Page 146 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

8o Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

periods, whether the colours be laid on in broad undefined washes,
as on certain figures and on the " tiger skin " bowls and dishes, or

brushed over a design carefully outlined in brown or black pigment.

There is one species of the latter family with a ground of formal

wave pattern usually washed with green and studded with floating

plum blossoms, in which are galloping sea horses or symbols, or

both, reserved and washed with the remaining two colours, or with

a faintly greenish flux, almost colourless, which does duty for white.

This species is almost always described as Ming and with some
;

reason, for the sea wave and plum blossom pattern is mentioned

in the Wan Li lists as in polychrome combined with blue decora-

tion. But the danger of assuming a specimen to be Ming because
it exhibits a design which occurred on Ming porcelain is shown by

an ink pallet in the British Museum, which is dated in the thirty-

first year of K'ang Hsi, i.e. 1692. This important piece (Plate 94,

Fig. 2) is decorated in enamels on the biscuit over black out-

lines with the wave and plum blossom pattern, the same yellow

trellis diaper which appears on the base of the vase in Plate 97,

and other diaper patterns which occur on so many of the so-called

Ming figures. This piece is, in fact, a standing rebuke to those

careless classifiers who ascribe all on-biscuit enamel indiscriminately
to the Ming period, and I am strongly of opinion that most of the

dishes, 1 bowls, ewers, cups and saucers, and vases with the wave

and plum blossom pattern and horses, etc., in which a strong green

enamel gives the dominating tint, belong rather to the K'ang Hsi

period. The same kind of decoration is sometimes found applied

to glazed porcelain, as on Fig. 3 of Plate 79, a covered potiche-

shaped vase in the British Museum with the design of " jewel

mountains and sea waves," with floating blossoms, and ya pao^

symbols in green, yellow and white in an aubergine ground, sup-

plemented by a few plain rings in underglaze blue. The style of

this vase and the quality of the paste suggest that it really does

belong to the late Ming period.

The use of enamels over the glaze was greatly extended in the

Wan Li period, though practically all the types in vogue at this time

can be paralleled in the Chia Ching porcelain, and, indeed, have

been discussed under that heading. There is the red family in which

1 There is a whole case full of them in the celebrated Dresden collection, a fact
•which is strongly in favour of a K'ang Hsi origin for the group.

» Eight Precious Things. See p. 299.