Page 160 - Bonhams Passkon and Philanthropy MET Mjuseum March 2024 Asia Week

A Group of Blue and White ‘Soft-Paste’ Ceramics

Lots 81 - 86

Very little, it appears, has been written about so-called Chinese material in the fired state is rarely translucent, while the European
soft-paste despite the plethora of examples produced in the type usually is. The Chinese seem to have begun using the material
eighteenth century. Still, the most illuminating text on the subject, in on its own in about 1700 and it continued into the late nineteenth
the English language anyway, was written almost fifty years ago by century, possibly even longer. Most pieces are small and include
Margaret Medley in The Chinese Potter, A practical history of Chinese boxes for seal paste as well as a variety of vases, small bottles,
ceramics, London, 1976, pp. 259-261 (in the 1999 reprint). On writing and miniatures. The decoration is often finely incised and almost
about white wares of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, invisible, but there are also many molded pieces which incorporate
she describes three categories, the first those of Jingdezhen high complex decoration in relief of dragons among waves, swastika
quality porcelain, second, the so-called ‘soft-paste’ group, and the diaper patterns, and stylized forms of the Chinese character shou,
third the Dehua blanc de Chine type. The first she notes include ‘longevity’, which enjoyed perennial popularity. The glaze is thin,
all shapes found in other wares but covered only with a perfectly sometimes uneven, and inclined to craze. A certain number of
colorless glaze of great brilliance. For the Dehua blanc de Chine pieces are decorated in underglaze blue painted in a finely penciled
group, which reached its apogee in the Kangxi era (1662-1722), she style quite unlike that used on the ordinary porcelain of the period.
mentions the quality of the impressive, often thickly potted porcelain,
most often in the form of figures with sensitive modelling, but also Regarding the addition of underglaze cobalt blue on soft-paste,
including a wide range of mostly small vessels. Moving to the so- it differs significantly from the finished result of cobalt blue on the
called soft-paste group, its probably best to quote her in her entirety regular porcelain output of Jingdezhen, where the design is hard
on the subject: edged. The painting on soft-paste indeed has a more transient
nature, a tendency to appear as if melting into the paste, leaving
Chinese ‘soft-paste’ must not be confused with European soft- a very ‘velvety’ or ‘silky’ finish which is further softened by the
paste as the two are completely different. The Chinese material is predilection of the glaze to finely crackle in an attractive unobtrusive
a natural white firing clay, probably of the pegmatite group of clay way. The glaze tends towards a milky-white tone, and it appears to
materials. The Chinese call it huashi, ‘slippery stone’ and it was take the application of cobalt especially well. The vessels themselves
sometimes added to poor quality porcelain, perhaps for its plastic are also lighter in weight. All these properties are extremely well
quality. The European soft-paste is a frit ware and thus artificially exhibited in this lovely group of ceramics that so obviously entranced
constituted of a glass frit combined with ball clay. The Chinese William Rhinelander Stewart.

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