Page 237 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

263 Wine vessel, tour, in the form of a
phoenix. Cloisonne enamel. Ch'ing
Dynasty, eighteenth century.

dishes there are stem cups, jars, and flattened pilgrim flasks, in
which an earlier tendency to crowd the surface with flowers,
waves, tendrils, and other motifs set in ogival panels has given
way to a delicate play of lotus scrolls, vines, or chrysanthemums
over a white surface. The influence of courtly flower painting on
porcelain decoration is very evident in the lovely bluc-and-white
flask illustrated here.
The blue and white of each reign has its own character, which
the connoisseur can readily recognise. The Hsuan-te style contin-
ued in the Ch'eng-hua era, though beside it there now appeared in
the so-called palace bowls a new style more delicate and less sure in
its drawing and consequently easier for the eighteenth-century
potter to imitate. In the Cheng-te period (1506-1521) there was a
great demand among the Moslem eunuchs at court for the so-
called Mohammedan wares, consisting mostly of brush rests,
lamps, boxes, and other articles for the writing-table, whose dec-
oration incorporated inscriptions in Persian or Arabic. The pieces
of the reign of Chia-ching (1522-1566) and Wan-li (1573-1620)
show a change from the old floral decoration to more naturalistic
scenes, while in the former reign the Taoist leanings of the court
made popular such auspicious subjects as pine trees, immortals,
cranes, and deer.
The imperial wares of the Wan-li period closely follow those of
Chia-ching; but there now begins a general decline in quality, the
result of mass production, rigidity in the requirements of the pal-
ace, and the exhaustion of the fine-quality clay-beds at Ching-tc-
chen. The most pleasing and vigorous blue and whites of the last
hundred years of the Ming are wares made in the numerous com-
mercial kilns. These are of two kinds: those made for domestic
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