Page 479 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

Motives of the Decoration 303

pattern or a diaper of spiral coils, and the more naturalistic " crested
wave " border, punctuated by conical rocks, has already been men-
tioned. There are besides narrow borders of zig-zag pattern with
diagonal hatching, and the ordinary diaper designs, in addition to
the familiar gadroons and arcaded borders.

The wider borders are usually borrowed from brocade patterns
with geometrical or floral ornament, broken by three or four oblong
panels containing symbols or sprays of flowers ; and when a similar
scheme is followed in some of the narrow edgings, the flowers are
unhesitatingly cut in half, as though the pattern were just a thin
strip taken from a piece of brocade.

A few special borders have been described on the pages dealing

with armorial porcelain, ^ among which were the well-known " rat
and vine " or " vine and squirrel " pattern (see Plate 119, Fig. 3),
reputed to have first appeared on a picture by the Sung artist,

Ming Yiian-chang.2 A rare border formed of red bats side by side

occurs on a few plates of fine porcelain which are usually assigned

to the K'ang Hsi period, but are probably much later.
On the whole, the Chinese border patterns are comparatively

few in number, being in fact a small selection of well-tried designs
admirably suited to fill the spaces required and to occupy the
positions assigned to them on the different porcelain forms.

As to the sources from which these and the other designs described
in this chapter were borrowed by the porcelain decorator, we can
only speak in general terms. Ancient bronze vessels, metal mirrors,
carved jades, stamped cakes of ink, embroideries, brocades, hand-
kerchiefs, and illustrated books no doubt provided the greater part
of them. The purely pictorial subjects would be based on the
paintings in silk and paper which the Chinese arrange in four chief

categories: (1) figures {jen wu), (2) landscape {shan shut), (3)
nature subjects {hua niao, lit. flowers and birds), and (4) mis-
cellaneous designs {tsa hua). Selections of desirable designs from
various sources were no doubt arranged in pattern books, and

issued to the porcelain painters.

1 See p. 258. * See Anderson, op. cit., No. 747