Page 405 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

Ch'ien Lung (1736-1795) 243

design employed in this large group. Contrasting the decoration
of his own time with that of the Ming porcelain, the author of the

Tao shuo,^ which was published in 1774, says : " Porcelain painted

in colours excelled in the Ming dynasty, the majority of the patterns
being derived from embroidery and brocaded satins, three or four
only out of each ten being from nature and copies of antiques. In
modern porcelain, out of ten designs you will get four of foreign
colouring, three taken from nature, two copies of antiques, one
from embroidery or satin brocade."

In their ordinary acceptation the terms are not mutually ex-
clusive, and the last three types might be, and indeed are, all
expressed in foreign colouring ; but presumably the writer refers
especially to that kind of " foreign colouring " which was directly
based on the Canton enamels and is illustrated in the ruby-back

eggshell dishes.

The designs taken from nature would include figure subjects
representing personages and interiors, landscapes, growing flowers
and fruit, and the like, good examples of which are shown on Plates
126 and 127. The one represents the "Hundred Flowers," the vase
being, as it were, one great bouquet and the flowers being drawn
naturalistically enough to be individually recognised. The other
recalls the celebrated picture of the "Hundred Deer" by the late

Ming artist, Wen Cheng-ming.-

The copies of antiques would comprise bronze patterns and
designs borrowed from old porcelain, examples of which are not
uncommon. And the brocade patterns, in spite of the low pro-
portion assigned to them in the T'ao shuo, occur in relatively large
numbers in Western collections. They mostly consist of flowers
or close floral scrolls in colour, and reserved in a monochrome ground
of yellow, blue, pink, etc. This is the characteristic Ch'ien Lung
scroll work which is used both in borders and over large areas such
as the exterior of a bowl or the body of a vase. The reserved pattern,
highly coloured and winding through a ground of solid opaque
enamel, suggests analogy with the scroll grounds of the contemporary
cloisonne enamel ; but this incidental likeness has nothing to do
with the question of " painting in fa lang style," which was dis-

^ See Bushell's translation, op. cit. p. 20.

2 Figured by L. Binyon, Painting in the Far East, first edition, Plate XIX. There
is a fine vase of late Ming blue and white porcelain with this design in the Dresden

collection.