to

the extreme limit of the long reign of K'ang Hsi. To this period

then we shall assign these and the whole group of kindred porcelains,

the plates with designs similar to those of the " birthday plates,"

but without the inscribed border, the small eggshell plates with one

or two figures painted in the same delicate style, others with a single

spray of some flowering shrub almost Japanese in its daintiness,
and occasional bowls and vases with decoration of the same character.

See Plate 113.

For extreme delicacy of treatment is by no means a feature
of the K'ang Hsi famille verte in general, in which the Ming

spirit with its boldness and vigour still breathed. It is rather a
late development in the decadence of the ware, heralding the more

effeminate beauty of the famille rose, and were it not for the evidence

of the birthday plates I believe many connoisseurs would be tempted
to ascribe these delicate porcelains to a much later reign.

Such, however, is the evolution of the famille verte during the
sixty years of the K'ang Hsi period, from the strong colours and
forceful Ming-like designs of the earlier specimens to the mature

perfection of the splendid wares made about 1700, and thence by
a process of ultra-refinement to the later types in which breadth
of treatment gives place to prettiness and the strong thick enamels

to thinner washes of clear, dehcate tints. These thin transparent
colours continued in use; indeed, they are a feature of a special

type of enamelling which will be discussed with the Yung Cheng
wares ; but the pure famille verte may be said to have come to an
end with the last years of the reign of K'ang Hsi. Later reproductions

of course exist, for no style of decoration is ever wholly extinct
in Chinese art, but they are merely revivals of an old style, which
even before the end of the K'ang Hsi period had reached the stage
of transition to another family. The opaque enamels of the famille
rose palette had already begun to assert themselves. Timid intruders

—II