Page 170 - Chinese porcelains collected by Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft, Cincinnati, Ohio, by John Getz

A CATALOGUE OF

No. 45

Grcind Decorated Vase (one of a pair), large graceful oviform, with short
neck and cover: massive porcelain of fine white texture.

The painting is in the magnificent palette of "feimille rose," and is distributed with

great decorative skill over the entire surface, displaying a radiant landscape in combina-
tion with court life.

The central motive depicted includes an Imperial summer pavilion, with an emperor
(as in the other vase) seated and surrounded by personages of the court. The picture

shows attendants bearing trays with objects of tribute or for presentation; two scholars
are seen to the left of the Emperor, and probably await the bestowing of gifts, while
the Emperor continues his interrupted conversation with the young lady of his court.

The columns of the pavilion are glazed in yellow, supporting a crimson cornice that

is also decorated with a yellow border, and a rich roof (like a pagoda), with curling eaves,
glazed in blue to represent porcelcun; a crimson valance is also suspended from the
cornice, which, together with a rich rdling involving lotus-flowered ornaments, completes
the accessories.

The surrounding landscape is an imposing garden with gaily dressed young court
people, enjoying boating among the flowering lotus, and presents a pleasing picture of
animation and brilliant coloring. The composition is sustained by gorgeous flowering
peonies growing near silicic rocky masses, and by a stone-arched bridge that connects

with the pavilion, and underneath which boats are lazily drifting.

The pictorial scene is inclosed at the shoulder by a broad brocaded border with scallop-
pointed edging in deep rose, involving the lotus flower; this border is followed by another
munediately above, in a crimson honeycombed fret, with white reserved medallions in-

closing emblematic attributes.

The neck displays a white ground with fragments of terraces, including flowers and
herbage amid rocky peaks, all showang above a horizon-line at shoulder. The same
motive, on a white ground, is also shown below on the base, over which a blue band

of lotus palmation, with a crimson outline, overlaps the scene above.
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