Page 264 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

was discovered. Indeed, many Yung-cheng pieces had the reign
mark ground away so that they might be passed off as Sung when
they were illicitly sold out of the Palace Collection. Nicn's "nov-
elties" included the "tea-dust" glaze, made by blowing green en-
amel onto an iron, yellow-brown glaze, an improvement on the
exquisite pale blue glaze known in Europe as ctair-de-lune, and such
rococo effects as painting in ink black flecked with gold or in
greenish-blue flecked with red. Already in 1712 d'Entrecolles had
been asked by the officials at Ching-te-chen for curious European
objects which might be copied in porcelain and sent to court, and
during the Yung-cheng period—and increasingly under Ch'ien-
lung—this taste for extravagant forms and new effects was to ab-
sorb the energies of the potters at the cost of real refinement of
taste. Its most lamentable results can be seen in the decline of fa-
mille rose, which early in the Yung-cheng period had had an ex-
297 Double vase, t'ao-p'ing. Porcelain,
the inner vessel decorated in underglaze quisite delicacy; it was spoilt by the foreign demand for rich and
garish decoration, finally degenerating into the livid salmon-pink
blue; the outer, with pierced sides, in
I'm u jc enamels Ch'ing Dynasty,
of the nineteenth century.
Ch'ien-lung period.
CH'IEN-LUNG In point of sheer craftsmanship the Ch'ien-lung period is su-
PERIOD WARES preme, and the finest of the enamelled wares produced under the
directorship of T'ang Ying are unsurpassed. T'ang lived and
worked with his potters, had complete mastery of their tech-
niques, and was continually experimenting with new effects, re-
producing the colour and texture of silver, grained wood, lac-
quer, bronze, jade, mother-of-pearl, and even cloisonne\ He
copied Italian faience drug pots, Venetian glass, Limoges enamels,
and even Delft painted pottery and Japanese "old Imari" ware
which were themselves copies of late Ming blue and white. T'ang
Ying also reproduced all the familiar Sung wares (his rather glassy
copies of Lung-chiian celadon being particularly fine), while his
versions of the robust Canton wares were considered a great im-
provement on the originals. But the most beautiful of the porce-
lains produced under his direction are the enamelled eggshell ves-
sels and bowls such as the lovely lavender vase decorated with
mallow flowers and chrysanthemums and bearing a poem be-
lieved to be by T'ang Ying himself. In recent years, fashion has
swung away from these exquisite objects to the more free and vital
wares of T'ang and Sung, in which we can see and feel the touch
of the craftsman's hand, but nothing can surpass the finest of these
Ch'ien-lung pieces for sheer perfection of craftsmanship.
The influence of European taste on the decoration of Ching-te-
chen porcelain, which had been growing since the end of the
K'ang-hsi period, is nowhere more clearly seen than in a small and
choice group offamille rose enamelled pieces known as Ku-yiieh-
6
hsiian. Indeed, many of them are decorated with European
scenes, and even the Chinese flower motifs have a foreign quality
298 Vase. Porcelain decorated with in the realistic drawing, shading, and handling of perspective.
flowers \n famille rose enamels and a
They generally bear poems followed by red seals, while the nien-
poem by Tang Ying. Ch'ing Dynasty.
Ch'ien-lung period. hao on the base is in embossed enamel.
244