Page 61 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Song Ceramics

With its glowing, intense blue-
green glaze, its luminous, complex
interlaced ‘ice crackle’ pattern, the
present brush washer is a picture-
book example of Ru guanyao and
incarnates to perfection the ware’s
revered qualities.
stacked upside down, like Ding wares, and the method of firing
them, precariously balanced on rings or pads with three or five thin
pointed stilts, undoubtedly led to many failures. In addition, pieces
were generally fired more than once, first for the biscuit, and then at complex skills in elaborate compositions, they favoured natural
least once more for the glaze. Glaze crazing, originally an undesired
effect of the different contraction of body and glaze during the
cooling process, was first discovered as an asset on Ru ware; yet
an attractive crackle pattern refracting the light, like in mineral
formations occurring in nature, requires a happy coincidence of
circumstances and cannot be produced at will.
Ru ware evokes patriotic sentiments and nostalgic thoughts of
glorious eras of China’s past, such as the reign of the Northern
Song Emperor Huizong (r. 1101-1125), one of China’s greatest
imperial art enthusiasts and connoisseurs; or that of the Southern
Song (1127-1279) Emperor Gaozong (r. 1127-1162), who strove to
recreate some of the dynasty’s lost splendour in the new southern
capital Hangzhou, although this had just been intended as a
temporary abode for the court, after it had been forced to flee from
invading foreigners.
Ru official ware was made for only a very short period of time,
generally believed not to have exceeded twenty years, during the
reigns of the Northern Song Emperors Zhezong (r. 1086-1100)
and Huizong. The two decades from 1086 to 1106 put forward by
Chen Wanli (Chen 1951) are still largely accepted as the most likely
period of its production, even though some scholars have proposed
slight variations. Although we have no indication of any direct
imperial involvement in its creation, an imperial complaint about the
unglazed rims of the white Ding wares from Hebei apparently led to
an imperial order of green wares from Ruzhou in Henan instead, the
SONG — IMPORTANT CHINESE CERAMICS FROM THE LE CONG TANG COLLECTION
first direct commission of ceramics by an imperial court, which until
then had relied on tribute wares supplied by various manufactories.
A taste for a ware so extremely modest and unspectacular could
only evolve from a world view that propagated modesty and honesty
over ostentation and pretence. This taste in ceramics manifested
itself at a period, when the influential, idealist politician Wang Anshi
(1021-1086) postulated, and practised himself, an austere and
frugal lifestyle, and when amateur literati painters, whose concepts
differed dramatically from those of the art academy professionals,
pursued simplicity and artlessness in painting. Instead of displaying
and spontaneous depictions of humble motifs. As painters tried to
render the atmosphere of a landscape at a specific moment, at a
certain time of day or in certain weather conditions, potters were
admired for achieving glazes of a specific shade (“approaching
the blue of the sky after rain”), rather than for the shiny green
surface in general that in the Tang dynasty (618-907) had evoked
comparisons with jade. The non-precious ceramic material, the
variation of hues achieved in the firing and the accidental crackle
patterns appearing during cooling accorded perfectly with the new
endorsement of simplicity, subtlety and spontaneity in art – a form
of understatement and connoisseurship that appealed to China’s
elite. With their discerning criteria for judging proportion, glaze
structure, tonal range and tactility, Song connoisseurs in many
ways anticipated modern design movements and Song ceramics
still provide models of style and craftsmanship for potters today.
Although this taste was originally borne by the class of China’s
educated scholar-officials, its sophistication – at least as far as
ceramics were concerned – was fully embraced by the court.
With the loss of the northern part of their empire to the Jurchen
and the move of the capital to Hangzhou, the Song no longer had
access to either the Ru or the Ding kilns – a very visible reminder of
lost territory. Since no southern manufactory was in a position to
fill this lacuna, Emperor Gaozong, the first to rule out of Hangzhou,
had new official (guan) kilns set up right inside the capital to make
wares modelled on Ru ware for imperial use. It is exactly the glaze of
the present washer, with its intense colour and ‘broken ice’ crackle,
that some of the most admired guan wares copied (compare, for
example, some of the guan vessels in the National Palace Museum:
Taipei 2016, pls II-2, II-7, II-11 and 12, II-42 and 43).
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