Page 16 - Collection of Maureen Pilkington Hong Kong April 2017
P. 16
CHENGHUA IMPERIAL YELLOW
REGINA KRAHL
Porcelains of Chenghua mark and period (1465-87) – discovered any yellow Chenghua sherds. Liu motioned to his
whatever their shape, colour or design – are synonymous with assistants, who instantly brought out of storage a large crate
finest quality and utmost rarity. Chenghua porcelains with filled to the brim exclusively with broken pieces of yellow
yellow glaze are particularly rare. No more than some twenty Chenghua porcelain. When we looked at this incredulously,
monochrome yellow dishes of Chenghua mark and period, in he told us that in his Institute there were many such crates of
various sizes, with flared as well as straight rim, are recorded yellow sherds recovered from the Chenghua stratum of the
worldwide, all but three today in museum collections, and kiln site. This overwhelming quantity of deliberately discarded
only four dishes including the present one ever seem to have imperial yellow pieces impressively underlines the notion of
appeared at auction. the ultra-avid quality control and the severe restriction of
porcelains allowed to leave the imperial manufacturing site
Yellow porcelains, glazed in the imperial colour, are believed and delivered to the palace in Beijing during the reign of the
to have been of special importance for the imperial court. Chenghua Emperor.
A yellow glaze was already experimented with at the Ming
imperial kilns in the early 15th century, but heirloom examples As a characteristic example of Chenghua porcelain, the
are extremely rare. No yellow porcelains appear to have been present dish has the superb silky tactility of imperial
produced during the ‘interregnum’ period from 1436 to 1464, porcelains of this period that even a blind test reveals, which
when the imperial kilns are believed to have been largely is unsurpassed and was never equalled again in any other
inactive. Yellow porcelains reappeared in the Chenghua reign, period. Another typical feature, perhaps less intentional but
but the number of preserved yellow wares of Chenghua mark probably a natural consequence of the specific composition
and period of any shape is still very small. and firing technology of these wares, is the idiosyncratic,
slightly smoky appearance of the transparent glaze on the
Since yellow Chenghua porcelains are noticeably absent white base, which can equally be seen on the bases of the
from the publications of excavated material recovered from yellow Chenghua dishes in the National Palace Museum,
the imperial kiln site in Jingdezhen, Julian Thompson, on a Taipei, for example (see the references, Taipei 2003, listed
visit to Jingdezhen in the 1990s asked the then head of the below).
archaeological team there, Liu Xinyuan, whether he had
14 SOTHEBY’S 蘇富比
