Page 177 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

The Technique of the Ming Porcelain 99

in the K'ang Hsi Encyclopaedia that the native mineral, when care-
fully prepared, was very like the Mohammedan blue in tint.

All these blues were used either for painting under the glaze or
for mixing with the glaze to form ground colours or monochromes,

which varied widely in tint, according to the quantity and quality

of the cobalt, from dark violet blue {chi ch'ing) through pale and

dark shades of the ordinary blue colour to slaty blue and lavender.

—Some of them notably the lavender and the dark violet blue

are often associated with crackle, being used as an overglaze cover-

ing a greyish white crackled porcelain. This treatment of the sur-

face is well illustrated by a small covered jar in the British Museum

with a dark violet blue apparently uncrackled but covering a

crackled glaze. Two lavender blue bowls in the Hippisley Collection
with the Cheng Te mark are similarly crackled. Other Ming blue
monochromes are a small pot found in Borneo and now in the
British Museum with a dark blue of the ordinary tint used in

painted wares, and a wine pot in the same collection with dragon

spout and handle of a peculiar slaty lavender tint strewn with

black specks, the colour evidently due to a strain of manganese

in the cobalt.

Next in importance to the blue is the underglaze red derived

from copper, which was discussed at length in connection with the
Hsiian Te porcelains. ^ Its various tints, described as hsien hung
(fresh red), pao shih hung (ruby red), and cinnabar bowls " red

as the sun," are, we may be sure, more or less accidental varieties

of the capricious copper red. The same mineral produced the

sang de bosuf, maroon and liver reds, and probably the peach bloom^

of the K'ang Hsi and later porcelains.

Other colours incorporated in the high-fired glaze in the Ming

period are the pea green (tou chHng) or celadon, and the lustrous

brown (tzu chin) which varied from coffee colour to that of old

gold. Both of these groups derived their tint from iron oxide,

carried in the medium of ferruginous earth. The use of two or more

of these coloured glazes on one piece is a type of polychrome which

was doubtless used on the Ming as on the later porcelains.

The glazes fired at a lower temperature, in the cooler parts of

the great kiln, and known for that reason as couleurs de demi-grand

feu, include turquoise {ts'ui se), made from a preparation of old

copper {ku Vung) and nitre ; bright yellow {chin huang), composed

1 See p. 10. 2 But see p. 177.