Page 2 - Ming Porcelain Primer

THE ‘MING VASE’

‘Ming’ has almost always been synonymous with fine Ming porcelain, even for non-specialists.
So why the Ming vase, and not the Tang, Song, Yuan or Qing vase, which might be larger,
more fragile or more sumptuously decorated and even more valuable when sold at auction?

First of all, it should be stated that Ming is of course difficult to generalise; neither
a period of almost three centuries nor one feature alone can be characteristic of Ming
China, for there was reconstruction and expansionism, withdrawal, rigidity and stagnation
and, at the same time, new ideas and innovations in many areas of the country, all of which
influenced production.

In 1644, the Ming dynasty fell and the last emperor hanged himself. The Manchu,
the ethnically non-Chinese, conquered the capital, Beijing, and the new Qing dynasty was
subsequently founded. However, Ming culture did not vanish completely and continued
on into the new dynasty. A part of the elite, the yimin, the Ming loyalists, hoped for a
return of Ming rule and nostalgically upheld their former culture and lifestyle. The fine
porcelain produced in Jingdezhen for the Ming court continued to be appreciated by the
new rulers, and as early as the early eighteenth century the Qing court was ordering rep-
licas of the famous Ming-style porcelain. Under the new dynasty’s Qianlong emperor
(1736–1795), blue-and-white and enamelled porcelain in the ‘classical’ periods and styles
of Ming was ordered in large numbers for the imperial court and came to be synonymous
with excellence.

When the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911 and the Republic of China was founded,
the new elite and intellectuals no longer related to the now defunct Qing dynasty, but
rather to the Ming era. The late Ming literati, with their love for individualism and freedom,
became the role models for the ‘modern’ intellectuals, taking their lead from the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. Early twentieth-century feminists saw themselves in the tradi-
tion of late Ming, when highly educated women, members of the literati class and the
nouveau riche as well as courtesans wrote poetry, played music and painted. The Ming
dynasty had been founded by a former leader of secret societies who had expelled the
Mongols; now the nineteenth century too saw uprisings organised by covert associations,
which finally overthrew the Manchu Qing dynasty, leading to the founding of the republic.
As a manifestation of historical parallels, Sun Yatsen (1868–1925), the first president of
the new republic, visited the tombs of the Ming emperors in Nanjing and had his own
mausoleum built nearby.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, a time when the Chinese were working on
a revival of Ming traditions, the West developed a growing interest in China. The estab-
lishment of such academic disciplines as sinology and, later, art history, soon followed,
and the Ming dynasty played a crucial role in this, for it was during the Ming period that
the first large-scale encounters between China and the West were recorded, leaving a
deep impact on both sides. Ming consequently became regarded as the ‘real’ China, and
collectors and museums in America and Europe started to build up collections of Chinese
art. Although there were changes in taste, ‘Ming’ continued to be the representation of
authentic Chinese culture, not only in porcelain but also in architecture, furniture, gardens,
paintings and silks.

Ref.: Clunas 2007, pp. 209–230.
Further reading: Pope 1971; Clunas 2007; Pierson 2013.

Large vase (detail, no. 8).

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