Page 48 - J. P Morgan Collection of Chinese Art and Porcelain

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

House pieces of Ming porcelain with Elizabethan silver-

gilt mounts, in the collection at the South Kensington
Museum, were probably brought to Europe by one of

the early Spanish ships.

Modern history begins at this point, and need not
be discussed here. It only seems necessary to append

a list of the reigns of the emperors of the Ming dynasty,
followed by another of the Manchu Tartar line, which

supplanted the Ming in 1644, and is still reigning in

China.

An octagonal melon-shaped wine-pot in the South
Kensington Museum collection, decorated with Chinese

boys playing and conjuring, is mounted in Elizabethan
silver-gilt with hall-marks of the year 1585. The other

four interesting pieces, also with Elizabethan mounts,

belong to the Pierpont Morgan Collection, and are now

exhibited on loan at the South Kensington Museum.
They were shown at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in
1895, and are now described in the Catalogue of Blue

and IVhite Oriental Porcelain printed at the time, as

coming from Burghley House, where they had been seen

in the possession of the Cecil family from the time of

AQueen Elizabeth. ewer, artistically painted in soft

blue with birds and flowers, is mounted with a silver-

gilt base, six bands formed as wreaths with cherubs'
heads in relief, a band round the neck, with lip and
lid surmounted with three dolphins and a handle formed

of a mermaid, with a double-twisted tail, all in silver-

gilt. The last of the four pieces, a bowl, decorated
with floral sprays and imperial phoenixes pencilled in
typical Ming style, has the mark Wan-li (i 573-1619)

outlined under the foot in underglaze blue; the rest

are unmarked, but are unmistakable examples of the
ceramic style of the same reign.

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