Page 380 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

230 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

derived from cobaltiferous ore of manganese, applied like the iron
red without anj^ glassy flux. (2) The same pigment washed over

with a transparent green enamel. This is the iridescent greenish
black of the famille verte, and it continued in use along with the

famille rose colours in the Yung Cheng and Ch'ien Lung periods

and onwards to modern times. A(3) black enamel in which the

— —same elements manganese black and copper green are com-

pounded together. This is the modern ivu chin, of which a sample
in the Sevres Museum (from the collection of M. Itier) was described

by Julien^ as "noir mat; minerai de manganese cobaltifere et oxyde

de cuivre avec ceruse." It appears on modern Chinese porcelain

as a sticky greenish black enamel, inferior in depth and softness

to the old composite black of the famille verte ; but for all that,

this is the yang wu chin (foreign black) of the Yung Cheng and

Ch'ien Lung periods. In the days of T'ang Ying it was a far superior

Acolour. (4) mottled greenish black occurs as a monochrome

and as a ground colour with reserved discs enamelled with famille

rose colours on the exterior of two bowls in the British Museum,

both of which have the cyclical date, wu ch'en, under the base, in-

dicating the year 1748 or 1808, probably the latter. (5) An enamel

of similar texture but of a purplish black colour is used on a snuff

bottle in the same collection to surround a figure design in under-
glaze blue. This piece has the Yung Cheng mark in red, but from

its general character appears to be of later date.

In the list of T'ang's innovations there is yang wu chin (foreign
black), which is doubtless the same as the hsi yang wu chin (Euro-

pean black) of Hsieh Min's list. It is clear that this is something

different from the old green black of the famille verte porcelain, and
we can hardly be wrong in identifying it with the wu chin enamel

described above in No. 3. Compared with the original mirror
black wu chin glaze this enamel has a dull surface, and we can only
infer that the term wu chin had already lost its special sense of
metallic black, and was now used merely as a general term for

black.

Assuming this inference to be correct, the term yang is'ai wu
chin (foreign painting in a black ground) should mean simply famille
rose colours surrounded by a black enamel ground of the type of
either No. 2 or No. 3. It is, of course, possible that the wu chin

here is the old mirror black glaze on which enamelling in famille

^ La Porcelaine Chinoise, p. 216.