Page 26 - Ming Porcelain Auction March 14, 2017 Sotheby's, NYC

24 SOTHEBY’S NEW YORK 14 MARCH 2017 MING: THE INTERVENTION OF IMPERIAL TASTE

IMMACULATE LIKE PILED-UP SNOW

REGINA KRAHL

W hite porcelain was of special signi cance for the court during ( 1989
the Yongle reign (1403-24) and this vessel represents one of 35
the classic styles commissioned from the imperial kilns in 13)
Jingdezhen. The present piece is remarkable for its particularly ne potting 2007
and its smooth and tactile glaze and illustrates the phenomenal advances
made by Jingdezhen’s potters, since porcelains began to be made there
o cially in the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368).

Monochrome white wares were so important in the Yongle period that a special
glaze of smooth, creamy appearance was developed to create a distinctive
monochrome white style as against porcelain that had been left undecorated.
What has become known as tianbai, ‘sweet white’, is a glaze that has shed the
bluish tinge of the earlier Jingdezhen qingbai (‘bluish-white’) wares, is less
opaque than the earlier shufu wares, and has a richer, more luscious presence
than contemporary glazes used over underglaze-blue designs, which were
primarily meant to be invisible so as not to obscure the blue decoration. The
pure white porcelain, which is not unlike porcelains we are using today, resulted
from the combination of a kaolin-rich paste with very low iron and titanium
content and a glaze containing mainly glaze stone and no glaze ash.

The term tianbai was apparently coined by Huang Yizheng, a writer of the
Wanli period (1573-1620) in his Shiwu ganzhu (‘Purple Pearl [memory bead]
for Remembering Things’) of 1591, which discusses a range of topics including
di erent types of tea. In this book he characterizes the glaze, which he thought
was common both in the Yongle and Xuande (1426-1435) periods, as “white like
congealed fat, immaculate like piled-up snow” (Imperial Porcelain of the Yongle
and Xuande Periods Excavated from the Site of the Ming Imperial Factory at
Jingdezhen, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1989, p. 35; and Zhongguo
Guojia Bowuguan, ed., Zhongguo Guojia Bowuguan guancang wenwu yanjiu
congshu/Studies on the Collections of the National Museum of China. Ciqi juan:
Mingdai [Porcelain section: Ming dynasty], Shanghai, 2007, p. 13).

Although the majority of Yongle nds at the Ming imperial kiln site in Jingdezhen
are apparently ‘sweet white’ wares (in two consecutive Yongle strata at the
eastern section of Zhushan Zhonglu in Jingdezhen city over 98%), preserved