Page 48 - The art of the Chinese potter By Hobson

THE ART OF THE CHINESE POTTER

or brownish purple), yellow, green, and an impure white. But it
should be added that the number of colours used was not always

strictly confined to three. Some of the earliest Ming polychromes

are decorated with this colour-scheme, and the designs are generally
outlined by threads of clay after the manner of the cloisonne enamel
on metal. Sometimes, too, the designs are carved or pierced in

openwork or framed by incised or pencilled outlines. The three-
colour ware with incised outlines is often found with the Cheng
Te mark, and that with outlines pencilled in brown with the Chia

Ching, and occasionally with the Ch'eng Hua, mark. All these

classes of polychrome are illustrated on Plates CX, CXVI, CXX,

etc. ; and all of them, except the last, are frequently found in pottery

as well as porcelain. The large group of porcelains with pencilled

designs covered with soft enamels applied direct to the biscuit,

though including a certain number of Ming specimens, belongs in

the main to the succeeding dynasty.
The other principal group of polychrome, that decorated with

soft enamels painted on the white glaze, has the generic name of
wu ts'ai, or five -colour ware, though here again the colours are not
strictly limited to the number implied. They include green of

several shades, yellow, tomato red, aubergine-purple, a composite
black (formed by a wash of transparent green or aubergine over a

dry brown pigment), and a turquoise green. This last is the usual
Ming substitute for a blue enamel ; but if a true blue colour was
desired, it was supplied by the ordinary cobalt-blue under the
glaze. The Ming yellow is generally brownish or of amber tint
the red, though thin, is opaque and tends to become iridescent.

The Ming potters were partial to openwork (ling lung) decoration
which we find on a large scale on the early wine-jars and barrel-

shaped seats. But the perfection of the pierced ornament is seen

on the delicate little bowls, made at the end of the Ming period

(see Plate CVII, Fig. i), with sides pierced in fret patterns of
unimagined fineness. This is the kuei kung (or devil's work) of
Chinese writers, and it assuredly needed an almost supernatural

skill to accomplish it. Combined with the ling lung work we often

find daintily modelled reliefs, figures, and other designs, in unglazed

biscuit. They are sometimes of microscopic fineness, at other
times of moderate size and standing out in full relief. The biscuit
in these porcelains was often overlaid with oil gilding applied on a

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