Page 332 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

196 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

Aslip, in steatite,! or in fibrous gypsum under the glaze. fuller

relief was obtained by pressing in deeply cut moulds or by applying

strips and shavings of the body clay, and working them into designs

with a wet brush after the manner of the modern pate sur pate.

There are still higher reliefs in K'ang Hsi porcelain, figures, and
symbolical ornaments, formed separately in moulds and " luted "

on to the ware with liquid clay, but these generally appeared on

the enamelled wares, and are themselves coloured. The applied

reliefs on the white wares are usually in unglazed biscuit, and there

are, besides, pierced and channelled patterns, but these processes have

been fully described among the late Ming wares,^ and nothing further

need be said of them, except that they were employed with supreme

skill and refinement by the K'ang Hsi potters. Pere d'Entrecolles ^

—alludes to these perforated wares in the following passage : " They

make here (i.e. at Ching-te Chen) another kind of porcelain which

I have never yet seen. It is all pierced a jour like fretwork, and

inside is a cup to hold the liquid. The cup and the fretwork are all

in one piece." Wares of various kinds with solid inner lining and

pierced outer casing are not uncommon in Chinese porcelain and

pottery. Sometimes, however, the cups are completed without the

inner shell, like Fig. 2, of Plate 78, which could be fitted with a

silver lining if required to hold liquid.

Objects entirely biscuit are exceptional. There are, however,

two small Buddhistic figures, and two lions of this class in the

British Museum, and curiously enough both are stamped with potter's

marks, which is itself a rare occurrence on porcelain. The former

bear the name of Chang Ming-kao and the latter of Ch'en Mu-chih

(see vol. i., page 223 ). Bushell * tells us that the Chinese call biscuit

porcelain fan iz'u (turned porcelain), a quaint conception which

implies that the ware is turned inside out, as though the glaze

were inside, and the body out ; and this illusion is occasionally

^ See d'Entrecolles, loc. cit., sections iv. and v. After describing the preparation of
the steatite {hua shih) by mixing it with water, he continues : " Then they dip a brush
in the mixture and trace various designs on the porcelain, and when they are dry the

glaze is applied. When the ware is fired, these designs emerge in a white which differs
from that of the body. It is as though a faint mist had spread over the surface. The

white from hoa che {hua shih or steatite) is called ivory white, siam ya pe (hsiang ya
pai)." In the next section he describes another material used for white painting under
the glaze. This is shih kao, which has been identified with fibrous gypsum.

2 See p. 74.

3 First letter, Bushell, op. cit., p. 195.
* 0. C. A., p. 533.