Page 17 - Art of the Ming and Qing Dynasty by Johnathan Hay

reign can also be seen in the revival and further elaboration of its Daoist decorative

vocabulary. The court was by this time less able to attract first-rate painters (though Wu Bin
is a notable exception), but it continued to commission ceramics, lacquer, cloisonné and
textiles in enormous quantities. It followed the rest of elite society in a demand for luxury,
expressed in the decorative arts through intricate workmanship and rich ornamental effects.
Thus, the fashion for complex inlaid mother-of-pearl designs on lacquer objects reached its

height in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, at least partly under court
patronage (501). Such intricacy, it is worth noting, lends itself to a more intimate experience
of the object. In general, it is difficult to attribute specific luxury developments to court

initiative though the the court certainly provided a major market for such objects. While not
an index of court patronage per se, the inventory of the property of the immensely powerful
minister, Yan Song (1480-1565), made at the time of its confiscation in 1562 following Yan's
fall from power, provides astonishing testimony to the extravagance of life in and around the
court. Given that it was commissioned by his enemies, however, such listings in the

inventory as 121 paintings attributed to Lu Ji almost strain credulity.
Urban Luxury. The growing extravagance of elite life outside the court may similarly
be seen through luxury objects. Some were imports, as in the case of Japanese lacquer, which

first became well-known in China in this period: it remained widely admired and influential
into the nineteenth century. Others were Chinese-made, but nonetheless exotic. One striking
group of ceramics, for example, employs the so-called kinrande style of ceramic decoration,
in which underglaze blue designs are contrasted with strong-colored enamel areas
embellished with delicate gilt patterns (501). One common kinrande shape is a tall wine ewer

derived from Persian metalwork, and which is also found at this time in precious metals and
cloisonné. From court paintings we know this shape to have been current at the Wanli court,
but it was also a common export form, sent both west and east, and it has also been found in

domestic Chinese burials. In the fifteenth century, such a form would have found its way into
general circulation through the court, but in this period the process is more likely to have
been reversed.
The city of Suzhou offers us the best opportunity to track the growth of luxury in this
period. Its largest and most tangible expression is the Zhuozheng yuan, or Garden of the

Politics of an Awkward Man, built by Wang Xianchen, a former Censor who retired to
Suzhou around 1513. The garden's name alludes to a poem by the Jin poet Pan Yue, which
defines as the politics of an awkward man: "to cultivate one's garden to meet one's daily

needs." Despite its name, the garden was a vast affair. Its construction probably began as
early as the 1510s, but must have taken many years to complete. The garden was located in
the middle of the city, among streets and canals: there were no possibilities of "borrowed