Page 457 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

Motives of the Decoration 281

with the K'ang Hsi decorators of blue and white and famille verte

porcelains. To instance a few types : the scene of the half-legendary
Yao with his cavalcade coming to greet the Emperor Shun who is
engaged, like the Roman Cincinnatus, in ploughing ; the episodes
of the three heroes of the Han dynasty, Chang Liang, Ch'en P'ing

and Han Hsin ^ ; the heroes of the romantic period of the Three

—Kingdoms (221 265 a.d.) whose stories may be compared with

those of our knights of the Round Table ; the stories of brigands

in the reign of Hui Tsung of the Sung dynasty.- The story of

WuSu Wu, the faithful minister of Han Ti, tending cattle in captivity

among the Hiung-nu, is depicted on a bowl in the British Museum,
and a dish in the same collection shows an emperor (perhaps Kao
Tsu, the first of the T'ang dynasty) surrounded by his captains.

Processional scenes and subjects illustrating the life and customs

of the times, peaceful domestic scenes with interiors of house or

garden peopled by women and children, are more common in the

famille rose period when the warlike tastes of the Manchus had already

Abeen softened by a long period of peace. civil procession and a

military procession sometimes balance each other on two vases,

the one being the wen p'ing (civil vase), and the other the wu p'ing

A(military vase). mock dragon-procession formed by children at

play is a not uncommon motive. Indeed playing children {wa wa)
,

have been from the earliest times a subject frequently and most

Asympathetically depicted on Chinese porcelain. historical child-

scene is that in which the boy Ssu-ma Kuang broke the huge fish

bowl with a stone to let out the water and save his drowning

companion.

There are many motives intended to appeal to the Chinese

literatus, and specially suited to ornament the furniture of the
writing table. Symposia of literary personages, for instance, make an

appropriate design for a brush pot, or again, the meeting of the

celebrated coteries, the Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove who

Uved in the third century, and the worthies of the Orchid Pavilion,

including the famous calligrapher, Wang Hsi-chih, who met in the

fourth century to drink wine, cap verses, and set their cups floatmg
down the " nine-bend river " (see Plate 104, Fig. 1). The Horace

1 When the names are known the incidents can usually be found in such works of

reference as Mayers' Chinese Reader's Manual, Giles's Chinese Biographical Dictionary,
and Anderson's Catalogue of Chinese and Japanese Pictures,

a Told in the Shui Hu Chuan; see 0. C. A., p. 570, a note in Bushell's excellent

chapter on Chinese decorative motives, of which free use has been made here.

—II 2 K