Page 358 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

212 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

field of the design appended, as a rule, to a stanza of verse or a des-
criptive sentence. This is a usual position for the signature of a

painter on silk or paper, and we can hardly be wrong in inferring that
Pai-shih was the artist whose designs were copied on the wares,
perhaps one who was specially employed to design for the enamellers,
rather than an actual pot-painter or enameller. The proper place
for the signature of the latter is underneath the ware, on the base
and here we find on a cup and saucer in the British Museum the
name apparently of the real decorator whose painting is not to be
distinguished from that on the piece with the Pai-shih signature,
just mentioned as in the same collection. Under the saucer (Plate
119, Fig. 2) is the seal Yii feng yang lin, i.e. Yang Lin of Yii-
feng, an old name for the town of K'un-shan ; and under the cup
is the seal Yu chai (quiet pavilion), which is no doubt the studio
name of Yang-lin.^ K'un-shan Hsien is situated between Su-chou
and Shanghai, in the province of Kiangsu, and we are to understand
that Yang-lin was either a native of K'un-shan or that he resided

—there more probably the former, for his work is typical of the

Canton enamellers. It is, however, probable enough that there
were decorating establishments working for the European markets
in the neighbourhood of Shanghai as well as at Canton, just as
there are still decorating kilns not only at Ching-te Chen but "at
the other towns on the river." ^

It is highly probable that the brushwork of the Canton enamellers,
like the enamels themselves, was copied at Ching-te Chen, and even

that some of the enamellers migrated thither. A tankard among

the armorial porcelain in the British Museum, bearing the arms of
Yorke and Cocks, combines a few touches of underglaze blue with
passages of famille rose decoration in the Canton style. The blue
can only have been applied at the place of manufacture, and as no
porcelain of this kind was actually made at Canton, it is evident
that the piece was made and decorated elsewhere (which can onl}^
mean at Ching-te Chen), unless we assume the improbable alternative
that the tankard travelled from the factory, bare save for a faintly
outlined shield with a saltire in blue, to be finished off at Canton.

Needless to say there is much Jamille rose porcelain in which

* These marks were discussed by Bushell in the Burlington Magazine, August and
September, 1906. They are figured on vol. i., pp. 219 and 223.

2 Quoted from a letter written to Sir WoUaston Franks by Mr. Arthur B. French,
who visited Ching-te Chen in 1882.