Page 186 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

CHINESE ART.
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bequeathed by Mr. W. H. Cope. It is a gourd-shaped vase with
moulded, applied, and incised decoration, covered with a turquoise
blue glaze, with details added in black. It has an open-work top,
two elephant-head handles, archaic dragons worked in relief out-
side, and bands of scroll and leaf-pattern ; and is posed on a pen-
tagonal stand with openwork sides supported on monsters' heads
springing from a ring base. The open band of the neck, and the
railing round the stand are worked with the svasHka symbol
of infinity, and the general design of the vase is that sacred
to the food of the immortals in the celestial paradise of the
Taoists.
The glaze is really the master quality in porcelain, and some
of the other single-coloured glazes of the time require a word of
notice, although it is impossible to illustrate them without colours.
The brilliant sang de bcsuf of the earlier Lang Yao is now succeeded
by its derivatives of softer hue, the chiang ton hung, or " haricot
red," and the ping kuo ch'ing, or " apple green," of the Chinese,
which are known to us as feau de pi-che (peach-bloom) or crushed
strawberry (fraisi ecrasee) ; a new bright black {Hang hei) appears,
shot with purple, the " ravens-wing" glaze of collectors, which is
occasionally overlaid with a surface decoration pencilled in gold; as
is also the contemporary " Mazarin blue," and the soft-toned, coral-
red glaze derived from iron. Some of the most brilliant mono-
chromes of the time are plain washes of one of the enamel colours
used in polychrome decoration ; such as the green of the famille vcrte,
which supplies an intense shade of colour flashing with iridescent
hues known as shc-p'iUi or "snake-skin green." This last was a
monochrome used in the imperial factory under Ts'ang, together,
we are told, with an "eel-skin yellow " of brownish tint, turquoise,
imperial yellow, cucumber green, and brownish purple. The palace
services were either yellow, green, or purple, with white for use in
mourning, and five-clawed dragons were usually tooled in the paste
under the monochrome glazes.