Page 66 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

26 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

tions in the text. Their chief interest Hes in their bearing on the
question of polychrome painting. In some cases the designs have
all the appearance of on-glaze enamels ; in others they suggest
transparent glazes or enamels on the biscuit. The colours used
are green, yellow and aubergine brown, the san is'ai or " three
colours," notwithstanding which the decoration is classed under

the general term wu ts'ai (lit. five colours), or polychrome. The
phrases used to describe the colouring include wu ts'ai, fu se, i'ien
yu, of which fu se^ means "applied colours," which might equally
suggest on-glaze enamels or on-biscuit colours, and fien yu- decidedly
suggests on-biscuit colouring. On the other hand, in one case ^
we are expressly told that the " colour of the glaze is lustrous white
and the painting upon it ^ consists of geese, etc.," an unequivocal

description of on-glaze painting.

Though the Ch* eng Hua mark is one of the commonest on Chinese
porcelain, genuine examples of Ch'eng Hua porcelain are virtually
unknown in Western collections. The Imperial wares of the period

Avere rare and highly valued in China in the sixteenth century,
and we can hardly hope to obtain them in Europe to-day ; but

there must be many survivors from the wares produced by the

private kilns at the time, and possibly some few examples are await-

ing identification in our collections. Unfortunately, the promis-

cuous use of the mark on later wares, the confused accounts of
the blue in the " blue and white," and the conflicting theories on

the polychrome decoration, have all helped to render identifications

difficult to make and easy to dispute. The covered cake box in
the Bushell collection, figured by Cosmo Monkhouse ^ as a Ch'eng
Hua specimen, is closely paralleled in make and style of decoration
by a beaker-shaped brush pot in the Franks Collection.^ Both are
delicately pencilled in pale blue ; both have a peculiar brown stain-
ing in parts of the glaze and a slight warp in the foot rim. In the
British Museum piece, however, the foot rim is grooved at the sides

^ ii'S.- Bushell has translated it " diffused colours," but /u is also used for " apply-
ing externally " in the medicinal sense, which seems specially appropriate here.

^ i%\% lit. "fill up (with) glaze," the colour of the glaze being specified in each
case. Cf. Ian ti Cien hua wu is'ai (blue ground filled up with polychrome painting), a
phrase used to describe the decoration of the barrel-shaped garden seats of the Hsiian
Te period. See p. 17.

' Fig. 63, a cup in form like the chicken cups (chi kang).
* 3t- _h c/i' i shang.
* Op. cit., Plate ii.
* See E. Dillon, Porcelain, Plate xviii.