Page 321 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

K'ang Hsi Monochromes 191

an imitative method belonging perhaps to the Yung Cheng period,
when old glazes and archaic shapes were reproduced with wonderful
skill and truth.

There is a solitary specimen of a high-fired glaze of pale buff
yellow colour in the British Museum, which perhaps should be ranked

with the yellow monochromes, though its appearance suggests an
exceptional effect of the pale tzu chin or " Nanking yellow " glaze.

And a rare vase in the Peters Collection has a minutely crackled

brownish yellow glaze clouded with dark olive in bold markings like

those of tortoiseshell.

Another Ming monochrome freely used in the K'ang Hsi period
is the lustrous brown (izu chin), formed like the celadon by mixing

ferruginous earth called tzu chin shih with the ordinary glaze.
Presumably the quantity of this material was greater in the brown

glaze than in the celadon. Pere d'Entrecolles describes this glaze
in its diverse shades of bronze, coffee and dead-leaf brown, but he
makes the curious error of proclaiming it a new invention in 1722.^

He also refers to its use on the exterior of white cups and as a ground
colour in which white panels were reserved. " On a cup or vase,"

he tells us, " which one wished to glaze with brown, a round or square
of damped paper was applied in one or two places ; after the glaze
had been laid on, the paper was peeled off, and the unglazed space
was painted in red or blue. This dry, the usual glaze was applied
to the reserve by blowing or by some other method. Some of the
potters fill the blank spaces with a ground of blue or black, with

a view to adding gilt designs after the first firing."
There were other methods of decorating these panels, and perhaps

the most familiar is that in which the early jamille rose enamels
were employed. This combination of brown ground with panels of
floral designs in thick opaque rose red, yellow, white and green
was a favourite with the Dutch exporters. In fact this ware is
still called Batavian, the old catalogue name derived from the
Dutch East Indian settlement of Batavia, which was an entrepot
for far-Eastern merchandise. The date of the Batavian porcelain
is clearly indicated by the transition enamels as late K'ang Hsi.

The tzu chin brown was used as a monochrome in all its various
shades from dark coffee colour to pale golden broNvn, and the lighter
and more transparent shades were sometimes laid over engraved
decoration. In the British Museum there are two candlesticks,

1 Second letter, section vi.