Page 92 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

“True Beauty of Form and Chaste Embellishment” 77
indicate. Later in the nineteenth century, some collectors would acquire significant
numbers of monochromes but in 1860, these were still novel. 28
Since post-1860 more monochrome porcelains could be seen and acquired, it is
not surprising that in much of the art and ceramics literature published after that
date, commercial and otherwise, there are references to single-colored wares,
particularly “imperial yellow,” “crimson,” and “turquoise.” By the later 1870s, these
have been given their own classification, often with reference to a Summer Palace
provenance. In what would become the standard reference for connoisseurs of
“Oriental” ceramics after Marryat, A.W. Franks (1826–1897) created a subclassi -
fication for Chinese porcelains that he named “Single Coloured Glazes.” 29 Franks, a
keeper at the British Museum, was a pioneer in terms of object classifications having
essentially devised an entirely new approach to categorizing East Asian ceramics taxo -
nomically and technologically. He was inspired by the earlier attempts in French by
Julien and Jacquemart (1856; 1862), but clearly decided these were not entirely
appropriate or accurately descriptive of the material. In his catalogue he quite
specifically incorporates technical features into his classifications and these would
become standard thereafter. For example, with monochromes, his definition of them
as “glazes” was an important refinement of the descriptive language for such wares
and for porcelains in general. Previously, as we have seen, they were described as
“self-coloured” or confusingly as “coloured” porcelains. That Franks’ terminology
became standard in the later nineteenth century is evidenced by a catalogue of an
exhibition presented by the collectors’ group, the Burlington Fine Arts Club, in 1896.
Their exhibition, “Coloured Chinese Porcelain” included a large number of mono -
chrome pieces and its catalogue essay was written by Cosmo Monkhouse utilizing
Franks’ terminology and his approach to classification throughout: “In no class of
porcelain is the supremacy of the Chinese more complete than in that of the single
coloured glazes.” 30
Franks popularized a further subcategory of monochrome porcelains that was not
newly identified in his catalogue but was newly separated into a unique type or style
of ware: what he called Chinese Crackle Porcelain (class II, 67–97a). This referred
to crackled glazes, and while the term “crackle porcelain” was in use before Franks,
it was not used in a standardized way. It does not appear in Marryat’s 1850 survey
but it is mentioned in Fortune’s book of 1857 where he comments on: “what is called
old crackle porcelain by collectors. The Chinese have many kinds of this manufacture,
some of which are extremely rare and beautiful.” 31 Reports on what was on display
in the 1860s also mention crackle but use the term “old gray crackle” quite frequently,
and in association with the Summer Palace: “In the Count de Negroni’s collection,
which was exhibited in London in 1865, were specimens of the imperial yellow
porcelain—the rare old gray crackle, which, though it looks as if the glaze had been
damaged in the process of manufacture, is really produced by art.” 32 Negroni had
been a soldier in the French army, present during the sacking of the palace, and formed
a notable collection that was displayed in London. 33 The term “old gray crackle” is
repeated by Lawrence-Archer in 1875 in reference to what he defines as pre-Ming
pieces, also something not frequently seen or accurately identified outside China at
that time. 34 The pre-Ming examples were likely to be stonewares, not porcelain and
thus a different technological category of Chinese ceramics (see Figure 5.2). It was
Franks, therefore, who made this type of glaze a separate category of glazed porcelain
wares. Most of the “crackle” wares from the Summer Palace were porcelain and of