Page 394 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

240 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

lining of the designs and another for filling them in, while the plain
blue rings were put on by the workman who finished the ware on
the polishing wheel, and the inscriptions, marks and seals were
added by skilful calligraphers. The blue material was now obtained
in the province of Chekiang, and close attention was paid to the
selection of the best mineral. There was one kind of blue " called
onion sprouts, which makes very clearly defined strokes, and does
not run in the fire, and this must be used for the most delicate
pieces." This latter colour is to be looked for on the small steatitic

porcelains and the fine eggshell cups.

In common with the other Ch'ien Lung types, the blue and white

vases are often of archaic bronze form, and decorated with bronze
patterns such as borders of stiff leaves, dragon feet and ogre heads.
Another favourite ornament is a close pattern of floral scrolls studded
with lotus or peony flowers, often finely drawn but inclined to be
small and fussy. These scrolls are commonly executed in the
blotchy blue described on p. 13, and the darker shades are often
thickly heaped up in palpable relief with a marked tendency to
run into drops. On the other hand, one sometimes finds the in-
dividual brush strokes, as it were, bitten into the porcelain body,
and almost suggesting scratched lines. Both peculiarities, the thick
fluescent blue and the deep brush strokes, are observable on a small

vase of unusually glassy porcelain in the Franks Collection. Two
other pieces in the same collection may be quoted. One is a tazza

or high-footed bowl with a band of Sanskrit characters and deep
borders of close lotus scrolls, very delicately drawn in a soft pure
blue, to which a heavily bubbled glaze has given a hazy appear-
ance. This piece (Plate 93, Fig. 1) has the six characters of the
Ch'ien Lung seal-mark in a single line inside the foot. The other
is a jar which bears the cyclical date corresponding to 1784. Like
the last, it has a decoration of Buddhistic import, viz. the four

characters %^M>'^ i'^^n chu en po (propitious waves from India),

each enclosed by formal cloud devices. It is painted in a soft
but rather opaque blue, and the glaze is again of bubbly texture.

In the commoner types of Ch'ien Lung blue and white, the
blue is usually of a dullish indigo tint, wanting in life and fire.
There is, in fact, none of the character of the K'ang Hsi ware ; the
broad washes, the clear trembling sapphire, and the subtle har-
mony existing between the glaze and blue, are all missing. More-
over, the decoration, with its careful brushwork and neat finish,