Page 260 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

patronage to be found. Though not of the kind that a fastidious
scholar-painter would have sought, it did breathe new life into one
corner of the Chinese art world, just as the onslaught of Western
industrial civilisation was about to be unleashed on China.
CERAMICS The political disasters that so deeply affected the seventeenth-cen-
tury painters touched all Chinese society. None except perhaps
the poorest peasant was unaffected. Confusion, banditry, and civil
war, which had begun after the death of Wan-li in 1620 and was
not stilled until well into the reign of K'ang-hsi, wreaked havoc
on the ceramics industry at Ching-te-chen. Already before the end
of the Ming Dynasty the imperial wares had sharply declined both
in quality and quantity. The reign of T'icn-chi is noted for a
coarse, brittle blue and white prized in Japan as tenkei ware, but
marked pieces from his successor Ch'ung-cheng's era are very rare
and of poor quality. During these years China lost to Japan the
great market she had built up in Southeast Asia and Europe, and
she did not fully recover it again till Wu San-kuci had been de-
feated and South China brought once more under the control of
the central government. Consequently the so-called transitional
wares of the mid-seventeenth century, being for the most part
continuations of earlier styles, arc not always easy to identify. The
most characteristic of them are strongly built blue and whitejars,
bowls, and vases decorated with figures in landscapes, rocks and
flowers (especially the "tulip," possibly based on a European mo-
tif) in a thick violet glaze which Chinese collectors call "ghost's-
face blue" (kuei-mien-ch'ing) and Western connoisseurs "violets in
milk." Many of them were made primarily for export and, like
the export blue and white of Chia-ching and Wan-li, have a free-
dom of drawing that gives them considerable appeal.
CHING-TE-CHEN No abrupt change at Ching-te-chen followed the establishment of
the new dynasty. The imperial factory was still functioning, after
a fashion, in the 1 650s, and pieces produced during these unsettled
years represent, as we would expect, a continuation of the style of
the Wan-li period. Between 1673 and 1675, Kiangsi was laid waste
by Wu San-kuei's rebel horde, and in the latter year the imperial
factories at Ching-te-chen were destroyed. They were rebuilt a
few years later. In 1682 K'ang-hsi appointed as director of the Im-
perial Kilns Ts'ang Ying-hsiian. a secretary in the Imperial Parks
Department. Ts'ang, who arrived at Ching-te-chen early in the
following year, was the first of three great directors whose names
are linked to this supreme moment in the history of Ching-te-
chen. It is not known precisely when Ts'ang retired. In 1726 Yung-
cheng appointed Nien Hsi-yao, who in turn was succeeded in
1736 by his assistant T'ang Ying, who held the office until 1749 or
1753. Thus, Ts'ang's directorship corresponds roughly to the
K'ang-hsi period, Nicn's to Yung-chcng, and T'ang Ying's to the
first years of Ch'ien-lung.
Two Chinese works give us useful information on the Imperial
Kilns and their output, though both were written after the factory
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