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CHINESE PORCELAIN
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS WITH CHINESE MS. TEXT
BY

HSIANG YUAN-P'IEN
TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED
BY

STEPHEN W. BUSHELL,

C.M.G., M.D.

LATE PHYSICIAN TO H.M. LEGATION, PEKING

EIGHTY-THREE COLOURED PLATES

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1908

HENRY FROWDE,

M.A.

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON, EDINBURGH

NEW YORK AND TORONTO

Ix the romanization of Chinese characters Sir

Thomas Wade's scheme

of orthography has

been followed here.

It is

the system of transliteration which has been adopted

by Professor

Giles in his large Chinese Dictionary, and by Mr. Goodrich in his invaluable Pocket Dictionary

and Peking
is
tz,

Syllabary, and

it is

now very

generally accepted by Chinese scholars.

The consonants

are generally to be pronounced as in English, with the exception

s

of/ which
k,p,
t,

nearly the r&nc\\j mjaimc, the English

are either unaspirated or aspirated.

m fusion

or s in brazier.

The

initials ch,

ts,

which intervenes between them and the vowel following is indicated by an apostrophe in preference to an h, lest the English reader should pronounce ph as in triumph, th as in month, and so on. To pronounce clia, drop the italicized letters in 7nuch-ha.rm, for fa, drop the italics in hit-hard. The initial hs, where a slight aspirant precedes and modifies the sibilant, is a peculiar sound of the Peking mandarin dialect which can only be acquired by practice. The vowels and diphthongs are to be pronounced as in Italian, in accordance with the
aspirated, the aspirate

When

following table.

Vowel Symbols.
a
e e i

Webster's System.
d
e
e i-e t

English Value.
a as

m father,

e as \x\yet. e as in fern,
i

as in marine,

ih

i as in pin.

o as in

loi-d.

u u
it

u
i or

u as
ft

in

prime.

as in

German
i

Miinchcn.

between

in bit

and u

in shut.

The
English.

last

vowel sound
thus,
ai,

it,

which only occurs with the

is

initials ss, tz, tz,

has no equivalent in

In the diphthongal sounds each of the vowels should be separatel}' pronounced in the
;

Italian fashion

nearly our aye,

;

better represented

by the

Italian di, in hdi,

amdi;

ia,

by the Italian words of the

into

ia \n

piazza

ie is

pronounced as

in the Italian siesta, niente, &c.

In speaking, the
differentiated

limited vocabulary of about five

hundred monosyllabic sounds are

four tones, or musical intonations, but these

may be

disregarded

in

writing, although

all-important colloquially.

INTRODUCTION
The
work
into
illustrated

manuscript catalogue reproduced

in

the following pages, the

of a celebrated Chinese connoisseur of the sixteenth century of our era,

came

bound in the was shown at It was described the time to the Peking Oriental Society, and excited much interest. in a paper read before the Society,' and subsequently prepared for publication and brought to England for the purpose. But the valuable Chinese album, together with my own poor notes on the subject, was burned up in the disastrous fire at
possession

my

more than twenty years

ago.

The

original,

ordinary Chinese fashion in four volumes between rosewood boards,

Whiteley's Repository

in 1887.

It

only remains for

me

to state, in a

few words,

how, by a happy chance, the loss has not been altogether irretrievable. The album, before it was brought to my notice, had been taken to His Excellency M. von Brandt, a well-known authority on Far Eastern subjects, who was then

German
outright,

Minister at Peking.
art,

Recognizing

its

importance as a document

in

the

history of Chinese ceramic

Herr von Brandt, although he declined to bu}^ it commissioned a Chinese artist named Li Teng-yuan to make a careful copy
said Chinese artist, a protege of the Lazarist Fathers at Peking,

of

it.

The

made

at

the

same time a
since,

duplicate copy for his

doubtless,

and has

own use, with illustrations and text complete, executed many another for European and American
I

collectors, as well as for his native clientele.

from him the present copy on

artist

my
34),

return to
in the

was fortunate in being able to secure Peking, which was executed, as the
(a. d.

notes in the preface

(p.

15th year

1888)

of the

reigning

emperor Kuang Hsu. My friend Captain F. Brinkley must also have acquired a copy from the same source, to supply eleven of the coloured illustrations to his learned disquisition on the keramic art of China'.- Our clever and versatile Chinese artist is the author, as well, of most of the quaint illustrations in Monseigneur A. F'avier's attractive work on Peking,-' several of which he has evidently culled, although unacknowledged, from the old porcelain album. I have learned so much myself from the water-colour pictures of the old artist Hsiang Yuan-p'ien, and from his current descriptions of the pieces figured by him in
'

Porcelain before the Present Dyby S. W. Bushell, M.D. (Extract from ih^t Journal of the Peking Oriental Society). Peking,
'

'Chinese

1903-4
'

(vol. ix).

nasty,'

Peking,

Histoire

Favier.

Peking,

par Alph. et Description, Imprimerie des Lazaristes au

Pei-t'ang Press, 1886.

^

Pe-t'ang, 1897.
in

Japan and China,

12

volumes.

London,

6
his book, that
I

CHINESE PORCELAIN
am

convinced that no apology is needed for introducing the worthy His soft colours were faded, it is true, but virtuoso to a wider circle of admirers. their restoration has been materially aided by many details in the descriptive passages, although these occasionally strike one as almost too enthusiastic in their
tone.

Some

of the tones, at

first sight,

may shock

one's preconceived notions, but

further research has generally established their high probability, until there seems no room left for cavil. The many requests that I have received, in print and in
writing, to
fulfil

an old promise
I

to publish the

work

in its entirety,

embolden me
its

to

hope
of the

for a favourable reception.

To

the courteous writer of one, Mr. C. F. Bell,

Ashmolean Museum,
in

am

very much indebted for securing

appearance

under such favourable auspices from the Clarendon Press.

Peking by a curio dealer from the library of the palace of the hereditary Princes of Yi. This palace was famous for its collections of ancient bronzes and porcelain, which were being dispersed at the time, as the fortune of the family was at a low ebb, and they were also the source of the peach-bloom and crushed-strawberry vases which

The album,

four volumes,

was brought

to

me

in

created such a furore in the United States about this time.^

The founder

of this

hereditary line of princes was Yun-hsiang, the thirteenth son of the emperor K'ang
Hsi,
his

who was born in 1686, and brother Yung Cheng. T'ang

Ching-te-chen,
refers

died

in

the eighth year,

1730, of the reign of

Ying,
to
this

the celebrated director of the imperial prince

as

potteries at

having personally conveyed

to himself the

emperor's

commands
in

before he (T'ang Ying) started to take up

the

duties

of his

new

post

the year 1723,- so that the

we may

gather that the

development of the ceramic art. After Yun-hsiang's death the hereditary rank of imperial prince (Ch'in Wang) was conferred upon his descendants, a unique honour, as it is the rule in China for each succeeding generation of the imperial blood to descend one step in the scale of nobility till they become commoners, except for the privilege of wearing yellow girdles. His lineal descendant in the fifth generation was the notorious Prince of Yi named Tsai Yuan, to whom the empress-regent sent a silken cord in 1861, so that he might expiate by his suicide his mismanagement of the Anglo-French war with China. As an additional punishment his sons were passed over and the princedom was conferred upon a distant scion of the house, in consideration of the
prince took a personal interest in
services of his ancestors.

The new

prince

is

reported to have taken to dissipated

ways

collections

title
^

he grew up, and to have squandered the ancestral treasures and under his control. But it is time to proceed to a short analysis of the contents of the album. The is L'l taiming tzu tUi p'u [Illustrated Description of Celebrated Porcelain of Different
since

Cf. Catalogue of the

Art

Collection

formed by
1886. topo-

graphy of the province of Kiangsi, book

fol.

cxiii,

the late
'

Mrs.

Mary f Morgan, New York,

t'ling
chili,

10.

Cf.

Chiang-hsi

the

official

INTRODUCTION
Dynasties).
It

7
pieces
selected

contains altogether figures of eighty-three

by the

author, as he tells us,

friends,
to
illustrate

from his own collection, and from the collections of his the various ceramic productions of China that were most

highly appreciated at the time he wrotd, which was more than three hundred years ago. The eighty-three pieces, classified by him in order according to the

use they were intended to serve, are somewhat arbitrarily arranged in ten sections, each section being provided with a table of contents, containing the several

headings attached to the individual pieces.

exact size of the original, unless
it

The

figures,
in

be stated otherwise

drawn generally of the the description, were all

a writer.

coloured by hand

in

the characteristically soft water-colours of the period.

artist

author Hsiang Yuan-p'ien indeed was an

as well as

The name His

'

appears in the imperial cyclopaedia of celebrated calligraphists and painters,' under Hsiang both categories. short biography in Book XLIII, fol. 27, 28, says

Yuan-p'ien, styled Tzu-ching, a native of Tsui-li (an ancient

Chia-hsing-fu, in

name

of Chia-ho,

now

the province of Chekiang), was fond of collecting rubbings from

ancient inscriptions on

His literary

title

stone and metal, as well as paintings of famous artists.' was Mo lin clii't sliih, i.e. 'retired scholar of Mo-lin.' In Book

LVII,

fol.

8,

of the cyclopaedia, his

is

name

is

given again

among

the artists of the

Ming

dynasty, and he

characterized as a clever painter of landscapes with old

trees, as well as of the

flowering plum and of orchids.

He

flourished in the second

and he is often referred to in appreciative terms by contemporary scholars writing on art subjects. A certificate written by his nephew Hsiang Tc-yii on one of his pictures is dated the first day of the eighth moon of the cyclical year kue'i ssii, in the reign of Wan Li, which is a. d. 1593.
half of the sixteenth century of our era,

on another of his pictures is quoted in the cyclopaedia (Book LXXXVII) as written by the celebrated artist Tung Ch'i-ch'ang (a. d. 1555-1631), who poses as a friend and contemporary of Hsiang Sheng-mu, also an artist of repute, who was a grandson of the author of our catalogue. In the great bibliographical cyclopaedia of Ch'ien Lung,^ Hsiang Yuan-p'ien is referred to as 'the most extensive collector of manuscripts and pictures of his time and it is added that even in the present day art critics rely on his favourite The seal is appended seal of Mo-lin to distinguish between the true and false'. to the preface in our catalogue in the form Mo lin shan jen, i.e. 'A dweller in the hills at Mo-lin.' The same seal,* by the way, is to be found on the famous picture of the fourth-century artist Ku K'ai-chih, now in the British Museum, which
second laudatory
certificate
'

',

'

Ch'iH

t/iig

P'ci wai

cliai

Shu hua p'n, published

other
particulars,
(p.

'

Ch'in
1 1,

tmg

ssti

k'n di'iian sliu tsitiig

iiiu,

Book

in

TOO books by an imperial commission in 1708.

CXI
*

fol. 9.

For
^

Chinese
Cf.

title

and

see

Illustrated in the Victoria

Bushell's Oriental Ceramic

Prof.

Art

647).

Handbook of Chinese
(Vol.
ii,

Art,

and Albert Museum by S. W. Bushel!

Giles's

Chinese

Biographical Die-

Fig. 125).

tionary, p. 790.

CHINESE PORCELAIN

has been so well described by Mr. Laurence Binyon in the Burlington Magazine, January, 1904. There is another supposed relic of our author in the Franks
Collection at the British

Museum, which

is

described

as a flask-shaped bottle, with

;

on each two handles, 2k in. high, of Chinese porcelain, coarsely painted in blue face a branch of peach. It has a carved stand, and is contained in a case of hard wood lined with silk on the lid of the box is engraved in fine characters, Hsuan tzii pao yiteh p'ing: 'Precious moon-shaped vase of Hsiian-te (1426-35) porcelain,' followed by a cutting of the name Tzit-ching, which, as we have seen above, is Hsiang Yuan-p'ien's peculiar title, or hao. It is especially interesting to find it here, attesting the date of what purports to be a specimen of early Ming blue and white porcelain. Hsiang Yuan-p'ien was a native of Chia-hsing-fu, a rich and ancient city, situated on the banks of the Grand Canal, about midway between Suchou and Hangchou. The latter are represented in a well-known popular rhyme as two paragon cities

'

Shang yii t'ien faug Hsia yu Sii Hang. Su and Hang, so rich and

fair.

May
The
Kingsai,
beauties of
it

well with Paradise compare.' are celebrated

Hangchou
'

by Marco Polo, under the name of

'

and

it

visited,

having been the imperial capital of the latter days of the Sung, must have been full of the relics of that dynasty. The Chinese author besides, Nanking, the capital of the early Ming dynasty, and Peking, the

imperial capital of his

in

own

day, and he figures pieces from important collections

both of these

cities.

The book opens with

a short preface

{/isu}

signed by Hsiang Yuan-p'ien, styled

Tzu-ching, of Chia-ho (Chia-hsing-fu), and sealed in vermilion ink with two of his seals inscribed in archaic script. The preface begins with a succinct, but masterly,

sketch of the history of the ceramic craft in China, passing rapidly over the earlier times, because he knows of no actual specimens of the art that can be certainly

which they call tz'u, as a hard, (t'ao), and distinguish it by the clear resonant note which it gives out on percussion, and by the test that it cannot be scratched with a knife. They do not lay so much stress as we do on the whiteness of the paste, nor on its perfect translucency. Porcelain was certainly invented in China. The place of its invention was probably Ching-te-chen, at which place we are told in the annals of its parent city, Fou-liang-hsien, mines of white kaolinic clay have been worked since the Han dynasty, which reigned from b. c. 202 to a. d. 220.
critics define porcelain,

referred to them.

Chinese

compact, fine-grained pottery

'

Catalogue of Oriental Porcelain and Pottery, by A.

W.

Franks (No.

746J.

INTRODUCTION
The word
tz'ti

9
dynasty, and Mr. Hippisley'
of that

first

came

into use during the

Han

plausibly takes this coining of a

new word

to designate the production

age to be a strong argument in favour of the early date. But others, more sceptical, ask to handle actual pieces of translucent body that can be certainly referred to The Chinese themselves confess that before the beginning of the T'ang the period. dynasty, early in the seventh century of our era, there are no criteria at hand to form an opinion. The official annals of Fou-liang referred to above record that
at

this

time T'ao Yu, a native of Hsin-p'ing (an old

far as the capital of the

name

of Fou-liang), carried

his porcelain as

empire (now
(a. d.

Si-an-fu),

and offered

it

to

the emperor under the

name

of 'imitation jade ware'.

The same book

records

that in the fourth year of the said reign

621) an imperial decree

was issued

ordering the potters of Hsin-p'ing to

use of the court.

make

a supply of porcelain utensils for the

The ceramic ware produced

levigated
paste,

at

this

time

is

described to have been of finely

thin
'

temporary name of been really porcelain, taken into consideration with the fact that it was fabricated in the very district that has always produced the finest porcelain up to the present day. The Chinese descriptions, moreover, are remarkably confirmed by an Arab traveller, Soleyman by name, who wrote an account of his journey to China in the middle of the ninth century, in which the first mention of porcelain outside China occurs. He says They have in China a very fine clay with which they make These vases vases which are as transparent as glass water is seen through them.
' '
:

body, translucent and brilliant as white jade. Its conimitation jade is enough, almost, to prove that it must have
in

are

made

of clay.'

But we have, unfortunately, no example of the white jade-like porcelain ware Nor have we a specimen of the of the T'ang dynasty illustrated in our series. Ch'ai Yao, the azure-tinted production of the house of Ch'ai, a short-lived dynasty which reigned at K'ai-feng-fu in the province of Honan from a. d. 951 to 960, and which, as we are told in the preface, was the first to become renowned for its ceramic ware. The sovereign of this line who was canonized as Shih Tsung
(954-9),
for
his
is

said to have written

: '

on the porcelain indent, when

it

was submitted

be blue as the sky, clear as a mirror, thin as paper, resonant as jade.' The Ch'ai Yao was the precursor of the early Kuan Yao of the Sung dynasty, which was made in the same city at an imperial manufactory
approval

Let

it

founded

beginning of the twelfth century of our era, the finest variety of which was azure-tinted, of clair-de-liine tone, derived from the diffusion ol the native cobaltiferous mineral in a pellucid glaze. The author declares that even
in the
^

Porcelains,

Catalogue of the Hippisley Collection of Chinese by A. E. Hippisley. Report of

Persons dans I'lnde

de
I'

et

a la Chine dans

ere chre'tienne, par

le IX' Steele M. Reinaud, menibre de

National
'

Museum,

1888, Washington.

I'lnstitut, Paris, 1845.

el les

Relation des Voyages fails

par

les

Arabes

lo
a sherd of this

CHINESE PORCELAIN
renowned ware was as rare as
a

phantom

in his

own

time.

Some

of his contemporaries, however, describe pieces of dazzling lustre cut into a ring The author of the for the girdle, or mounted with gold like a jewel for the cap.

Citing pi tsang, a book on art published

in

1595, for instance, writes

' :

have

seen a fragment of CJiai Yao

tint

shaped into a ring to fasten the girdle, the azure

and
it

brilliant

sheen of which corresponded with the description, as given above,

but

differed in being thick.'

Yao was not the first coloured ware made in China. During the preceding T'ang dynasty which ruled over the whole of China from

The

azure-tinted Cliai

A. D.

618

to

906,

arts

and

letters

flourished exceedingly, and

reference to porcelain in the voluminous literature

abundant of the period, which has been

there
is

described as a protracted Augustan age.

artist's

It

was

at

this time, as

hinted in our
exact

preface, that the ceramic art

in

became

really industrial.

The most

references are to be found

the books on tea and

the elaborate tea-drinking

ceremonial of the time, such as the CJia Ching, a classical work written by
in the

Lu Yu
The

eighth century of our era, which classifies tea-drinkers' bowls according to

the effect of the colour of their glaze in enhancing the tint of the infusion.

bowls most highly esteemed were the blue bowls of Yueh-chou, the modern Shaohsing-fu, in the province of Chekiang; and the white bowls of Hsing-chou, now
Shun-te-fu, in

the

province of Chihli, where porcelain

is

still

produced

in

the

present day. They both rang with a clear musical note, and are said to have been used by musicians of the period, in sets of ten, to make chimes, being struck on the rims with little rods of ebony. The yellow bowls of Shou-chou in Anhui province, and the brown bowls of Ch'ang-nan in Kiangsi were declared to be not
so suitable for
tea.
its

become, under in China, were

of

The productions of this last factory, which was destined later name of Ching-te-chen, the metropolis of the ceramic
same time neglected
for other purposes, as the

to
art

not, at the

biography

Chu

Sui

in

the historical annals records the zeal he showed,

when superintendent

of Hsin-p'ing, in obeying a decree, issued in 707, ordering sacrificial vessels to be made for the imperial tombs.

The Yueh Yao was

still

blue,

and

it

owed

its

colour to cobalt.

Shao-hsing-fu
it

is

the source of the best cobaltiferous mineral

several
hills

known

in

China, and

is

found
con-

in

in

this

prefecture in

the form of irregular greenish-brown

fact,

cretions,

hollow

inside.

Blue was,
to
after
rain.

in

already becoming the beau-ideal of

these early potters,

rifts

who sought

between the clouds

blue, as

reproduce the intense depth of the sky in the Their result was a monochrome glaze of
its

celadon tone, the more excellent in proportion as

colour partook less of green

and more of

it was seldom without a nuance of green. The raw colouring material being a complex mineral, containing, in addition to cobalt, oxides of iron, copper, nickel and manganese, the shade would vary according to the proportions,

of these last ingredients, the iron giving a greenish shade, the nickel a greyish,

INTRODUCTION
the copper and

ii

manganese reddish or purplish

tones.

The ceramic colour was

',

known

to the poets of the time as 'blue of the distant hills

of purple.
the T'ang,

which suggests a touch Under the Wu-Yueh, one of the ephemeral dynasties which succeeded

it

was

called /i

se,

'the prohibited colour,' because

it

was then reserved

for the sovereign.

an uncertain ground for the definition of shades of colour, and it is time to turn to the album again. The objects illustrated here are generally arranged in classes, as we saw above, according to the purpose for which they were

But

literature

is

intended to be used.
Sacrificial Vessels

In this connexion the series comprises

and Censers for incense. Ink Palettes, Brush Rests, Water Pots, and Vases for the library. Vases of varied form adapted for holding flowers, divining-rods, &c. Jars and Libation Cups for sacrificial wine. Wine Ewers and little Cups, Teapots and Teacups, Rice Bowls, Dishes, and
Saucers
for

ordinary use.
artists'

Wine

Receptacles for convivial parties and Bowls for washing

for the toilet.

brushes.

Rouge Pots and Perfume Boxes

Pagoda, enshrining a jade image of Buddha and a jade jar containing sacred relics from India, presented by the empress to the Porcelain Tower Temple
at

Nanking. Oil Lamps and Pricket Candlesticks of elaborate design.

The

eighty-three objects figured are usually referred to their respective dates,

to their several potteries or places of production.
it

and traced

For the purposes

of discussion

be convenient to rearrange the series according to the dates and localities of the pieces, and to make a few notes under the heading of the several potteries represented in the collection.
will

be found on analysis that fort3^-two of the pieces are attributed to the Sung dynasty, a. d. 960-1279, one only to the Yuan dynasty, a. d. 1280-1367, and the remaining forty to the Ming dynasty, which began to reign in the year 1368 ot
It will

our

era.

Of

the

Ming emperors

five reigns are

represented

Yung-lo (1403-24) by

by twenty pieces, Ch'eng-hua (1465 87) by eleven pieces, Hung-chih (1488-1505) by four pieces, and Cheng-te (1506-21) by four pieces. Two of the pieces representing the last reign are teapots of red and buft' boccaro stoneware from the potteries of Yi-hsing, in the province of Kiangsu, which were
one
piece,

Hstian-te (1426-35)

'

'

founded during this reign by Kung Ch'un all the rest of the Ming pieces come apparently from the celebrated imperial manufactory at Ching-te-chen, in the province of Kiangsi. The Yuan dynasty piece, which is engraved under the white glaze with the mark Shu fu, 'imperial palace,' is also no doubt a production of
:

Ching-te-chen.

The

forty-two pieces referred to the

Sung dynasty

represent seven of the most

:

important of the several fabrics famous at the time, and comprise

three pieces of

12

CHINESE PORCELAIN

Ju

Yao, 'Ju-chou ware'; twelve pieces of Ting Yao, 'Ting-chou ware,' including examples of every glaze, white, purple, and black; ten pieces oi Kuan Yao, 'Imperial

ware'; one of Ko Yao, and eleven of the ordinary Lung-cliiian Yao, from Lungand ch'ilan-hsien ; one of Tung Ch'tng Yao, from the eastern capital of K'ai-feng-fu
;

four pieces o{ Chiin Yao,

'

Chun-chou ware.'
list

The

following Table gives a

:

of the

Sung dynasty

pieces arranged in their

several classes

Sung Dynasty.
Ju Yao
Ting Yao
Figs. 19, 22, 34.

{White.
-Purple.
{Black.

Figs,

i,

4, 28, 33, 57,

82.

Figs. 3, 14, 18, 24, 51.

Fig. 35.

Kuan Yao

Figs. 2, 5, 8, 13, 15, 17, 47, 50, 53, 74.

Fig. 11.
.

Ko Yao
Lung-ch'uan Yao Tung Ch'ing Yao
.
. .

Figs. 12, 16, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 32, 36, 68, 79.

Fig. 71.

Chun Yao

Figs. 20, 30, 41, 78.

Ju Yao.

The Ju Yao
in the

of the

Sung dynasty was made

It is
list

at Ju-chou, the

modern
but
is

Ju-chou-fu,

province of Honan.
at

not the earliest of the

its

Sung wares,

deservedly

placed
its

the head of the

on account of

finished technique

glaze.

The

porcelain required for the palace

was

at first

and the beauty' of obtained from Ting-chou,

but the Ting Yao,

of the court

we

are told,

was found

to

be so fragile that supplies for the use

were ultimately ordered from Ju-chou. The Ju Yao is said to have carried on the traditions of the celebrated C/i'ai Yao of the preceding dynasty, which the emperor, as we have seen above, ordered to be made of the colour of the clear sky in the inter\'als between the clouds after rain, and which was made in the same province of Honan. The paste of the Ju Yao is described to have been fine, dense, and extremely hard, but its chief merits la}' in its glaze, which was so soft and lustrous that connoisseurs compared it to congealed lard. It was often laid on so thickly as to run down in rich masses and stop in a curved wavy line before reaching the foot of the piece. The glaze was either crackled or plain in texture, and the latter was preferred if its colour was pure and uniform. The two beautiful vases of ancient bronze design illustrated in our catalogue (Figs. 19, 22) have both a plain uncrackled glaze, the colour of which is described by the artist as that of the Filex tncisa, the 'sky-blue flower' of the Chinese, a flowering shrub which is common upon the hillsides in summer throughout central and northern China. It is the yueh pai, literally 'moon white' of the Chinese silk-d3'er, which we know in ceramic parlance

INTRODUCTION
as clair de
liine,

13

and

this is the

name

technically given to the tint of the Jii Yu, or

The third piece, 'Ju Glaze', of the modern reproductions of the ancient colour. the curious duck-shaped wine-vessel illustrated in Fig. 34, is a specimen of crackled Ju Yao, the lustrous glaze of pale purplish blue tone being reticulated with a coarse
network of
lines like a piece of starred ice.

Some small pieces of Ju-chou ware reign of Yung Cheng (1723-35) to the
the old

of the

Sung dynasty were

a
cat's

sent

down

in

the

imperial potteries of Ching-te-chen to have

food-basin,

glazes reproduced.^

They

included

and a dish

for

welshing brushes moulded in the form of a man's face, both of uncrackled sky-blue glaze and a bowl of similar colour, which had its glaze finely crackled with the
;

minute network known technically as fish-roe crackle, the

ceramic writers.

tniitee glaze of the

French

Ting Yao.
Ting Yao
dynasty
for
its
is

the

name
in the

applied to the porcelain fabricated during the

Sung

at

Ting-chou
deposits

province of Chihli, a district

with

known from

early times

rich

of kaolin, the porcelain

potteries,
its

clay of the Chinese.

The white

porcelain

from these

delicate resonant

body invested with a

soft-looking fluent glaze of ivory-white tone, is more common in collections than any other of the Sung wares. The bowls and dishes were often fired bottom upwards, and the rims, left unglazed, were afterwards mounted with copper collars to preserve them from injury. Some are perfectly plain, clothed in the characteristically soft white of ivory or creamy tone, the glaze perhaps collecting in tear-drops outside others have been engraved at the point under the glaze with ornamental patterns a third class has been pressed inside with intricate and elaborate designs in more or less pronounced relief, the principal decorative motives being scrolls of the tree paeony and lily flowers with flying phoenixes. The original or Northern Ting {Pel Ting) ware lasted up to the 3^car 1127, when the Sung emperors were driven south by the Tartars, the best specimens dating from the periods Cheng-ho (1111-17) and Hsuan-ho (1119-25). After the crossing to the south, as it is always called, the Nan Ting, or Southern Ting ware was made at Nan-ch'ang, in the province of Kiangsi next we have the Hsin Ting, or
; ;
'

'

'

'

'

'

'New Ting'

vases of elegant shape with contracted waists

made

in

the

Yuan

dynasty (1280-1367) by P'eng Chun-pao,- a worker in gold; and finally the Cliia Ting or 'False Ting' censers of Chou Tan-ch'uan, the clever potter of the reign of Wan-li (1573-1619), who imposed on the connoisseurs of his time b}'' his
marvellous reproductions of the four-footed incense-burner of

Wen Wang,

one

ot

which forms the

'

first illustration

in

our album.
lainc

He worked
Ckiiioise

also at Ching-te-chen,

Cf. Bushell's Oriental

Ceramic Art

|p. 369).

on

p.

.\.\.\iii

of

his

Preface

dti

'

His story

is

well told

by Julien

in his Force-

traducleur.

14

CHINESE PORCELAIN

and reproductions of the old Ting Yao are still made there, which must not be confounded with the older varieties. The Ting Yao of the Sung dynasty is divided into three classes, white, purple, and black, according to the colour of the glaze, the body of the porcelain being

The white All the three classes are well represented in our series. pieces are remarkable for the fine modelling of the forms and for the intricate finish of the workmanship, especially, for instance, the sacrificial vessel of bronze design illustrated in Fig. i, the elephant-shaped wine-jar in Fig. 3, and the pricket candlealwa3^s white.
stick with

phoenix and lotus

details in Fig. 82.

The

glaze in the finest pieces

is

compared by the artist in his description to the purest white jade of mutton-fat grain, which has always been the ideal of the Chinese potter. The purple variety is represented by five specimens, the most important of which are those in Figs. 3, 18, and 51. The colour of the glaze is likened by the
artist to
It

the tint of ripe purple grapes, and, again, to the rind of the aubergine
cobaltiferous

fruit.

was obtained no doubt from the

manganese mineral which has

always been the sheet-anchor of the Chinese potter. The older Chinese poets sing of red Ting-chou wine-cups like carved red agate or carnelian, but we have nothing
of this kind

now

before us.
is

exhibited in Fig. 35. Its rarity may be inferred from the artist's description that he has seen over a hundred pieces of the white variety, some tens of the purple, but only this one

Of

black Ting Yao there

only one example, which

is

specimen of the black. It is a duck-headed bottle, in which the black only extends over the head and neck, while the body of the vase remains white, and is truly, as
the artist wittily remarks, a vara avis the

among
'

wine-bottles.

Some

tea-drinkers of

Sung dynasty

refer to

'

hare's-fur cups

of Ting-chou porcelain, as being the

most highly appreciated of any

at the time,

and describe them as invested with

faintest trace of the
in

a rich lustrous coat of dappled grey,

which revealed the very

powdered

tea inside before

it

disappeared altogether

the last competitive watering.

were the 'partridge cups' of the Fuchien potteries, which were of lustrous black shot with purple, dappled with green and silvery lines and flecks, like the plumage of the Perdrix cinerea.
In this peculiar quality their only rivals

Kuan
The Ktian Yao was
dynasty, kuan meaning
'

Yao.
it

so called because
official
',

or

'

was the 'imperial ware' of the Sung imperial and the name still remains in use
',

to-day for the productions of the imperial

potteries

at

Ching-te-chen.

The

first

manufactory
our
era, the

in the

Sung dynasty was founded

early in the twelfth century at the

capital Pien-chou, the

factories

modern K'ai-feng-fu. A few years later, in the year 1127 of dynasty was driven to the south by the advancing Tartars, after which were founded in the new capital, the modern Hang-chou-fu, to supply' the

INTRODUCTION
palace,

15

and the productions of the new kihis

to be called

built within the city

near the Temple

of

Heaven continued

Kuan

Yao.

The
in

imperial porcelain produced at the old capital seems to have resembled,

its

most of

qualities,

the celebrated Cliai Yao, which, as

we saw

above,

was

and unctuous, of the old Kuan Yao were generally reticulated with coarse lines like cracked ice, and were of various tints, of which yueh pal, or clair dc tune, was the most highly esteemed of all, emerald green (literally gros veti), pale purple,' ta-lii, followed by fen-cliing, and \dLSt\y hui-se, 'grey.' The Hang-chou ware was made of a dark reddish paste coated with the same glazes as the old, and we meet with descriptions of ironcoloured feet and brown mouths applied to bowls, the colour of the paste of which was exposed underneath and, again, showed through at the rims where the glaze
fabricated at the

same

place.

The

glazes, rich

'

'

'

was

thinnest.

The

ten pieces of

Kuan Yao

illustrated in the

album are mostly described as

being of the fen-ch'tng, or pale purplish blue type.

crackled in the conventional way, like starred
ice,

The

first

eight in the

list

are

with a broad network of

lines.

two, illustrated in Figs. 53, 74, are uncrackled, although distinguished by the pure colouring of their rich monochrome glazes, revealing clearly, in the latter
last

The

case, the relief

work

in the paste

underneath, which

is

fashioned after the pattern

of a saucer of carved red lacquer.

The
left

quaint emblematic ink palette illustrated in Fig. 8 must be a production of

its

the Hang-chou potteries, as the picture clearly reveals

iron-grey paste in the parts

uncovered by the glaze.

Kg

Yao.

We

come next

to the far-famed
in

celadon wares
Ch'u-chou-fu,

made
in

in the

Sung

dynast}^ at

Lung-ch'uan-hsien,

the

prefecture
cli'ing
tz'ti,

the
'

southern part of the

province of Chekiang, the

par excellence of the Chinese, the seiji of the Japanese, the niartabanl of the Arabs and Persians. There is a lordly pile of literature on the celadon question in all its bearings, and the field, attractive as it is, can hardly be laboured further here. During the early part of the Sung dynasty factories were established at Liu-t'ien, some twenty miles distant from the walled city of Lung-ch'ilan, and under its jurisdiction. Traditions have been handed down of two brothers named Chang, who are said to have lived
or
'

green porcelain

'

'

here

in

the twelfth century of our era.

for that reason

'

Chang

Sheng-yi, were popularly

',

The productions known

of the elder brother, called

at the

time as

Ko

Yao, the

and were chiefly distinguished by the crackled texture of their glazes. Chang Sheng-erh, 'Chang Secundus,' fabricated typical celadon ware on the old lines, only improving the lustre and colour of the green glaze, so that his productions continued to be known by the old name of Lung-ch'iian Yao.
Elder Brother's

Ware

i6

CHINESE PORCELAIN
The
crackled glaze of the early

Ko Yao

is

described as looking as
sea-green, or celadon.

if it

were

the
and

'broken into a hundred pieces' French tniitee. It was not, however,

{po-sui),
SiXso

or as being like the 'roe of a fish' {ya-tcu)

all

The shades
manganese;
'.

of colour included
mi-se,

fen-ch'ing, or 'pale purple',

',

due

to cobaltiferous

or

'

millet-coloured

the yellow

tniitee

glaze derived
'

from iron and

antimony, which became known to European collectors as old mustard crackle Ko Yao is represented in the album by a single piece, the little hill-shaped brush rest illustrated in Fig. ii, the glaze of which is described as 'pale purple' (fen-ch'ing) It looks, in fact, in the picture, very in tint, crackled with ice-like lines {ping-wen).
like

an ordinary piece of Kuan Yao of the time.

Such was the

all

original

Ko

Yao; the name has since been extended

to include

kinds of porcelain covered with crackled

of the

monochrome

glazes in every shade of

greenish and bluish celadon, as well as crackled yellows, greys, and whites.

So

(1280-1367), which was turned out in large quantities from the same potteries, but was far inferior to the old ware both in grain and in colour. The ancient crackle was highly prized in Borneo and other islands of the Eastern Archipelago as far east as Ceram, and it figures largely among relics of old Chinese porcelain and pottery brought to our museums from these parts. The modern potter at Ching-te-chen, we are told, knows nothing of the ancient Ko Yao, nor of the derivation of the name, it means to him only a crackled ware

we have Ko Yao

Yuan dynasty

'

'.

Lung-ch'uan Yao.

The ordinary Lung-ch'uan Yao is the typical celadon ware. Cdadon was the name of the hero of the popular novel L'Astr^e, written by Honors d'Urfe in the seventeenth century, who used to appear on the stage dressed in clothes of a peculiar greyish or bluish sea-green hue. The shade became fashionable and the name was borrowed to describe a similar tint in the colour of Chinese porcelain. The peculiar shade was specially characteristic of the Lung-ch'uan ware of the Ming dynasty (1368-1643), which was made in the city of Ch'u-chou-fu, to which the factories had been meanwhile transferred from Liu-t'ien. The colour has been well compared
to the grey-green tint of the skin of the

Chinese olive, a species of canarium, and it toned down through lighter intermediate shades to the palest sea-green, such as distinguishes certain kinds of old European glass-ware. This was the prevailing colour of the large bowls and dishes which were marked underneath with ferruginous
rings,
left unglazed so as not to adhere to the supports in the kiln, and which were so highly valued in Mohammedan countries because it was fancied that they had the property of detecting poisoned food by

defining the portions of the paste

changing colour.

The Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung dynasty was of a darker and more pronounced green, as is clearly shown in our illustrations. The finest specimens of the period

INTRODUCTION
display a bright grass-grccn, the
liken
it

17

Is'iing-lU,

or 'onion-green' of the Chinese,

who

to fresh

onion sprouts, and they occasionally approach the yet brighter

of jadcite.

emerald-green

tint

The

pieces, comparatively small in size, are generally

left

completely covered with glaze underneath, only the narrow foot-rim being Their decoration is either incised in the paste, or worked in sensible
effect

bare.
its

relief,

being enhanced by the varied shades of colour according to the depth of

the glaze.

The forms

are often fluted or ribbed, and with

wavy or

foliated rims;

some

have a paeony or lotus blossom, fishes or dragons,

in

sprays of flower or

geometrical patterns etched

relief inside,

the paste;

others have a pair of fish

worked

in

or two movable ring-handles attached outside.

During the Sung dynasty there was commercial intercourse by sea between China and the Mohammedan countries and we read in both Arabian and Chinese books of the time that 'green porcelain' was one of the articles of trade. The Chinese say that their junks went to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and proceeded down the east coast of Africa as far as Zanzibar, which they call
;

Tsangpa, and are curiously confirmed by the discovery there in some old ruins, during Sir John Kirk's residence as H.M. Consul-General, of a quantity of celadon vessels, mostly in fragments, mixed with Chinese copper coins of the Sung dynasty. This celadon ware was probably the earliest Chinese porcelain seen in Europe,
Nationale at Paris, treating of the

coming probably by way of Alexandria. An Arab manuscript in the Bibliolhhjue life and exploits of Saladin, mentions that the
year 1171, forty pieces of this kind of Chinese porcelain to Nureddin. Marco Polo refers to it, and he is probably the first to apply the name oi porcelaine to the ceramic production of the Far East, which he says was exported in his time to all parts of the world. In England a well-known early piece is
emir presented,
in the

a small celadon

bowl, artistically mounted in

silver-gilt, at

New

College, Oxford,

which was presented by Archbishop Warham between the years 1504 and 1532. There are eleven pieces oi Limg-cliUan Yao in our collection, all of which are attributed to the Sung dynasty. The favourite simile of the artist when he is describing the colour of the glaze is that of fresh green onions, but he likens it in other cases to green jade, to wet moss, to the fresh foliage of the willow, to parrot feathers, to the green plumes of the kingfisher, and once to the rind of a young cucumber. Only one of the pieces is crackled, the many-mouthed receptacle for flowers, illustrated in Fig. 25, which is described as a rare specimen from these kilns, in that it has its bright glaze of parrot-green hue crackled with lines like fissured ice. The other pieces are all uncrackled, with the ornamental details either etched in the paste, or worked in relief, under shaded green glazes of the
traditional tone of colouring.

i8

CHINESE PORCELAIN
Tung Ch'ing Yao.
The name
of

Tung Ch'ing Yao, which may be rendered

'

Eastern celadon

ware

',

was

originally given to the productions of the private kilns in the vicinity

of K'ai-feng-fu, in Honan, which was the eastern capital of the Northern dynasty (a. d. 960-1126). It is said to have resembled generally the Kuan
the 'imperial ware' of the time,

Sung
Yao,

but was of coarser make and paler

in the collection is

colour,

and

the glaze was never crackled.

The one specimen

an octagonal

porcelain bowl intended for washing artists' brushes (Fig. 71), shaped like a flower-

pot with a foliated rim.

glaze which
is

Its sides

are etched with formal floral scrolls, under a

artist

described by the
laid

as being as blue-green

as

the turquoise
millet-like

plumes of the kingfisher

grains rising in faint

on

in

layers,

and as being strewn with

relief.

The name
often

of Tung-ch'tng has survived to the present day as that of the typical

sea-green celadon glaze.

meaning east is, however, the character of same sound meaning 'winter', now supplanted by another
first

The

character

tting,

'

',

implying the

new

reading of

'

winter-green

'

or
is

'

ever-green

'.

This

is

declared

by ceramic
imperial

purists to be a corruption, but

it

the form usually adopted in the

lists

of porcelain prepared periodically for the palace.

The
proportion
will

recent

reproductions
ferruginous

of

the

Tung-ch'ing

glaze

at

Ching-te-chen

are

prepared by adding to the materials of the ordinary white glaze a very small
of the
clay {huang-fu), which,
buff",

when more
latt,

concentrated,

produce graded shades of old gold,

cafe

an

dead-leaf brown, and

'

been well defined by Salvetat as, ton pale legerement bleuatre, analogue au ton de certains verres de gobeleterie.'
chocolate.
typical celadon colour has

The

un

The

recent reproductions

of the Lnng-fJiiian

glazes at the

same place are

prepared by the further addition of a little cobaltiferous manganese to the materials of the above Tting-diing glaze, resulting in a more pronounced greenish tone,

which

is

also technically

known

in

ceramic books as tou-ch'ing, or

'

pea-green

'.

ChUn Yao.
The
Chiin

Yao was

fabricated at the potteries of Chun-chou,

which dated from

Sung dynast}^ about the year 960 of our era. The locality corresponds to the modern district of Ya-chou, in the province of Honan. The productions were not ranked very high at the time, because the clay was slightly yellowish in tone and not so perfectly potted as in the imperial ware, for example,
the beginning of the

and because the forms were generally

classical designs in

original,

instead

of

being copied from

bronze or jade.
eyes,

attraction

to

Western

last point does not detract from their and the glazes were of extraordinary variety and

This

INTRODUCTION
brilliancy,

19
its

culminating

in

the flambe or transmutation glaze, with

flashing red

passing through every intermediate shade of purple to bright azure-blue, the later

reproduction of which
glaze
is

is

one of the chief triumphs of the Chinese

all

potter.

The

really, as

M. Vogt

justly remarks, la qiialite maitresse de la cdramique.

The

glazes concocted here were

those of the

grand feu, produced by com-

binations of copper and cobaltiferous manganese, variegated by the flames, oxidizing

or reducing according to circumstances, of the large furnace.

ciated

The Chinese

appre-

most highly the three monochromes, ruby-red, bright green, and aubergine purple, the first when like vermilion, the second of the tint of green onions or of kingfisher plumes, the third when it approached Indian ink in its most blue-black depth of tone. The mixed Jlambt' colours they did not care for so much, considering them to be fortuitous changes in the kiln of one of the glazes intended Flower-pots and saucers were much sought after, especially to be monochromes. when marked underneath with one or two numerals incised in the paste. Among other things there were square vases and jars with covers, censers and round pots for incense, barrel-shaped garden seats, &c. Some idea of the variety of glazes turned out from these kilns may be gathered from a list of nine ancient examples sent to Ching-te-chen to be copied in the reign of Yung Cheng (1723-35), which comprised 1. Rose-leaf crimson [inei-kiiei tzii). 2. Pyrus japonica pink (hai-t'ang hung). 3. Aubergine purple {chich-p'i tzu).
:

4.

Plum-skin blue {mei-tzu

cli'ing).

5.
6.
7.

Mule's liver mingled with horse's lung

{lo

kan

ma fei).

Dark purple
Sky-blue

{shen

tzii).

Millet yellow {mi

sc).

8.
9.

{f'len Ian).

Furnace transmutations, or Jlambes {yao

four examples

pien).

The

of Chiin

Yao

illustrated in

our album are

all

of varied

shades of purple.
the numeral zvu,

The
'five,'

first (Fig. 20),

a wine-jar with phoenix-shaped handles, has engraved under the foot as a 'mark', proving it to be,

the artist observes, really a Chiin-chou piece.

next (Fig. 30) is a miniature vase with the mottled purple and blue glaze, according to the description, vulgarly
'

The

known
(Fig. 41)

as ass's
is

liver

and horse's

lung.'

The ovoid

wine-pot with a tiny spout

;

described as a choice example of the typical aubergine glaze

78), as approaching in
its

and the

quaint dragon-shaped lamp (Fig.

of autumnal bulrushes.

tint

the deeper shade

The
at

pieces are small, and hardly satisfying,

it

has seen such magnificent trophies from these kilns

must be confessed, to one who A note in Chinese collections.

hand refers, for instance, to a tripod censer of reddish pate, 18 inches high, with rounded bowl and receding neck, thickly imbued with an unctuous opalescent

20

CHINESE PORCELAIN

glaze of mottled clair de bine type, contrasting vividly with the flashing red hue of a pair of archaic dragons worked in bold relief round the hollow of the neck

and partially reserved between two irregularly undulating lines of glaze the dragons formed an imposing frieze, half hidden, as it were, in azure-tinted clouds.

Shu Fu Yao.
was established in China by Kublai Khan, the grandson of the great Tartar conqueror, Genghis Khan, in the year 1280 of our era, and ruled over China eighty-eight years, is represented in our collection by the It is described small white vase of unusual interest which is illustrated in Fig. 21. as being lightly etched in the paste underneath the foot with the two characters shu fu, imperial palace,' a mark indicating its destination for the emperor's own use, and suggesting our heading, Shu Fu Yao, i.e. Palace Ware.' The affiliation of this ware, with its peculiar technique, is traced out by the artist from a ceramic point of

The Yuan

dynasty, which

'

'

view, in a novel and interesting way.

We

know from ceramic

annals that the

Sung

dynasty,
to the

when they crossed over

to the south in 1126,

and abandoned Ting-chou

to Nan-ch'ang, in the

Juchen Tartars, transferred the fabrication of Ting Yao

province of Kiangsi, in other words to Ching-te-chen, the great centre of Chinese

ceramic industry.

The

artist

accordingly traces back the technique of the vase to

the old Ting-chou porcelain of the Northern Sung.

He

carries

it

on, besides, to the

well-known white bowls of eggshell texture dating from the reigns of Yung-lo (1403-24) and Hsuan-te (1426-35) of his own dynasty, which were similarly tooled in the paste with an etched decoration, and were also lightly engraved with date-marks under
their soft white paste,

and which, he says, were modelled

in all

respects after the

Shu Fu Yao. The Yuan dynasty was not particularly distinguished for its porcelain. The kilns at Ching-te-chen were, we are told, occasionally opened by imperial command, but only to be closed again as soon as the indent was filled and next we read of the
;

temporary removal of the potteries merciless exactions of the mandarins

to other parts of the province,

in charge.

to escape the

The white
the time.

porcelain figured here was, of course, not the only kind fabricated at
origin,

There are several coloured celadons and crackled wares of diverse

which generally show transition characters, as in the case of the white. The massive bowls and cups so often dug up throughout northern China, which figure commonly in collections as Yuan porcelain [Yuan tzit), can hardly, in fact, be distinguished from the ceramic productions of the Sung dynasty. The emperor Ch'ien Lung, for instance, in some verses of his own composition written in 1776 and etched upon a typical pair of these bowls through the pale purple crackled glaze mottled with crimson blotches, which had been dug up at Urumtsi in Chinese
^
'

Now,

believe, in the Freer Collection at

New

York.

INTRODUCTION
'

21

Turkestan, begins his ode with the stanza, If not palace bowls of the Sung they are Yuan copies of the Sung.' The class is generally characterized by a thick glaze of

unctuous aspect and finely crackled texture, which often only partially covers the the prevailing colours are lavender surface, leaving the lower parts of the bowl bare speckled with red, and clair de lime tones stained with crimson ferruginous blotches,
;

of accidental origin, but

much

appreciated by collectors.

Passing on to the Ming dynasty

its

(a.d. 1368-1643),

we

find forty select pieces of

ceramic productions illustrated

classified

in

the album, belonging to five reigns.

These have
:

according to the dates, and according to the methods of decoration, and have been arranged for convenience of reference in tabular form as follows

been

Ming Dynasty.

Yung Lo

White.

Fig. 62.

/Monochromes. Coloured glazes.

HstJAN Te
^Painted
Painted
in blue.
in red.

Figs. 40, 73. Figs. 10, 43, 77. Figs. 9, 31, 37, 39, 48, 69, 83.
Figs. 6, 54, 56, 61, 70, 72, 75.
Fig. 58.

\In red and blue.

Ch'eng

Hua

(Coloured glazes.
(Painted in colours.

Figs. 38, 49, 65, 76, 82. Figs. 55, 59, 60, 63, 64, 66. Figs.
7,

Hung Chih
Cheng Te

{Monochrome
(Monochrome
(Yi-hsing
'

(yellow).

46, 67.

{Coloured glazes.

Fig. 42.

(yellow).
'

Figs. 52, 80. Figs. 44, 45.

Boccaro

ware.

Yung Yao.
porcelain ware of the reign of which corresponds to a.d. 1403-24, only one piece is given, the eggshell cup engraved with dragons and phoenixes under the soft white glaze illustrated in Fig. 62. The steps in the development of this charming white porcelain and of its lightl}^ etched decoration have been already indicated in the description of the white imperial ware of the Yuan dynasty (page 20). The thin body of a bowl having been pared on the jigger, under the Ming dynasty, almost to the vanishing point, was either incised at the point, or pressed, with decorative designs, before the glaze was finally blown on with a spray-tube tied round with silk gauze. The effect was

Under

the heading of

Yung

Yao, that

is

to

sa}',

'

Yung-lo,'

water-mark of paper, and to bring it out properly it was necessary to hold up the bowl to the light. The mark also had to be read as a transparency;
like that of the

22
it

CHINESE PORCELAIN
was generally
written, as in this case,
in

six characters of archaic script,

but

occasionally in four characters, the

name

of the dynasty (Ta Ming, 'the Great Ming')

being omitted.

The

porcelain of this reign

was
it

also occasionally painted with cobalt blue, or

again, decorated in colours, especially coral-red in combination with gold, but as

there are no examples before us,

need not detain us

further.

It

is

generally

ranked by native connoisseurs below that of the reigns of Hsuan-te and Ch'eng-hua, but above the ceramic productions of Chia-ching and later reigns.

HsiJAN Yao.

The ceramic productions

as well as for
its artistic

of the reign of Hsuan-te

(a. d.

1426-35) are included

under the heading oi Hsiian Yao.

work

in

His reign was justly celebrated for its porcelain, bronze, and it is generally considered by Chinese

authorities as rivalled only

by

that of Ch'eng-hua,

among

the reigns of the

Ming
its

dynasty; Hsuan-te excelling in the quality of its tones of its reds, while Ch'eng-hua was pre-eminent for the
combinations
in different colours.

blue decoration and in the ruby-like

artistic

treatment of

specimens of these two and the reigns, figuring, as it does, twenty of the former and eleven of the latter pictures are well described by the artist, so that they illustrate most satisfactorily
is

Our album

very rich

in

the voluminous ceramic literature of the times.

The
been due

fine quality of the

'

blue and white

'

of the reign of Hsuan-te

is

said to

have

from the west of Asia of some new foreign material, which Hsiang Yuan-p'ien refers to under the name of Mohammedan blue or gros The typical blue of bleu {Hui-hiii ta ch'tng), suggesting a Persian or Arabic source.^ the time was somewhat pale, but clear and pure in tint, harmonizing well with the jade-like tone of the white ground, which occasionally had a wavy surface strewn
to the importation
'

'

with faint elevations like grains of millet.

The
copper.

yet more famous ruby-red {pao-shih hung) of the period was obtained from

The

finely pulverized metal

was applied on the raw

paste, in the

same way

and subsequently coated with the white glaze. After the piece had been fired the red designs are described as flashing through the liquescent glaze so as to dazzle the eyes with their lustre. The Chinese story says that it was prepared from powdered rubies, and amethystine quartz seems really to have been
as the cobalt mineral,

incorporated with the glaze to give

it

greater transparency

but the colour could not

in

have been due

'

to this,

because rubies and amethysts would become colourless

Burton {Porcelain,
gation.
p. 68),

the

Perhaps obtained from Baluchistan, in the mountainous parts of which have been found deposits of the purest cobalt ore, in the form of

can be used without any

leviis

other preparation than that of grinding and

The

native Chinese ore,

it

well known,

known as cobalt bloom, a compound of cobalt and arsenic, which, according to Mr. W.
the mineral

belongs

mineralogically to
as asbolite.

the variety of

wad

known

INTRODUCTION
intense heat of the furnace
;

23

its

application under the glaze

been obtained from copper.

illustrated in Fig. 40,

The

colour after firing

in

is

shows that it must have of vivid sang de bccuf tone it

;

appears as a monochrome over etched details

the beautiful wine-pot of jade design

in Fig.
'

and outside the palace dish

;

73

as one of several coloured

'

glazes in Figs. 10, 43 as a painted decoration in red and white in the other figures on the list and in combination with undcrglaze cobalt blue in the charming wine-cup
;

reproduced

in Fig. 58.

Ch'eng Yao.
is an interval of thirty years between the close of the last reign and beginning of that of Ch'eng-hua (a. d. 1465-87), during which the reigning Chinese emperor was carried off to Mongolia and kept prisoner by the Mongols

There

the

for seven years,

and

in the

midst of the national troubles the porcelain manufacture

was much

neglected.

the industry, so that the

In the reign of Ch'eng-hua there was a marked revival of new ruler disputes with his grandfather Hsiian-te for the

ceramic supremacy of the dynasty.

the

The
its

general verdict of connoisseurs

is

that

and also in the quality of its blue and white now that the exotic supply of cobalt was no longer available but that it excelled in its artistic decorations in mixed colours. This is curiousl}^ confirmed by the selection before us, which consists of eleven pieces, all of which are decorated in colours, neither blues nor reds having, apparently, been deemed worthy of being exhibited. The eleven pieces are grouped in the above list in two classes, the first including those decorated in coloured glazes, the second those painted with different colours. The distinction, first made by Sir Wollaston Franks,' is a real one, the technique of the second class only being like that of a water-colour artist painting on silk or paper with a brush. The first class is a continuation of similar work executed in the last reign, and the colours always produce a certain effect of isolation and relief which is not quite satisfactory to the eye. The second, on the contrary, allows the harmonious combination of the colours in a miniature picture, painted on the soft white ground with a brush after the best canons of Chinese art. It must be granted, however, that no very decided line is to be drawn between the two classes, and that the same palette of enamel colours must have been used in
reign failed in the vigour of
',

new

copper-reds

'

both.

The
of the

attractive wine-pot illustrated in Fig.

38

will serve as

a typical example
tendrils,

first

class

it

is

modelled
in

in the

shape of a melon, with stalks and

it

leaves and smaller melons

is

worked upon

naturalistically executed

open-work relief, and the decoration green, yellow, and brown enamels of appropriate
in

'

Catalogue of the Franks Collection of Oriental Porcelain and Pottery, 2nd Edition, 1878.

24
shade.

CHINESE PORCELAIN
:

For the second class we may refer to the following two classical designs a stemmed wine-cup (Fig. 55) painted in enamel colours in Chinese ceramic art on a white ground with festoons of grapes; and a flat cup (Fig. 64) with spreading sides 'diaphanous as a cicada's wing', painted with chicken, butterflies, and a cockscomb growing from rocks, in subdued colours, after the style of a celebrated court artist in water-colours of the Sung dynasty.' The artist gives an enthusiastic description of another pair of these graceful eggshell cups, under Figs. 59, 60, which are artistically decorated in soft colours with flowers and insects on a white ground The oil-lamp illustrated in Fig. 82, designed in the shape of perfect transparency. of a nelumbium lotus, is also worthy of mention the shaded pink petals of its floral receptacle owe their colour, doubtless, to copper silicate, foreshadowing the famous 'peach bloom' and 'crushed strawberry' shades of a later da^^; the pinks and crimsons derived from gold were certainly unknown to Chinese ceramic decorators As far as we can gather from the literature of the subject, and in these early times. from an inspection of our illustrations of the pieces painted on a white ground with polychrome enamels, in the style which is technically known as zvii-tsai, or 'fivethe colours are blue of purplish hue, yellow, greens of graded shade, coloured If there be a mark attached, it is pencilled coral-reds of varied tint, and brown. underneath in cobalt-blue sous couverte, which would not be included in the polychrome list.
'

',

'

'

HuNG-CHiH Yao.

The emperor Hung-chih succeeded

his father

Ch'eng-hua and reigned eighteen

The years (1488-1505), carrying on the ceramic traditions of his predecessor. elegant wine-pot modelled in the form of a gourd, which is illustrated in Fig. 42,
is

referred to the

new

reign,

and
is,

it

would bear comparison, the

artist tells us,

with

any production of the same style decorated in polychrome enamels of the preceding
era.

The

reign of Hung-chih

however, particularly remarkable for

jonqiiille,

its

monochrome
tint

yellows of pure tone, the finest of which ^xq jaiine

of the petals of a hibiscus flower.
are aU
typical

or compared to the
Fig.

The

other three pieces of the reign figured here

enamelled

3^ellow.

The
in

fluted teacup

reproduced

in

46 shows the

shade

it

is

moulded

the shape of a hibiscus blossom and coated outside

with a
little

monochrome

glaze after the natural tint of the flower.

In the case of the

in tone, is

incense burner illustrated in Fig. 7 the yellow,

traditional colour of the rare
its

more orange
yellow jade.

likened

to

baked chestnuts, the

ot the
'

The yellow monochrome, which owes

runner
to

colour probably to iron,

it

is

the fore-

imperial yellow

',

so called because

is

by sumptuary laws reserved

emperor. A coflection of 'imperial yellow' will be usually found open with a rice-bowl or saucer-shaped dish, pencilled underneath in under-glaze blue with a six-character mark of the Hung-chih period. The glaze will be either
for the use of the

INTRODUCTION
scrolled clouds incised in the paste.

25

perfectly plain, or spread over a decoration of five-clawed dragons in the midst of

Cheng Te Yao.
The son
from
A. D.

of the preceding emperor,

who

reigned under the

title

of Chcng-te

1506 to 1521, is the last represented in our album. The ceramic works at Ching-te-chen were in the hands of eunuchs sent down from the court at Peking,

and the books are

officials as

full

of complaints about their cupidity and oppression, from the

well as from the potters.

failed

which had
as

smce the time of

'

The supply of cobalt Hsuan-te, came again in

blue',

blue from Western Asia,

this reign

by

new route,
Yunnan,
in

we

are told that a high eunuch, appointed governor of the province of

obtained gold

some

Hiii citing, or

Mohammedan
that
it

from abroad
at

it

was melted with

its

a mineral flux to
;

make
it

imitation sapphires,

and was valued

twice

weight

would stand the grand fen, it was used in The story is the decoration of porcelain, the colour of which surpassed the old. confirmed by a special case in the British Museum filled with Chinese bronzes of the period with Arabic scrolls, together with some specimens of Chinese blue and white porcelain with similar Arabic inscriptions, mostly marked underneath Cheng te nien chili, 'made in the reign of Cheng-te (1506-21).' The 'mark 'also occurs on
and when

was found

vases decorated with coloured glazes, with green dragons, for instance, relieved

b}^

a yellow ground, or on bowls roughly painted round the sides with fishes in

underglaze copper-red
(1522-66), during

but the reign

is

not distinguished by any special excellence

either of style or material,

and

it

ranks certainly below the next reign of Chia-ching

to

which there was destined

is

be a decided renaissance of Chinese

in

ceramic

art at Ching-te-chen.

80 by two pieces of porcelain, both of which display the yellow monochrome glaze of orange tone which is compared to the tint of baked chestnuts. Both are modelled after old bronzes, the first being a helmet-shaped libation cup of archaic classical form, the second
reign

The

of Cheng-te

illustrated

here

Figs.

52,

lamp poised upon the head of a phoenix standing on a tortoise. The other two pieces referred to the period are the teapots of Yi'-hsing Yao illustrated in Figs. 44, 45, which are included as curious instances of the yao p'len, or 'furnace transmutation' class, in other words as lusns naturae, fortuitously produced by the agency of the fire. The teapots, both unglazed, of the natural
a

colour of the fired paste, one being brick-red, the other fawn-coloured, are described
as being severally
tea
is

endowed with

the property of changing to a bright green

when

poured
in

in,

so as to indicate the level of the liquid inside.

The Chinese
'

have a

taste for the marvellous,

changes',

which

and describe many kinds of yao pten, or furnace forms, pastes, and glazes have become in turn variously

26
modified
;

CHINESE PORCELAIN
some they
is

attribute to miraculous agency, others to

to labour the subject here.
is

human

ingenuity,

but there

no time
in

The
at

Yi-hsing

Yao

the well-known coloured stoneware, or terra cotta,

prefecture

Yi-hsing-hsien,

the

Chang-chou-fu,

province of

made Kiangsu. The

on the western shores of the T'ai-wu Lake, and turn out a fine stoneware of various body-tints, buff, red, brown, and chocolatecoloured, which is preferred to porcelain by Chinese for the infusion of tea and The Portuguese called it boccaro, and the for preserving delicate sweetmeats. name has remained. It was first imitated in Europe by Bottger, the inventor of Saxon porcelain, in 1708, in the fabrication of his so-called porcelahie rouge; and
potteries are not far from Shanghai,

was afterwards copied with great exactness b}' the Elers in Staffordshire. There is a special Chinese book on these teapots by Chou Kao-ch'i,

called

Yang hsien Ming

Yi-hsing).

liu list,
is

'

collection of the teapots of Yang-hsien

'

(an old

name

of
F.

This

probably the source of the document translated by Captain

Brinkley,^ and
is

his

book may be consulted

for further information

it

on a ware which

appreciated as highly in Japanese tea-clubs as

it

is

in

China

itself.

The Japanese

copied

in their celebrated Banko-yak'i.

The above

cursor}^ notes

on the

different potteries represented in the

have cleared the ground for a few remarks on the collection as a whole.

album will Having

been compiled towards the close of the Ming dynasty, in the second half of the sixteenth century of our era, the pictures give a good general idea of the chief achievements of the ceramic art of China up to that period. The objects figured may
be briefly studied according to their forms, technique, and methods of decoration. The forms are mostly derived from ancient bronzes ; or from carved jade vases,

modelled themselves generally after ancient bronzes ; and the artist is usually careful to trace back each particular design to its original source. The Sung dynasty, which

began in 960 and lasted over three centuries, has been characterized as a protracted Augustan era in China. Philosoph}^ was widely cultivated, vast encyclopaedias were written, and a host of commentaries on the classics issued from the press, so that the period has been summed up in a word as that of Neo-Confucianism. The emperor and high officials of the time made collections of books, pictures, rubbings of inscriptions,

bronze and jade

still
it

antiquities,

and other

art objects, the illustrated catalogues of

which

Chinese,

remain, although the collections have long since been dispersed. The is well known, have the greatest veneration for antiquity, and the study of

ancient relics and of the inscriptions upon

literature.

them forms an important branch of their Archaeologists classify the specimens, which are constantly being dug up from the ground, under the two headings of Chin, Metal,' and S/ii/i, Stone.' The
'
'

former class includes

sacrificial vessels, bells,

and ordinary

utensils of bronze,

bronze

'

Japan and China, by Captain

F. Brinkley, vol. ix, pp. 353-65.

INTRODUCTION
nnrrors, bronze weapons,
;

27

and coins the latter class comprises stone sculptures in bas-relief, incised inscriptions, Buddhist images and other figures, prehistoric stone weapons, vessels and utensils of nephrite and other kinds of jade, archaic pottery, The early illustrated commentaries on the classics, inscribed bricks and tiles, &c. and the first special works on bronzes, like the Ting Lu, a record of celebrated urns written in the sixth century, include much that is fanciful and legendary but the
;

Sung
and

catalogues are

more

reliable, containing fine illustrations of the actual objects

facsimile
in

now

woodcuts of the inscriptions. The most important of these catalogues circulation, which is often quoted by Hsiang Yuan-p'ien, is the Hsiian Ho Po
in

Kit T'u Lu, 'Illustrated Description of the Antiquities

thirty books,

the

Hsuan Ho

(Palace),' in

which was written by Wang Fu in the beginning of the twelfth century It is usually printed together of our era, and has been frequently reprinted since. Illustrated Examination of Antiquities,' which comprises with the K'ao Ku T'u, catalogues of several private collections compiled by Lu Ta-lin in 1092, in ten books and with a smaller work, in two books, entitled Ku Yii T'u, 'Illustrations of Ancient Jade.' Another catalogue of the Sung dynasty which is also cited in our pages (see
'

Tu, Illustrated Mirror of Antiquities of the Shao-hsing period (i 131-62),' which was published at Hangchou after the crossing The standard work on jade of the Sung dynasty to the south of the river Yangtsze. Illustrated Description of Ancient Jade,' in 100 antiques is the Ku Yii Tu Fu, books, which was compiled by an imperial commission in 1176, and circulated in manuscript till 1779, when it was first printed by order of the emperor Ch'ien Lung. The Ming dynasty was also distinguished for its school of antiquarians, but for an account of some of their books we may venture to refer the reader to the sketch of Chinese ceramic bibliography in our Oriental Ceramic Art (loc. cit., pp. 639-69).
Fig. 6)
is

the SJiao

Hsing

Ch'ien

Ku

'

'

Nature furnishes the motives of most of the other forms in our collection, either There are brush-rests like directly or through the medium of bronze castings. miniature ranges of hills, wine-cups and oil lamps like archaic dragons, handles of vases shaped as fishes, as the heads of dragons and other monsters hung with rings, &c. The wine-jars shaped in the forms of the elephant, rhinoceros, duck, and goose are particularly remarkable the phoenix appears in Figs. 20, 40, 82, and in connexion with the tortoise in Fig. 80. Some of the most charming forms are taken from natural fruit and flowers, such as the melon-shaped wine-pot in Fig. 38, the gourd
;

forms

in

Figs. 36, 42, the

palm-leaf vase in

Fig. 29,

the bamboo-shaped vase in

persimmon water-dropper in Fig. 10, and the rouge-pot shaped like a The nelumbium lotus supplies artistic single persimmon {D'lospyros shitze) in Fig. 43. designs for lamps in Figs. 81, 82, and there are two pretty floral wine-cups, one
Fig. 31, the twin
(Fig. 49) fashioned in the

form of a purple magnolia blossom, the other

foliage.

(Fig. 65)

a
in

yellow chrysanthemum with green

With regard

to technique, the older pieces

have had their decoration incised

the paste with a graving-tool or

worked

in

the

body

in sensible relief before the

28
application of the glaze.

CHINESE PORCELAIN
They owe
their chief beauty to the lustrous depth, colour,
is

and sheen of the glaze with which the tooled decoration

plain in texture
wen), or fine
;

clothed.

The

glaze

is

either

or crackled with a reticulation of

lines,

wide, like starred ice {ping

and tniitde, like fish-roe [ym-fzu wen). The glaze is self-coloured, generally of some shade of blue or purple, and derives its tint from a dosage of the cobaltiferous mineral found in China. The pronounced green of the celadon w^are of the Lungch uan potteries seems due to the cobaltiferous ore in the presence of iron, and the purple aubergine colours of the Tingchou and Chilnchou potteries, as well as the rare blue-black of the former locality, are to be attributed to the same protean mineral,
under changed conditions of
period, a
soft

flux or firing.
is

The onty other monochrome

its

of the

white of

ivor}' tone,

traced by the artist from

birth-place at

Tingchou

to the

Yuan
is

dynasty, and so on to the reign of Yung-lo of the Ming.

After the reign of Yung-lo

The

era of Hsilan-te

new methods of remarkable, we have seen,

decoration appear on the scene.

for its use of the

two under-glaze

grand fen, copper-red and cobalt-blue. The red invests the piece or is combined with with a brilliant monochrome glaze of sang de banif tone green and brown glazes in a mixed colour scheme or is pencilled, like the blue, on the raw paste, so that the lines of the decoration come out in rub}' red with The cobalt, applied with a brush in the same way as the a white background. blue and red, and occasionall}^ (as in Fig. 58) on the same piece, ushers in the white decoration, which is destined to become in future da3^s such a signal triumph of the Chinese potter. The rudiments of the technique had been probably brought from Persia during the Yuan d3'nasty, when the same Mongol house ruled at Baghdad and at Peking, but it was not until the reign of Hsuan-te that it came to be deemed worth}' of notice among the artistic productions of the
colours of the
; ;
'

'

Chinese brush.

The
ment of

reign of Ch'eng-hua
its

is

always given the

in

first

place for the artistic arrange-

schemes of decoration
its

colours.

A
the

glance at

Fig. 38 will

give

a striking idea of

successful combination of glaze colours.

is

But there
that the

is

one

great drawback in this kind of polychrome decoration, which

the porcelain
is

body of

entirely hidden.

It

is

only

in

painted

decoration of white

porcelain with enamel colours, in the style of a water-colour picture, that the soft

body

tint

of the material

is

allowed

its

proper art value.

Just as jade provides

an inimitable bed for the inlay of jewels, so the jade-like surface of porcelain

makes

a perfect background for the jewel-like enamels, which are

now

for the first

time brought into play.

Their introduction into the ceramic field is unanimously attributed by Chinese connoisseurs to this reign, and it is generally conceded that
the eftect of a clever decoration in the soft colours characteristic of the time appeals

eye than any other. The records say that the porcelain was at Ching-te-chen, under imperial patronage, of purest tone and eggshell thinness, and that the designs were first painted on silk in the palace by the
to

more made

an

artist's

INTRODUCTION
artists of the court to
all

29

be sent

down

to the potters.

wine-cups of varied form.

Fig.
55,

In his description of the

The examples before us are stemmed cup reproduced

in

which

is

painted round the sides with festoons of grapes, our artist

confesses himself fascinated with the delicacy and finish of the artistic colouring,
the grapes shining like clusters of amethyst beads in the midst of the shaded green
vine-leaves.
Fig. 64,

One

of the celebrated 'chicken cups' of the period

is

illustrated in

and two wine-cups decorated with flowers and dragonflies in Figs. 59, 60. These cups were already rare, costing, the artist tells us, as much as a hundred and this estimate of their value is confirmed from other taels of silver each sources, the emperor Wan-li (1573-1619), for instance, being reported to have always had a pair of them on his dinner-table which were prized as worth 100,000
;

cash.

The

close of the

Ming dynasty was

a time of luxury and extravagance; there

were even then china-maniacs in the land, and our artist is hardly free from the He declares that the censer of ruddy dawn tint melting in soft impeachment. the sun (Fig. 6), which the owner bought for three hundred taels, is well worth and finds no fault with the general of the emperor's bodyguard for a thousand buying from a chief eunuch a ruby-red wine-pot (Fig. 40) for 200 ingots of silver in paper money, which would have been equal to /600 sterling had the paper But the occasional mention of currency not been much depreciated at the time. the cost of a piece is a test of its appreciation that we would not care to miss, although it is time to close this lengthy introduction and to pass on to the book
;

itself,

the

full

manuscript Chinese text of which

all

is

reproduced

in

the

following

pages, as well as

the coloured illustrations.

For the careful and exact reproductions of the illustrations, executed so as to convey something of the spirit and feeling of the original water-colours, we are especially indebted to Mr. W. Criggs, the Director of the well-known chromolithographic press at Peckham.
S.

W.

B.

ILLUSTRATED DESCRIPTION
OF THE

CELEBRATED PORCELAIN
OF

DIFFERENT DYNASTIES
TZ'U
T'U
P'U
[gj

M
f^

LI

TAI

S^
BY

^
TZU CHING

MING

HSIANG YUAN-FIEN
STYLED

P'lEN

YIN

Si YUAN

HSIANG

Circa

mdlxxv

PREFACE
In ancient times while
the ground,

Shun was
^

still

living in the midst of the fields,

he

tilled

made

pottery and fished, to gain his living; so that even before the

three ancient dynasties- the art of moulding clay

was already

practised.
it

But very
be feared

many
that

years have elapsed and his generation

is

so remote that

is

to

no examples of his work can have survived. Passing on to the Ch'm, Han, Wei, and Chin dynasties, we come
;

to the first

mention of actual specimens of the craft as, for instance, the wine-cups of Chi Shu-yeh^ and the wine-goblets of Hsii Ching-shan.* Later potters in their daily

work and monthly

of the house of

tale

turned out a large variety of objects,

down

to the reign

which was the first to become renowned for its ceramic ware, although men of the present day search for mere fragments of the porcelain without succeeding in finding them, and declare it to be but a phantom. Next to the Ch'ai pottery, we have the productions of the kilns of Ju, Kuan, Ko, and Ting following for inspection, till finally we come down to our own reigning dynasty,*' and have before us porcelain of the periods of Yung-lo, Hsiian-te, Ch'eng-hua, and Hung-chih. When these are compared with productions of the
Ch'ai,-'

kilns of the

Sung

dynasty, they are found even to surpass the

latter,

excelling

form as well as in the colours of their glaze. Having acquired a morbid taste for refuse (literally scabs '), I delight in buying choice specimens of the three dynasties of Snug,'' Yuan,^ and Ming, and in exhibiting them in equal rank with the bells, caldrons, sacrificial dishes and winevessels of bronze, dating from the three ancient dynasties,'' from the Ch'in '" and
in the lines of their
'

the

Han?'
is
is

' The Emperor Shun, whose reign Chinese chronologers b. c. 2255-2206,

dated by
generally

of the great Ts'ao Ts'ao, he was a contemporary of Ts'ai Yung, the prince of convivial scholars,

credited with

early improvements in the art of

and
^

rivalled

him

in his love of

wine-bibbing and

pottery, although

the invention

of

the

potter's

epicurean gaiety.

wheel
cessor
^
'

is

attributed to his
Ti,

more fabulous prede'.

The

After

Chou

dynasty, a.
that
'

d.

951-960,

Huang

the

'

yellow emperor

the sovereign decreed

for his
a

the porcelain

when made

Hsia, Shang, and Chou dynasties. Chi K'ang, whose literary name was Shu-yeh, lived A. D. 223-262, and is one of the seven sages of the Bamboo Grove. A celebrated functionary and scholar, he was equally renowned as a lover of wine and music, and was devoted to the study of alchemy.
'

The

use should be
thin as

blue as the sky, clear as

mirror,

paper,

resonant as a musical
d.

stone of jade'.
" ' '

The Ming
A. D. A. D.
B. c.

dynasty, a.

1368- 1643.

960-1279. 1280-1367.
2205-256.

Hsu Mo, whose

in

literary

name was Ching-shan,

officially

"
"

B. C. B. C.

255-207.

died

the

year a.d. 249, and was

206-A.

D.

220.

canonized.

Secretary of a Board in the service

.>?

per

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34

CHINESE PORCELAIN
With
the aid of two or three intimate friends,
1

meeting constantly

da}'
I

night for discussion and research,

actually seen elsewhere

have

selected a series of pieces,

which

and have
this

or which are in

my own

possession,

and compiled

have painted the pictures in colours, and given the source of each one, to preserve them from being lost and forgotten, and hoping to interest my esteemed friends. Say not that my hair is scant and sparse and that I fondly appreciate
album.
I

what is only fit for a child's toy Written by Hsiang Yuan-p'ien styled Tzu-ching native of Chia-ho. above, The signature is attested by two vermilion seals in antique script Hsiang Yitan-p'icn, i.e., 'Seal of Hsiang Yuan-p'ien'; below, Mo-lin shanjen', i.e.,
:

'

dweller

in

the hills at Mo-lin' a favourite literary

title

of the author.

Copied

in

the fifteenth year (a

d.

1889) of the reign of Kuang-hsii of the Great

Ch'ing dynasty, being the cyclical year ssu-ch'ou, in the first decade of the peach (third) month, by Li Teng-yuan, styled Shih-ch'uan, a retired scholar of Peking.

With two

seals, inscribed Shih-ch'uan,

and Teng-yuan Li

chi.

35

.1

(X^

ggj

-%

CONTENTS
SECTION
I

Table of Contents
Ting Yao of the Sung dynasty.

Copy

of an ancient Sacrificial Vessel of

Wen Wang
.

Kuan Yao

of the

Sung
of the

dynasty.

Copy

of an ancient T'ao-fieh Sacrificial Vessel

Purple Ting

Yao

Sung

dynasty.

Copy of an

ancient Sacrificial Vessel engraved with

cicada designs

Ting Yao of the Sung dynasty.

design

Ancestral Vessel with monsters' heads and band of scroll

4

Kuan Yao
HsiJAN

of the

Sung

dynasty. dynasty.

Incense Burner with loop handles and mammillated feet

Yao

of the

Ming

Antique Censer with fish-shaped handles decorated

in

in

deep red with ruddy clouds melting

the sun at

dawn

Hung-chih Yao of the Ming dynasty.

basket
'
.
.

Small Incense Burner shaped as an archaic 'oak

7

SECTION

II

Table of Contents

Kuan Yao
HsiJAN

of the

Sung

dynastj'.

Ink Palette inscribed with an augury of great peace

8
9

Yao Yao

of the

Ming dynasty.

Ink Palette painted

in

blue with dragons

...
. . .

HsiJAN

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Water Dropper

in

the form of two

persimmons coloured
10

deep red

Ko Yao

of the

Sung

dynast}-.

Brush Rest shaped as

mountain with

five

peaks

11

Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung dynasty

Water Pot

of tazza shape with cover

12

Kuan Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Water Pot engraved with

dynasty.

cicada designs

...
fluted form

13

Purple Ting

Yao

of the

Sung

Water Pot

for

washing brushes of

with band of coiling silkworms

14

37

"4

38

CONTENTS
SECTION
tablp: of
III

contents
the form of hills with a
tall

Kuan Yao
Kuan Yao

of the

Sung
of the

dynast}-.

Brush Rest

in

peak

15

LuNG-CH'iJAN

Yao
Yao

Sung Sung

dynasty.

Water Pot with monster mask handles

16
17

of the

Sung
of the

dynasty.

Quadrangular Vase with ringed monster-head handles

Sacrificial Jar with

Purple Ting

dynasty.

horned dragons

...
.
.

18

Ju Yao of the Sung dynasty.

designs

Trumpet-shaped Vase engraved with palm-leaves and scrolled

19

Chun Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.
dynasty.

Small Jar moulded with two phoenixes as handles

20

Shu Fu Yao

of the

Yuan

Small Vase with garlic-shaped mouth ornamented with

21

designs

light!}-

tooled in the paste under the glaze

SECTION

IV

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Ju Yao of the Sung
dj-nasty.

Small rounded Beaker of old bronze design

...
.
. .

22

Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung dynasty.

Hot-water Bottle with swelling garlic-shaped

23

mouth
Purple Ting
Lung-ch'Ijan

Yao
Yao

of the

Sung

dynast3^
dynasty.

Small quadrangular Vase to hold divining-rods

24 25 26
27

of the

Sung

Flower Receptacle with several mouths

Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung dynasty.

Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung dynasty.

Lobed Vase
Small Vase

of hexagonal form
for a single flower

.... ....

Ting Yao of the Sung dynasty.

Lung-ch'ijan
leaves

Small Vase with two handles and bands of scrolled design

dynasty.

28

Yao

of the

Sung

Vase fashioned

in the

form of a whorl of palm29

Chun Yao
HsiJAN

of the

Sung
Ming

dynasty.

Miniature Vase for one flower with finely engraved

decoration

...

30
.

Yao

of the

dynasty.

Blue-and -white Vase fashioned as a section of bamboo

31

39

7u

^ ^ ^ ^ fr^

it

^
^

it

M 1
4 ^

f
^
t

t
a;

-4^

4^

^
.1

3l

7^
rfxr

<^.

/iv

-S

-^
'ft.

A^

4".

1
^
^4
;-o

t
7j22-

ki^

1
1

-r

^ij

t
(27

40

CONTENTS
SECTION V
Table of Contents

Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung dynasty.

rhinoceros

Wine

Jar modelled in the form of a hornless

Ting Yao of the Sung dynasty.

Ju Yao of the Sung dynasty.
Black Ting

Wine

Jar in the form of an elephant

in

Wine Ewer
dynasty.

the shape of a duck

.... ....

32
33 34

Yao

of the

Sung

Duck-headed Wine Vase

35

Lung-ch'uan
HsiJAN

Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Wine
Jar
in

Jar

in

the shape of a

recumbent gourd

36

Yao

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Wine

the shape of a goose painted in blue on a

white ground

37

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming dynasty.

Melon-shaped Wine Pot decorated with coloured glazes

38

SECTION

VI

Table of Contents
HstJAN
HsiJAN

Yao

of the
of the

Ming

dynasty.
dynasty.

Elephant Jar painted

in

blue

39
spout
. .

Yao

Ming

Deep

red

Wine Pot with phoenix-headed

40
41

Chun Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Wine

Pot of flattened form decorated with

floral scrolls
.

HuNG-CHiH Yao of the Ming dynasty.

Gourd-shaped Wine Pot with pale yellow ground

.

42

Hsuan Yao
Yi-HsiNG

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Rouge Pot overspread with deep red ground

Tea Pot Tea Pot
of

43
'

Yao

of the

Ming dynasty.

Kung

Ch'un's

make with

'transmutation

pale

brown body
of the

44
dynasty.
of

Yi-HSiNG

Yao

Ming

Kung

Ch'un's make with

'

'

transmutation

vermilion red body

45

41

m
t
it
J:.

a.

%
4

it

4
+

CO

^^i]

i^i]

31

M-

M
rfr

5.

/A

'S
;i7

-^
i.

3
IE
t

1
31
>3
-r

^^

1 -r

t
t

^
3
vt

t
TO

42

CONTENTS
SECTION
VII

Table of Contents
HuNG-CHiH Yao of the Ming dynasty.
enamelled pale yellow
Pair of

Tea Cups shaped

as hibiscus flowers

Kuan Yao
HsiJAN

of the

Sung

dynasty.
dynasty.

Tea Cup shaped

like a

Buddha's hand citron

in

...
.

4^
47

Yao

of the

Ming

Set of Tea Cups decorated

blue with dragon pines

48

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming dynasty. Magnolia Yiilan

Wine Cup
Sacrificial

simulating a crimson

blossom of the

Kuan Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Cup

with dragon's-head handle

... ...

49
50

Purple Ting
scrolls

Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Sacrificial

Wine

Vessel with grotesque dragon

Cheng Yao

of the

Ming Sung

dynasty.

Libation Libation

Cup Cup

of plain

rounded form

....

5^

52
53

Kuan Yao

of the

dynasty.

decorated with scrolled designs

SECTION
Ming

VIII

Table of Contents

HsuAN Yao

of the

dynasty.

Tazza-shaped

Cup

decorated

in

deep red with three

in

fish

54

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming dynasty.

grapes

Tazza-shaped

Cup

decorated

enamel colours with

55

Hsuan Yao
Ting Yao
HsiJAN

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Tazza-shaped Cup painted

in

deep red with three pairs

56

of peaches of the

Sung

dynasty.
dj^nasty.

Cup

fashioned like a plaited willow basket

57

Yao

of the

Ming

Conical
Pair of

Wine Cup
little

of archaic form painted in

deep red
'

58

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming dynast}-. flowers and insects

HsiJAN

Wine Cups

painted

in

'

five

colours

with
59.

60

Yao

of the

Ming

dynast}-.

Small bowl-shaped

Wine Cup

decorated

in

deep red
61

with three

fish

Small Eggshell Cup with dragons and phoenixes YuNG-LO Yao of the Ming dynast}-. engraved in the paste under the glaze

62
63 64

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming

dj'nasty.

Flat-bottomed
Flat-bottomed

Cup
Cup

painted

in five

colours with geese

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming dynasty.

painted in five colours with chicken

like a

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming dynasty.

and decorated
in

Small

Wine Cup shaped

chrysanthemum blossom
65

colours
dynast}-.

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming

colours

Wine Cup shaped

like the root of a tree

painted in

66

43

44

CONTENTS
SECTION IX
Table of Contents

HuNG-CHiH Yao of the Ming dynasty.

monsters
LuNG-CH'tJAN

Wine

Vessel moulded

in the

form of two winged

67

Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Wine

Vessel with a transverse

bowed handle
68

attached by chains engraved with four deer

HsiJAN

Yao

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Sacrificial Vessel of archaic

form decorated

in

blue and

white

69
of the

HsOan Yao

Ming
of the

dynasty.

Palace Rice-Bowl decorated

in

deep red with three

fish

70

Tung Ch'ing Tz'C

with

Sung

dynasty.

Hexagonal Bowl

for

washing brushes, engraved

7^

floral scrolls

HsiJAN

Yao Yao

of the

Ming dynasty.

Dish

for

washing brushes, decorated

in

deep red with

72

pairs of fishes

HstJAN

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Palace Dish decorated outside in deep red, with dragons

73
orna-

engraved

in the paste

underneath

Kuan Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Shaped Saucer engraved with carved lacquer

mentation

74

SECTION X
Table of Contents
HsiJAN

Yao
in

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Round Box

perforated through the middle, painted

deep red

75

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming dynasty.

HstJAN

Round Box

for

rouge decorated

in

enamel colours

Yao

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Relic Pagoda painted in five colours

....

76
77

Chun Yao

of the

Sung

dynastj-.

Dragon

Oil

Lamp
with a branched pedestal supported by

78

Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung dynasty.

a clawed foot

Oil

Lamp

79
dynast}*.

Cheng-te Yao of the Ming

by phoenix and

Saucer-shaped

Lamp with

projecting handle supported

.

tortoise
dynast}-.

80

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming

in

Oil

Lamp

in

the form of a

Nelumbium

lotus decorated

enamel colours
of the

81

Ting Yao

Sung

dynasty.

Pricket Candlestick with phoenix and lotus-blossom details

Oil

82

HsuAN Yao

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Lamp

with four nozzles painted

in

blue with white

ground

38

45

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SECTION

CONTAINING SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS

(FIGS.

1-7)

FIGURE
Ting Yao of
the

Sung

dynasty.

Copy

of an ancient Sacrificial Vessel of

a figure in the

Wen Wang.

Hsitan ho Po ku fu^ and its The in our illustration. This vessel was shaped by the breadth are reproduced actual height and potters of the imperial manufactory and the delicate lines of the carving are as fine as bullocks' The vessel, moreover, stands perfectly upright and square, without leaning hair or floss silk. The glaze is perfectly lustrous a hair's breadth, and is exactly proportioned in every part. and translucent, like fine white jade of mutton-fat texture. It is truly a choice specimen of Ting-chou porcelain, worthy to be placed first in a collection of sacrificial vessels from different I was fortunate in being factories, and its equal, alas! is rarely to be seen in the present day.
sacrificial vessel (^uii^)

was copied from

able to see
of Chm,-^

it

in

the

palace of the Prince

where

It

was

rCanMi/n-aS
same wood, crowned
with a lizard of moss-

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^C ^ ^ ^
^-'^

;^^ ^^^^

ii

Jf^ ^

f^
*.
't^
-:I7

^
u^
/i'>)

^
^r. ^"^

^
rti M^

^Jjj,
fj

^*f.

^
C-i

ifj 1*3

green jade.

The well-known
compiled
early in

illus-

J *^
_|
-.

^g
{"7
E.^

/f
30
'X^L

trated catalogue of ancient

^ ^
T
a,

f.
^%
->

4
"^
[^
9j\^

^
"w
"O"

ifl

"^^

bronzes,

by
the

'^

Wang Fu

twelfth century, and fre-

.>,

quently republished since. * The finest white jade is often compared by the Chinese to mutton-fat or lard, and the hard stone intentionally polished is
till

l|y

'?
|_

_^__
t-^

-^P -^

3>^ Vl

-^

^V
J^'

f 3i^7,

X %
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'

-^
rTb.

^
3f^

m"5*

^^^

K
"ff
j-gj

Ik

Jrj

its

surface
fluent.

appears

'\^

/J

tj

M> '^

>%.

soft
'

and

palace of the princes of Chin was at Peking. They were the lineal descendants of the third son of the emperor Hung-wu, the founder of dynasty, who the IVIing dynasty conferred the title on the first prince in the third yearofhisreign(A.D. 1370).

The

f'
'rr
J'^'Ll

t^
jy^
\

1
j -^
j_
Jct^ "TV"

^ ^
J-j

^K
^^
-Jb

Vrjn

^ y^ tj
JOZ.

"^^
^i^ ^]

j^^

'^t2

)1>

^-

The titIeofJ-Ffl^ (prince),

by the way, has been omitted in our copy of and the Chinese text should be supplied as the fifth character in the last column but one.

/i

t
^ J^

Z % > g T ^ ^ ^
/>^^

^
-^
itti
ibj^

it'

i]

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itT^

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ix'x

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i
/

FIGURE
Kuan Yao The vessel
of the
is

Sung

dynasty.

Copy

of an ancient T'ao-fieli Sacrificial Vessel.

and its size and dimensions fashioned in the form of three monstrous are the same as those of our ogres ^ (fao-fieh), the visages of which, with protruding eyes and frightful features, project from each lobe, with the details engraved and worked in relief, as if limned by brush. The an artist's background of the ogres'
in the Hsiiait

copied frem a figure

ho
is

Po ku

fii hi

'

illustration.

The body

y^

faces

is filled in

with scrolls,

etched as finely as silk or The colour of the hair. glaze is a pure delicate blue
of greyish tone, as clear and

transparent
sapphire.^
face
is

as

precious
sur-

The whole

marked with

lines

resembling those of cracking ice, and it is a most choice example of the grand imperial ware of the time. This piece also came from the palace at Peking. I saw it at Nanking, in the house of the governor of the city, Chu Hung, grand tutor of the emperor.
'

The
The

imperial catalogue of ani).

cient bronzes (see note to Fig.

"

fao-t'ieh is the gluttonous

ogre which haunts forests and wild places, a frequent motive of decoration of ancient Chinese bronzes.
'

Ya

kit

eliding,

or ch'iiig
is

ya

ku,

is

the old

name

of the sapphire, or

blue corundum, which

now coms/iih

monly

called in

China Ian pao

It is

derived from the Arabic and Persian _j'rt/i'/. (Cf Bretschneider's Mediaeval Researchesfrom Eastern AsiaticSources,
vol.
i,

(blue precious stone).

p. 174.)

7yA

17 VJl2

FIGURE

Purple Ting

Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.
i)\
*j^

Copy of an ancient Sacrificial Vessel engraved

with cicada designs.

-^

This

sacrificial vessel (ting)

was copied

from a figure

K'ao ku fu} the height and dimensions being the same as in our The form is distinguished and illustration.
in the

the decoration

is artistically

executed, hand-

ing

down
a

the style and spirit of the three

If

ancient dynasties.
is

The

colour of the glaze

warm
tint

purple,
ripe

clear

and deep
delightful
in

like
its

the

of

grapes,

brilliant lustre.

Among

the productions of

the Ting-chou

kilns white glazes

form the

great majority, the purple and black glazes

being comparatively rare, so

that

a fine
is

piece of the purple variety like this

very

it ^K

seldom seen.

bought

it

myself for ten

from a curio

taels of silver at the capital

dealer's stall in the

Pao Kuo Ssu.^

'

The K'ao ku
first

Vn,

Illustrated

Examination of
\>y Lii Ta-lin,

Antiquities,' in ten books,

was written

t
a
SI

and the

edition

was published

in

1092.

It

is

often printed as an appendix to the

Po ku fu

lu,

the

imperial catalogue of bronzes referred to above. - Pao Kuo Ssu, State Protecting Temple,'
'

is

a large Buddhist temple in the southern or Chinese Fairs are still held in its courtyards city of Peking.

on certain holidays, their wares for sale

temple
to the
is

at

which the dealers exhibit

throngs of visitors. This remarkable image of Kuan-

t ^

to

famous

for a

yin, decorated in coloured glazes,

which

is

attributed

Sung dynasty.

(Cf. Bushell's Oriental

Ceramic

Art. p. 131.)

FIGURE

^
Ting

Yao

oi

the

Sung

dynasty.

Ancestral
scroll

Vessel with
design.

monsters' heads

and

band of

The

sacrificial vessel (yi)

was copied from the

figure of a bronze casting

by Chiang of the T'ang

dimensions are
repro-

dynasty.'

The
our

height and

duced

in

illustration.

The

technique and form

is

of the vessel are most artistic and the engraving

of sufficient

depth to stand wear and

tear.

The
fine

glaze

is

clear white,

pure and
it

stainless,
is

like

jade of mutton-fat grain, and

as a beautiful
is

worth preserving
This
family,

ornament

for a scholar's library.

an ancient piece handed

down

in

my own
in

which has been kept

and
is

for generations

a cabinet,

now

taken out to be illustrated here to give

pleasure to

my

esteemed

friends.

The Tang dynasty flourished from a.d. 6i8 to a. d. 906. know nothuig of Chiang as a worker in bronze of the period,
>

nor of any book illustrated with his models.

We

shall
It

find

him quoted again

in

the description of Figs.

in

16, 25.

will be

noticed that the character for T'ang

the Chinese text has been

replaced by Yuan a mistake of the copyist.

FIGURE

Kuan Yao
lated feet.

of

the

Sung
{In)

dynasty.

Incense Burner with loop handles and

mammil

The
cast

incense

burner

'^

copied from the figure of a bronze factory T'ien-pao ' the in

/L^

^
'

flj
i^x
^jii

^^ ,Uy

Ju
^r

^,

JL. "S"
-y

^
>^.

under

the
after

T'ang dynasty.
its

It

is

-^

drawn
form

actual

height and

^^

t^
J^
^

,jj

f/A^
-^

!^
'^

dimensions
is

in

our

illustration.

The

antique and the glaze, ot good colour, is bright and attractive. Besides, the particular class of mammillated incense-burners is ranked genefirst among sacrificial vessels
so that most of the makers censers in the reign of bronze of this shape and preferred Hsuanrally,

^
^i^
'j'

^r

^
^^
'

.-;

y'g

-^^ ""
jjj^ '^^

y^U "^''*
^jV
*

j^ ^^ "^
-j^

^ '^
,|7

"^

^
r-l

r^
I

e ^"^^
_^.^,

f
J

y^
,

^^^

44-

adopted
colour

it

as

their

pattern.
is

The

of the glaze blue of grey tone, fissured with a

reticulation
it

purplish

of

ice-like

cracks,

and

For a piece of great beauty. library the in table the on place a

is

"^ ^^ 4v ^^ )-0
gi_

W ^
/^J_

^ ,^
^ /^

"^
5^ ^^

A ^t ^
''-'

Jf^

_j^

^'.f
>7.

^
_^
^pf^

"^
,

.^A^

y&

^ L.

-^

to
it

burn offerings of fragrant incense is truly an object to be treasured

culture.
I

j^
fl^

l.

:^

^
-^

by a man of Ku-su- in the

Chiu-chang.

saw
of

it

at

'^^

collection

Chang

S/
<t\>

/^
_^

:Z

M~

^
"^^

1 The T'ien-pao Chu referred to was probably a factory founded in the palace during the T'ien-pao period (a. D. 742-55). __
.
.

ij

<!_*

:^
N^

The Ming dynasty, famous for story goes that there was
2

reign of HsiJan-te (1.426-35) of the

its

bronzes.

The

a great fire in the

"H^
f^N

W^ -^
"'^
^^^ -^
VO

^
,

J^. ^

A]^
-rr-

palace at the time, the ruins of which supplied a fortuitous mine of alloy of inimitable
quality.

^n ^ v
-^T _<^

"il^

-T^
Zrf~

^^
1^1
-^j

of Su-chou-fu, one of the principal cities of the province of Kiangsu.

=

An

old

name

v"^

^J^

^^T^

FIGURE

(I

HsiJAN Yao of the Ming dynasty. Antique Censer with lisli-shapcd handles decorated in deep red with ruddy clouds melting in the sun at dawn. The form of the sacrificial incense burner was copied from a design figured in the Shao The upper part of the surface outside is filled in with deep red* of brilliant lising Chicn kit fit} tint like ruddy dawn clouds, the lower part of the swelling bowl and the foot is glazed white, pure as driven snow. The red and white,"' where they meet, melt into each other, so as to

crown of our collection of celebrated porcelain of strewn with faint tubercles, like grains of millet it I saw it at the southern capital,* in the house of is really a precious jewel of a rare epoch. HsiChu Excellency His hsiao, the governor of the
dazzle the eyes, and
diflferent
it

is

truly the very

is

dynasties.

The whole body

city,

who

told

me

that

it

origmally came from the imperial

J|
/xi**

^ ^^^i ^J
Vi vs
-^

^^ 'M

^
^->-

M^ y>,
-^

given

having been one of the princes as part of his monthly allowance, and that he himpalace,

_^

"^
tj

out

to

bought it afterwards for three hundred taels of silver. In the present day a thousand taels of silver might
self

^ ^
^
-M^

"J

-f" ^^

iS -^
^X-

>7^

M ^
^J

^
, -V\
JJ-^

i^

^
J^^r

-f-

T^
OJ
'^ii-'

n^

t. "^^

^%
Hr .--^
"i^
-^

^^

^^
-$; *^

;ep

4^ 1

M^ ^U^
.T<c2

fT^

^
^
ti

^
'T
->-

)^ J
^

X ^ 3
^,X.
-^

X^
{flj

^^ ^
-^^

be offered for another without succeeding in finding

it.

7^
T^
.^p
J

_/f^

of Anancient bronzes, published during the Sung dynasty in the Shao-hsing period

The

IHiisI rated

Minor
of

tiqiiities,

collection

^
T

-ft,

j
^^

-^
^J^

Jp
'

^ ^ yh M ^ ft^ ^
"^
"^^
if^ ^
^j_ ^f^

j^ >0
>i^
"y^^

;EX^

'^^*^

"^

-^ ^

(a. D. 1 131-62).

Th^y of
red,

./-/<.Oiterally.
is

'

massed issed
'

more
'.

correctly

f.C '^4

^ -<-~-^
^
-^/^^

F|,
*

^
*

-
<-~i
1
\

^
__
.^<

written

with

another
It

character,

meaning

sacrificial

was

first

cups made for the emperor Hsuan-te's wor

used for the
sacrificial

^ *. ^^

3^,

,?S~'

sun, which were ship of the coloured a brilliant crimson of sang de

bmtf tone, due to proto-silicate of copper permeating a glaze rich

in silica.
" It would be interesting tn know whether this condition was inten tional, or whether the whiteness

^ ^ ^
T^

Z f y #
tj

>lf

*
-?" J

a
;l
>
'T>
*

'"^

Is

IX
*]
-<L
^"P
I" '-^

-f

^
|;
^J^
>^.

^
^j: ^*
.^i
"H \;

was an

accidental

result

of the

^ ^
_--

firing of the piece.

In the latter

j^

,.

case the vessel would have been

fired

Jc_

i
^-P-

iS/i

upside down.
to find a

It

is

not unbaiif\iis&

common

sang de

with the upper part white where the copper has been dissipated in the fire.
'

.^r

^^

i'":^

-^ Xt

v:^

Nanking.

FIGURE

X
HuNG-CHiH Yao of the Ming dynasty.
Burner shaped as an archaic oak basket
'

Small Incense

'.

The
same

incense-burner

[ting]

was copied from a

its

figure in

the Hsiian ho

Po ku fu^ and

height and dimensions are

It

the

as those of our illustration.

(literally

has two upright

handles

'ears'), four
is

feet,

and a movable cover.

tint

The

colour of the glaze

yellow, of the

of boiled

chestnuts.
it

In form and decoration of antique artistic beauty,

is

specially suitable for a place on the altar, ready for

I

lighting offerings of fragrant incense.

collection at

got

it

for

my own

Wu-men, from

the cell of the bonze- Hu-ch'iu.

'

The

imperial catalogue of ancient bronzes, published in the

i.

Sung

dynasty, cited under Fig.

'

The word

'bonze', a

common name

for a

Buddhist

monk

in

the east,

is

derived from the Japanese.

>^:i

SECTION

II

CONTAINING SF.VEN ILLUSTRATIONS

(FIGS. S Hi

FIGURK

Kuan Yao of the Sung dynasty. Ink Palette inscribed with an augury of great peace. The ink-palette {ye}t) was copied from the form of a palette used by the emperor in the Hsuan Ho Tien,' and it is reproduced in its actual size in our illustration. The outline is
vase with loop handles at the sides, which are perforated for strings to hang The upper surface of the palette has in the middle an oval depression, like the pit of a water-palette, where the paste is exposed, having been left unglazed to adapt better for rubbing the cake of ink. it The result is as fine and rich a liquid ink as could
like that of a

the palette on the wall.

be produced by the use of Tuan ^ stone, so that the two materials are to be valued equally. The bottom of the palette (which is also figured) is etched with the t'ai hexagram and with an elephant [hsimig] underneath. The shape of the palette, being that of a vase (p'mg), T'ai fhig yu hsiang, an augury of great peace,' which gives its completes the rebus name to the palette. The colour of the glaze is a greyish blue, crackled throughout with lines like ice cracks. Its archaic style and unusual pattern make it truly a precious
'

'

'

object for the

Sr.V:
^".tfof
Hsilanyao, dewith corated

^
tfr

'J^

^ ^
*fc
,u

f
,?p

1^

*!.

^t
t5:

^L ^^
'

^ a

^^
^r

urefneit,
the

a^n^d

sang de double biaif

persimmon water-pot
which follows,
I

# ^ ^
j*

^t % ^
S
j^
^ft"

^>

h^
7^

m
-f^
.

^
|^ ^f

>6|.

i:

1'?
->!L

-R_^_

J^
:%-

>^ ^
-J-

K^
J-"-^

<l^

^
^'l

# t t
'g

g
^K

J^
-f-

it
tk:^

obtained this

palette at
ang-ling,3

Ku-

t.

^
it

^
$^

"^

*>

^ m
i\^

^t
'^^

the

collection

'z

ofHsuCh'ienchai, asecne-

"t 4* ^1

^ ^
-^

^
'^^^

^ m t
t
il

1-

T
?'\

^ a
^
|L

*
-n
"ff

fl

*=
;:l:"

^
'J^-

^
fo'
,

A
founded
period
-25)''

palace
during

r,S"S.7o
(a. d.

<?^

1119-

The best inkstones come from

Tuan-ch'i, in the

jL
/iQ

^
ri^
:gL

"^ ^ T ^ ^

t t A '^ K <^
:^
-5r

Ifi

O^

;L
>^^
A-V

^
"c

^
^i

^
V^
>>-^

^-^

prefecture
Shao-ch'ing,

of
in

Kuangtung
vince.
^

pro-

^
%
fk

1"^

>S^

-C
i^
v^

Aii^

M
t.

'f

^^
/'I

^
^>

i?
J^L

^ 1
^ff
>/

-4

An

old

name

of Yang-chou-fu,
in the

It

ii

province of Kiang-su.

-t-

n ^

FIGURE

X
HsiJAN Yao of the Ming dynasty. Ink
Palette

)fl

^
J^'i

li)

painted

in

blue

with

y^

^'-^

dragons.

A small ink-palette (vf) fashioned

after the design of a jade palette u.sed

^
t<7

t
^
rl

'-K

by the emperor in the Hsuan-ho palace,^ drawn of the size of the

original
in

our

illustration.

The

IT

-^
41
;!

glaze

pencilled

as driven snow, round the sides with dragons delicately drawn. Each of the two sides of the bod}' displays a five-clawed dragon painted in blue outline, stretching out its neck into
is
all

as white

JL
1^1

^
;K
13]

It

1^-

the midst of scrolled clouds.

The

whole surface
decoration
ink,
is

rises into faint millet-

like elevations, the bright blue of the

4
y\

^
,^

it
l).a

,1.

as intense as congealed
really a beautiful

and

it

is

and

desirable specimen.
in

six characters,
chili,- is

An inscription Ta Ming Hsi'ian tc

"j^

*I7

nien

pencilled in blue under

neath, in

quired

it,

good antique stj'le. I acwith the augury of great

'

peace' palette just described,^ from the collection of Hsu Ch'ien-chai.

See note
'

w^

SI
'

to Fig. 8.
(a. d.

Ar

Made in the reign of Hsuan-tL1426-35) of the Great Ming (dynasts).'

"^

A
1^

'

Illustrated in Fig. 8.

s-

-An

I'IGUKE

10

^L
risiJAN
in

^'^

^K

^i"-

Yao

of the

Ming dynasty. Water Dropper

red.
after

OM

the form of two

persimmons coloured deep

{s/itti c/iii)

The water-dropper
the

was fashioned

design of an ancient piece of the same kind

in
'

moulded

bronze.

It

is

composed

of a

pair of

persimmons
the twig
for
is

hanging together from a leafy twig, and

its

perforated along

length to

make

a spout

dropping water on the

is like

palette.

The

colour of

the red glaze

like

fresh blood, rising into millet-

elevations,

the

leaves are green, the stalk

is

brown, exactly

like the

colouring of a water-colour

picture of Hsii Ch'ung-ssu,- or one of his fellow artists,

copied from nature.

It is

a rare jewel for the ornaI

ment of a scholar's

library.

acquired

it

for

my

own

collection, in

company with

the two preceding

ink-palettes,

from Secretary Hsu.

shitze of botanists, a tree cultivated for its

'

The Diospyros

fruit
'

throughout the north of China.

clever artist of the tenth
centurj',

who

painted

fruit,

flowers and insects.

(Cf Giles's Chinese Pictorial Art,

p. 93.)

FIGURE

11

^
Ko Vao
The
bronze
of the

Sung

dynasty.
peaks.

Brush

Rest

shaped as a mountain with

five

brush-rest {yen shan\

was copied from

'

a
its

brush-rest

of

the

Han

dynasty,

and

dimensions are the same as those of our

illustration.

miniature range of

hills

with a central peak and

four lesser elevations, the precipitous sides and deep

valleys are car\'ed in the style of a landscape sketch

by the old
glaze
is

artist

of genius

Wang

Tzu-chiu.

The

purpHsh-blue

in colour,

crackled throughout

with a network of ice-like cracks.

Of

antique form

and lustrous colour,

it

forms an ideal rest for the

I

brushes of a caUigraphist.

saw

it

at the

house of
Imperial

my

fellow

citizen

Yao,

member

of

the

Academj'.
'

The Han dynasty

flourished from

b. c.

206 to

a. d. 220.

:>1^-

.,

^-:n^/

FICURK

1-2

^1
Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung dynasty.
Pot of tazza shape with cover.

Water

The

water-pot (shut

c/i'e'ng)

was copied from

figure in the

K'ao ku

fti}

and

its

various dimensions

are reproduced in
the glaze
fully
is

our

illustration.

The

colour of

a bright jade-like green, of the delighttint

fresh

of

damp moss

or

young pendent

willow twigs.

The cover and

floral

swelling bowl are

worked

all

round with

designs which stand

life

out in strong
picture.
is

relief, instinct

with

as in a painted

When

the bowl

is

filled

with water there

a cover to be placed on the top to keep out dust

rats stealing the contents, so that
for
it

and prevent
eminently

is

fitted
'^

daily

use.

acquired

it

at

Wu-chiang

from the collection of Li Hsueh-po.

'

The

'

Illustrated

Examination of Antiquities of the eleventh

'

century, cited in a note under Fig.

^

3.

city of the third

rank

in

the prefecture of Suchoufu,

province of Kiangsu.

FIGURE

13

Kuan Yao
The
a figure

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Water Pot

^f-

^i>

engraved with cicada designs.

water-pot
in

(shut

cli'eng)

was copied from

its

the

Shao hsing Chicn ku fu^ and

various dimensions are reproduced in our illustration.

The

colour of the glaze

is

a greyish

blue,

;|

fissured with a reticulation of ice-like cracks.

The

form and decoration are of studied elegance, finished

but not too elaborate,
it

is

somewhat simple
in

in

its

^
4'J

*
-t

depressed outline, but carried out

lines

handed
-

down from
dynasties.

clever craftsmen of the

Han and Wei

At the same time as the purple Tingdecorated with

coiling

chou water-pot
figured
next,
I

silkworms

purchased
Wu-ling.^
6.

this

one from a dealer

it
aa
012

*
X.
'fi^

in antiquities at
'

Cited in a note to Fig.

'^

The Han and Wei

dynasties reigned

from

r. c.

206 to

A. D. 264.
'

^ ^

Prefecture Ch'ang-te-fu

in

the province of Hunan.

4^

r^

T^U

FIGURE

14

Purple Ting

Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Water

Pot for washing brushes of fluted form with band

of coiling silkworms.

The

water-pot

(s/iui cli'cng)

was copied from

the

design of a many-lobed washer of bronze of the

Han'

dynasty and

its

various dimensions are reproduced in

our

illustration.

The

colour of the glaze

is

a bright

purple, resembling the fruit of the aubergine- plant,

of

delightful

brilliancy

and

sheen.

Besides

the

studied elegance of the form, the details are

worked

out in the or

stj'le

of a skilful craftsman of the

It
is

Han

Wei

dynasty.

provided with a coral spoon,

to display

and mounted on a carved rosewood stand

its

refined beauty.
at

acquired

it

together with the

preceding piece
'

Wu-ling.

B. c.

206-A.

D. 220.
is

'^

The

egg-apple, called also brinjal, or the egg-plant,

the
is

produce of the Solamiin nielongeita.

parts of China, hence

The ceramic
of

colour

derived from the cobaltiferous ore of manganese found in

its

many

common name

manganese purple.

SECTION

III
(FIGS. 16-211

CONTAINING SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURE
Kuan Yao
Rest
in

15

of the

Sung

dynasty.
tall

Brush

the form of hills with a

peak.

t
^

^^
-m

%. ^^ ^t

The

brush-rest (yen shan\

its

is

figured after

*^

the lines of

original size in our illustration.

is

The
with

precipitous peak
its

carefully modelled
in

prominences and hollows

strong

contrast, after the style of a landscape picture

in
Li.^

gold and green of the famous General

The

glaze

is

blue,

as

bright as the

vitex-tinted= azure sky, crackled throughout

with ice-like
antique
tint

lines

of varied

length.

The
was

and lustrous glaze excel even

those of the

Ko Yao
the

brush-rest which
I

illustrated in Fig. ii.

taels of silver at

bought

it

for

twenty
from

capital (Peking),

the collection of Hsin, the Secretary of the

Grand

Secretariat.

'

Li Ssu-hsun, a great grandson of the founder of

the T'ang dynasty.

He was made

a general in 713,

but
of

was more famous

his

as the greatest landscape painter

the

age,

and

especially as the founder of

Northern School of Chinese Art, the chief characteristic of which seems to have been its brilliant
colouring.
*

(Cf. Giles's

Chinese Pictorial Art,

the
'

p. 42.)
'

The

Vitex incisa,
is

sky-blue flower

of the

Chinese,

a flowering shrub which grows wild on

the hillsides of northern and central China.

of
its

The

tint

flowers approaches that of the forget-me-not.

-f.

^,<y/\yY

FIGURE

Ki

M X
Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung dynasty.
Pot with monster mask Iiandles.

Water

The

water-pot

(sliui cJieng)

was fashioned very

by

cleverly after the

design

of a bronze casting

Chiang of the T'ang' dynasty.

glaze
is

The

colour of the

a bright green like nephrite jade, which in

translucency and lustre almost rivals the productions

of the imperial and

Ko

kilns of the time.

The form
found

and

size are not extravagant,

and

it

is

a most desirable
I

acquisition for the library of a scholar.

it

myself

at Yi-hsing-hsien

in the cell of the

Buddhist

monk Shan-chuan.
'

The T'ang dynasty

flourished
is

a. u.

618-906.

city

near Shanghai, which

chiefly

famous

for its reddish

stonewares, the kind l^nown to us from a Portuguese word as

boccaro ware (see Figs.

44, 45).

FIGURE

17

Quadrangular Vase with ringed monster-head handles. of the Sung dynasty. quadrangular vase (fang liu) was copied from a figure in the Hsiian ho Po ku The body of the f'u Ih^ and its various dimensions are reproduced in our illustration. or any leaning to hair's breadth irregularity, without upright, a vase is perfectly square and

Kuan Yao

Tiie

either side.

The

colour of the glaze

oif

is

a pale fresh blue, reticulated with ice-like crackle,

and it is a celebrated specimen from the collection of

the

imperial

ware

of

the

time.

This

vase

came

Kuo

Ch'ing-lo,

who
it

i
"ai

^*^

originally

bought
it

for fifty taels of silver,

although

had then

^
_

^
x^

^^
1^
'^
g

+
I

-^
KJ

^
4-r

^
1^

1^1 I5?4

^4

,.^

%
L,,g

J^
fl

"t
'^', -f

'^

Xi^

Ch'ing-lo no cover. happening to go out fishing one day, found

in

^
'

^
tl^
>>'

>

^l^ -^

the

boat a cover

"^

-<-

^ ^

^^ '^

5^

A "^ ^
^idj

^ ^
/jJ '-^

^ 22
"

"7

&

which had been pulled up in the boatman's net, and bought it for
ten strings of
'

^
Kj

cash

'.-

When
home
it

he

reached
it

^ ^
:^

^
^.^

,^

^ ^
,^

V
>J<w

>!

^^
^

'^^

-^

^\
Jl,

^t
_,__^

.^
^n"

^ ^

+^
"^
\S\

^
^ ^
^^
j_

Jg.

'|<^

"^
)^
J^/"f

again he placed

on the vase and

^
t^,
""*"

^
''^

/&
-j^

^A
V>4

,^
'g'

was

really the original

Jl-

cover.

There is an ode written by Ch'ing-lo in commemoration of this

incident. Iwaspermitted once to examine the piece, and have not

,^
,^
/'J"

^^

'^-^i-^

^
-h
'

^
4?
'

:jZ

if "*
\4
I

/..

^i^
<3'jJ

^
''^
^''

O'-^

^^
"^

forgotten

it

to-day.

Now
has

^
P
,

i_

that

Ch'ing-lo

,t^

passed know not

the vase.

away, I who has

of

^^ ,^

^ /^ J^ ^ ^i> '^l i4 ^ ^^ J^^ ^

.rf^

^ "^^
^17
.^

'Vv
^^t^
.

^^
Af ^^
-^^j-

^^
^
^

i:

become the owner

?H

'ii^

-^
1

:f
-^

^
-^-.

.^^

^
T^j

7 ^ m ^ _,
-

^l/^

f^

jiL>
itL^

i^']

/v^ -^^
^^ ^

The

catalogue of an-

y^v

-^^
,

-<^
^^"^

cient bronzes cited

under

''?

A stnngofa
is

thousand

^^

cash

equivalent to about

a tael of silver

^
.

^
ifj

^^
r\. 4h

"^ ^

'^

M^

>>^

'^^

r^

V
^^

\.

I-'IGLRE

18

-fe
Purple Ting

Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.

;fe

4-

Jt-

^ ^
t
i^

Sacrificial Jar with

horned dragons.

The

sacrificial jar {hu)

was copied from

kii

a
its

figure in the Hsilan ho

original

Po

fn

lu^ and
in

^
it

dimensions are reproduced

our

t4

illustration.

The outHnes

of the design are

antique and distinguished, the colour of the

glaze
in
is

warm

purple, like grapes ripened

clear and
lustrous.

rm

the
a

sun,

beautifully

As

receptacle
it

for flowers

on the dinner

table

would

really be an acquisition of the

I

highest class.

saw

it

formerly

in

the palace

n
^
m^

%.

t
lit

of the Prince of Chiang-yu,

not

where they could

I

remember

its

source, and

sketched the
in

picture with the greatest

care,

order to

submit

it

afterwards for the appreciation of

-^

'i^

^L

my
'

learned friends.

The

imperial catalogue of ancient bronzes cited

i.

It
->A

under Fi^.

4-

''^

FIGURE
Yao
of the

in

]v

Sung

dynasty.

Trumpet-sliaped Vase engraved with pahn-leaves and

scrolled designs.

ho
of

The trumpet-shaped vase {ku) was copied from a sacrificial wine-vase figured in the Ilsiian Po ku t'n lu^ and its several dimensions are given in our illustration. Very few productions the Ju-chou kilns have come down to our time, and those that have are mostly platters, cups,
like.

and the
like
this

These
old

vase,

are, besides, generally cracked and imperfect, so that a fine perfect piece with no crack even as minute as a hair or thread of silk, is rare indeed.

Moreover the

wine-jars

known
most
for

as kn and tsun- are excellent

receptacles

*l

flowers,

shapes

can

and no other compete with

purpose.
In
in

them
its

for this

form,

technique,
its

and

the colour of

glaze,

this

vase surpasses any production of the imperial {kitan) or Ko kilns of the period, and it is not surprising that
value should spondingly high.
its

be
I

corre-

saw

it

when

was
a

at

the

capital

(Peking), in the collection of

Huang,^
emperor's

general

of

the

bodyguard, who that he had bought me told cash from for 150,000 * it
'

'

Yun
1

Chih-hui.
imperial catalogue of an-

The

cient bronzes, cited

'^

under

Fig.

i.

The ku vases

are hornlike, with

tall,

flaring

slender, graceful bodies and mouths; the tsun are fash-

ioned in more or less similar lines, but are more squat and solid, so
that
'

diameter their exceeds their height.

sometimes

the
in

Three other notable pieces in same collection are illustrated our album as Figs. 40, 59, and 60.

The copper

'

cash

"

of China has

varied in value at different times, but the normal rate of exchange is 1,000 for a tael, or Chinese ounce of silver,

would roughly represent about /50 sterling.

so that the above

A^-

FIGURE

211

Chun Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Small Jar moulded with two phoenixes as handles.

This wine-jar {fstcji) is modelled after a design from some unknown source, or perhaps after the original fancy of the potter; yet the form is of classical stj'le, and the work has been executed b}' no common hand, so that its maker must have been a scion ot some noted line of antecedent craftsmen. The productions of the Chiinchou kilns are generally ranked by connoisseurs below those of the other
factories of the

Sung

dynasty, but this

jar with

its

well-modelled form and

to

beautiful colour, as well as from being

so well adapted

hold flowers,

is

worthy of being placed on the shelf of the cabinet with any collection of specimens from the Ju, Kuan, Ko, or Ting potteries. Underneath the foot
of the jar the character
ivii,
'

five,' is
'

found engraved as a numeral mark an evidence that it is, without any

I

doubt, really a Chun-chou piece.'

am

at

present myself the fortunate

jar.

possessor of this

arc told by Chinese ceramic writers the usual practice of the Chiinchou potters to incise in the paste before the If piece was glazed one or two numerals.
'

We
it

that

was

more than one such occur

it

is

the

same

numeral repeated, being first incised underneath, and again on some part of the upper surface of the shaped dishes for flowering narcissus bulbs, for example, which are the finest specimens of Chun-chou ware extant.

FIGURE

21

Shu Fu Yao

of the

Yuan

dynasty.

Small Vase with garlic-shaped mouth ornamented with designs lightly tooled
in the paste

*-

under the glaze.

the pure

Under our own dynasty

white porcelain of the reign of Yunglo^ and Hsuan-te," with ornamental

designs
glaze,
faintly
all

engraved

under the

was Yao,^ and the Shu Fu Yao

copied from the S/in

itself

Fn
was

modelled after the Ting-chou porcelain This of the Northern Sung dynasty vase [p'ing) has its peculiar shape, its white-toned glaze, and its engraved decoration, all alike copied from the
.''

Ting-chou ware. Underneath the foot of the vase the two characters shit fa, imperial palace,' are lightly engraved
'

The under the paste as a mark form and size of the vase are exactly
'

'.

suitable for the decoration of a small

with a few sprays of herbaceous flowers, such as narcissus, begonia, golden lily, or dwarf chrysThis piece also stands anthemum.
dinner-table

now

in

my own
1403-1424.

study.

'

A. D.

A.D. I426-I435.

' Shu Fu was the name of the imperial palace during the Yuan d^masty (a.d. 12801367I, so that the name Shu Fu Yao indicates

affiliation

The for the use of the palace of the art of engraving the several classes of white porcelain, as traced out above, is interesting and convincing. ' A.D. 960-1126.
'

ware made

'.

"^j^ irfi

SECTION
CONTAINING
'IK.N

IV
(FIOS. 22-31)

ILLUSTRATIONS
22

FIGURE

Ju Yao of the Sung dynasty. Small rounded Beaker The beaker-shaped vase {kn) was
fashioned after the figure of a sacrificial

of old bronze design.

JP

j[iH,

j^l

7^

vessel in the Hsi'ian ho

Po kii Cu^
P'^
1
-flfj*
*

-^

>
yjr-

M'i^
yfp^r

and its several dimensions are reproduced in our illustration. I have said
the description of Fig. 19) that the productions of the Ju-chou

^
-f

^
,7^

.A^
''iT

yq\,
^Jj-

already
kilns

(in

^
'

nO-

jJC

i-t'

comprise

mainly platters

and
its

-^
^'^^

f^
"

^^ ^j^
'"

T
yT
-^

"^
"^^

-
<.^
<

'^
rf-r-

cups, and that other pieces are very

rare indeed.

"^

So

that this vase with

finely-tinted

finished form

should

and be ranked

glaze

X X
.>
"^
^jl^

^X
j,

4
,>-

%
j^
-IKZ,
^j,

^
j.

')
.^
)j&j

even

above the

-^
p<\

several productions of the imperial and

'"O

&
,.-j{

"a

Ko

kilns of the time.

is

Moreover the
of the sky-blue

colour of the glaze

'^

-^

-f

Mu
-^

shade of the vitex flower, and the whole surface has nowhere a single hair of crackling, so that it is indeed a rare example of the ceramic ware of Ju-chou of almost unique interest. It

|)K
|

^ A ^ tt 4
^,

li

^ft^

i^
^C

^^

^^

!^
-<^
J^
^jrn
J

2
>WL

worthy of a place beside the slender trumpet-shaped vase engraved with scrolled designs and palmations, which was illustrated in the preceding section of the album (Fig. 19), and is to
is

well

J^
Jl.
^

'^;^

.^
tT
*

^
!
'

^
^

"''

^^

^^
/
Aj'

><
n<

be classed with the

kind.
I

latter as a recep-

tacle for flowers of the

most recherche
-

"JpT

saw

it

at

Wu-men
official

in

the

^^-^

ft

Jr

house of the high

ting.

Shen Wen-

"

'

The One

imperial catalogue of ancient bronzes

Fig.
i.

cited
^

under

of the quarters of the city of Shao-

hsing-fu, in the province of Kiangsu.

^ f

't

r*^^^

1.

^t

-^
tt

^'J

FIGURE

2:5

Lung-ch'Oan Yao of the Sung dynasty.

Hot-water Bottle with swelling garlic-shaped

^\

mouth.

The
and
our

hot-water bottle {zvcn

in

Iiu)

was copied
fit hi,^

from a figure
its

the Hsi'tan ho

Po kn

several dimensions are reproduced in

In cultured circles for hold-

illustration.

ing flowers the hot-water bottles and the club-

shaped vases

are the two kinds most highly

esteemed as receptacles for the Mutan tree

paeony, for the herbaceous paeony, and for
varieties of orchids, because the

mouths of

these vessels are small, so that

when

filled

with water they allow no bad smell to escape.

This bulbous-necked bottle

is

a case in point.

The

glaze

is

bright green, of the tint of fresh

is

onion-sprouts, so that the colour

ful

as beauti-

as the form
in

is

classical.

The

vase has

long been
of our

constant use on the dining-table

own

ancestral

home.

'

The

imperial catalogue of ancient bronzes so often

i).

cited (see Fig.

-

Literally bulrush beaters

{p'li c/i'iii),

resembling the

club-shaped wooden mallets used by Chinese washerwomen to beat clothes against rocks or boulders at the
riverside.

FIGURE

24

^
Purple Ting

Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Small

quadrangular Vase to hold divining-rods.

Small
divining-rod vases
^

are

considered

by

connoisseurs to constitute a most suitable form for

holding flowers.

This vase

ip'ttig) is

of

medium

size,

and

exactl}'

adapted for flowers on the writing-table

beside the ink-palette.

glaze
that
it

Moreover the colour of the

is

a bright purple of

warm

lustrous tone, so

stands out

among

the several pieces of purple

Ting-chou ware as a
beauty.
It is in

fine

specimen of surpassing

the collection of

my younger

brother

Kung An.

Divining-rods are
still

made

of twigs of the Acliillea sibirica,

a tree vvhicli is

cultivated in the

grounds of the tomb of

Confucius in the province of Shantung.

of the vessel containing

The conventional form

in relief

them

is

quadrangular, with two of the

eight trigrams of ancient divination

worked

on each of

the four sides of the vase, separated by the circularjv/^'rt^ symbol of light

and darkness.

The

peculiar ornamentation of the

vase in the illustration suggests a degradation of such symbolical

designs into a merely geometrical pattern.

still

The

original

form

is

a favourite one in the imperial potteries of Ching-te-chen

to-day,
the

which send up to the Palace at Peking square vases with symbols worked in the paste in salient relief, invested with manganese purple, turquoise crackle, or 'robin's egg' glazes.

FIGURE

25

LuNG-cu 'iJAN Yao of the Sung dynasty.

Flower Receptacle with several mouths.

:^
>ru

^^

The

receptacle for flowers {Ima tiang)

in

was

copied from a design for a casting

bronze

by Chiang

of

the T'ang dynasty,'

and

is

a form of rare occurrence, extremely con-

^
C2
XT

^
)lL

^'
-k^

^ C
M
%.

venient for holding several varieties of flowers,

% ^

such as the different kinds of roses, as they

due season, and are placed on the This little altar on ceremonial anniversaries. occasions such on vase filled with flowers affords a delightful show of colour and diffuses
blossom
in

"^

^
^K

J:

an exquisite fragrance, so that

ranks high.

it

deservedly
is

Besides, the colour

a bright

It
'

green

like the

plumage of a

parrot, crackled

throughout with Hnes

it

like fissured ice, so that

^ ^
4]

is

a rare specimen of the ceramic

It
is

ware of
city, in

Lung-ch'iian.

now

in

our

own
in

the temple Chi

Hsiang An, being

constant

use
'

at

the shrine

Wu

Huan Lao Shan.

many-

A. D. 618-906.

It IS

interesting to have these

necked flower-vases traced back so

curious form
is

far in China, as the

not

uncommon

in the

ceramic produc-

tions of Persia
^

and the Near

East.

The
is

glaze of these

potteries during

the

Sung

dynasty was a brighter green than that of later times,

1L

^
17 cr

and

often likened to the grass-green tint of fresh

onion-sprouts.

The

celadon ware of the

is

Ming period

from the same potteries

greyer tone of sea-green,

and

is

like

the skin of the Chinese olive, a species

of Canarium.

FIGURE

26

^1.

Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung dynasty.

Lobed

Vase of hexagonal form.

The vase

(fitig) is

designed from some unknown

source, but the form

is

thoroughly

classical,

and

its

dimensions are well adapted for ordinary use.

colour of the glaze

The

resembles the

tint

of a fresh

green cucumber.
indentations
firmly

The

six-lobed outline with vertical

a solid form designed to stand

make up
small

on
'

table,

ready to be

filled

with

Loyang

rock-grown

chrysanthemums,
I

or

some

similar herbaceous flowers.

bought

this

vase for

my own
'

collection in the market-place at Huai-yin.^

Tlie

name

of an old capital

oi'

China, corresponding to the

modern Ho-nan-fu.
'

An

old

name

of Huai-aii-i'u, in the province of Kiangsu.

FIGURES

27.

28

Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung dynasty.

Small Vase

for a single flower.

its

27.

The
form and
pieces, a

vase {p'wg)
its

is

not

much more

than an inch high, yet

finished technique

and

bright green colour combine to

make

it

a beautiful object in a collection of small

charming receptacle
In

for a small flower like a

little

jasmine.

company with
one has
y^

the

dwarf orchid, a balsam, or a sprig of Ting-chou vase engraved with two scrolled bands which

follows, this

long been installed as a jewel in my own

cabinet.

^^
.

:^
_r-r

-^

j_j.

^^
.j;

j^^

a,
j^

Ting
the

Yao

of

Sung

dynast}-.

Small Vase with two

^
'

^
-tj

'^

'**

/^

__^

i^ ^ ^^^

^>
J^r

"T

^ ^c
ri^
^^|_j

fat,

without the least

FIGURE

2!>

'm
Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung dynasty.

^ n
-ir

it,

Vase fashioned
leaves.

in

the form of a whorl of palm-

The
body

palm-ieaf vase [chiao yeh finty)

is

0^

designed from some

the
is

unknown

source, so that

of unique form.

The

leaves are

arranged on every side so as to leave a hollow

space in the centre, forming a kind of tube

mto which

water

can

be

poured,

and

it

makes an

ideal receptacle for cut flowers.

The

leaves and the culm are coloured in darker

and lighter shades of green

to distinguish the
foliage,

upper and lower surfaces of the

ing that the ancient
in the fabrication

showpains
of art

workmen spared no
little
'

even of a
at

work

like this.

saw

it

Hsi-shan

in the collec-

tion of

Tsou Yen-chi.

'

An

4>
old

name

of Yiin-yang-fu, in the province of

Hupei.

f
AS.
atr

CO.

J4

FIGURES
Chun Yao
decoration.
of the

30.

31

Sung
which

dynasty.

Miniature Vase for one flower with finely engraved

3-

only about an inch in height, has a bulbous neck shaped like a 'head' of garlic. The colour of the glaze is a mottled bluish-purple, vulgarly known as It is one of the tiniest of little vases, but well adapted to hold ass's liver and horse's lung '. It is in my own collection, together with the twig of jasmine. or a pearl orchid a single

The

vase

\p'ing),

is

'

accompanj'ing

little

bamboo vase decorated

in blue.

HsiJAN Yao of the Ming dynasty. Blue-and-white Vase fashioned as a section of bamboo. 31. vase [p'ing), which is one inch and seven-tenths high, is fashioned like a segment of with the outlines of the stem and eye-holes of the joints pencilled in Mohammedan bamboo,

The

^ ^ ^^
^t
i^

"""

m ^ ^
$.
'fe
^S:
i-X

\n

^
-^

t ^ A ^ ? i
.g
^|i

%^ ih

^
Vf.

% m % 4> ^ ^
'^^

^ # m ^
i^

fk

%.

^v

^
^i"

#^

Tp

^
lip

^
tj

rp

4L

4^

JL

%^
.If.

^
^^
1
^p

^
,C

A 4
i^

vx
J:-

^t

"'

^ ai^'fii-g^^^'

"

o o

'i

o o

o o

k
57

/jr-

^)

(m
4 1" t

^^<^

SECTION V
CONTAINING SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS
(FIGS. 32-38)

FIGURE
Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung Wine Jar modelled in the

:i2

it

)\' j^

f\

dynasty.

form of a hornless rhinoceros. The rhinoceros jar (50 fsitn) was modelled after a bronze sacrificial vessel figured in the Hsilan ho Po ku fu,^

^^

and

its

several dimensions are the

same

as those of our illustration.

The body

t:

VA

hollowed out to hold wine, the is peaked saddle on the back is hinged
to

i
00
OCT

make
is

the cover of the jar.

The

very ancient, and well fits the jar to figure in the ancestral temple as a ceremonial utensil. In the present day pottery and porcelain are much used for sacrificial vessels, in place of

form

4^
i

IB

I-

gold and copper, so as not to waste

the resources of the state and to spare
the

means of the people

the

new

materials consequently should not be

too lightly esteemed.

The

K
^

colour of

the glaze
tone.

is

bright green like spring

onions, delightfully clear and rich in

at the

saw it at the southern capital, temple Ch'ao T'ien Kung, in the apartment of Kuo, the prior of the Taoist community.
I
'

^ ^
lil

The imperial catalogue

been so often
'

of ancient bronzes
i).

that has

cited (see Fig.

The

character ku, from the title

'cover,'

ancient,'

has

been

omitted
of

by the
k'o,

^
't7

*j

copyist,

so also kat,
the

from the Chinese text, and fourth column. ' Nanking.

second

column

'should,'

from

the

cz

||j

'/^^

%i

FIGURE

33

Ting Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Wine

The
and
are
its

elephant
several

jar {hsiang tsuri)

was modelled

Jar in the form of an elephant. after a figure in the Hsi'ian ho

Po ku fu

lu^

dimensions

identical

with those of

our
ficial

illustration.

The

sacri-

wine-jars used in ances-

tral

temple worship should

^i/-n yp}

$ 1.

'^'

i-

SI

4 ^
r^

had subsidiary vessels for meat offerings and subsidiary jars for wine set out, the size of which was probablysmaller
than that of the principal
crificial

^
.^\,

jj^

jr

-V;
ij"

-^

S\

^
^>^

"^

r^

'

"^

^^

^
ia

sa-

vessels.

Vessels of
doubtless

;S

15

1^
fk
^^ y^
.:^

fi.

-14
-*"

the

kind

would

have figured as such subsidiary jars, and although this one may not be large enough for use in the ancestral ternpie, it must not be regarded merely as a to}'. When filled it will hold about a pint of wme. 1 he colour of the
glaze
is

#
^^

f
^ VX
/

^
^

^^
.>-,
-r

^5"
Jc;^

P^
.iv^

_>-

'^
^Aj

^-^

M^
-f il

^
-=^

^
^^
^'1

J^
:t

'fe

a lustrous white, re-

J^L

"^
"
*31

sembling mutton-fat, and the modelling is well executed and artistically finished. I

T
{^g.

^
"^^

^
^

f
.^
,,

"^

"T

^
$?

_Jl_

,^ ^^-^
^'1
''^^

^[

^
i

saw

this piece in the collec-

"^
J

tion of

Chu

Chi-chien of

San

^
"^ J

'^J*

A
AJ.i -^j*
>,-t

^^

^^
j}^
.

'

The

cient bronzes so

imperial catalogue of anoften cited (see

note to Fig. I). ' San Ch'u appears to have been the name of a street in the city of Shao-hsing-fu. Another piece from
the

^^ 4>
i^

^Cj?

,]>

^T^
J?
j"

>?K^
X
-'^'^
"Jb

^_i
v
i

^_^ VSl
"-"^

Tp J
itt'v

J?

J
Jt -^^

same

collection

is

illustrated as

Fig. 54 in our

album.

"^

3J

V~"^

J4^\ ^^

'^*

\
(^<:\\

^
\

(^

^<iJiJ

\.

I'IGURE

.-54

Ju Yao of the Sung dynasty. Wine Plwer in the shape of a duck. The duck-shaped ewer (/ isjoi) was copied from a figure in the Hsiian ho Po ku t'u lu,^ and its original dimensions are reproduced in our illustration. The colour of the glaze is pale blue. Now the duck is a water-bird whicli swims in lakes and rivers, and delights in sporting gracefully on the surface of the water. The men of old fashioned these vessels to suggest that winedrinkers should skim lightly on the surface like ducks, and not become drowned in liquor like a the peculiar form of the vessel was intended, in fact, to serve as a warning against drunkard intemperance. But this particular wine-pot hardly holds a pint of liquor, and it would be difficult to get intoxicated with such a little wine. There is another ancient saying that a murmuring brook is not for enough, incomplete n a t o to x c a.
;
'

large

rivers

and lakes are

required

'.

This vessel, however, albesmall, can it

serve
as

a
of

metaphor

greater things. Itisof finished

form and technique, the pale

blue glaze
crackled
archaic
on,

is

in fashiit

and

is

in all

respects

worthy of the
highest

rank
ex-

as a rare

ample
ancient
vessel.
it

of

an

wineI

saw
^

at

Hsin-an

at

the

house

of

Wu S hang-

she of Shangshan.
' The imperial catalogue of an-

cient bronzes cit-

ed under Fig.
-

i.

An old name
the

of
in

Hui-chou-fu, province of Anhui.

FIGURE

35

Black Ting Yao of the Sung d3'nasty. Duck-headed Wine The duck-headed vase (/ tsun) was copied from a figure in
its

Vase.
the Hsiian ho

Po

kii

t'ti /;/,'

and

several dimensions are reproduced in our

illustration.

discussion of the use of the duck

as a motive for wine-vessels

was given under the

last illustration,

and need not be repeated.

Among
being

the productions of the Ting-chou kilns the large majority are white, the purple and black

much
is

rarer,

so that an ink-black

specimen

ver}' sel-

dom

seen.

In

the

course of my own life I have seen a hun-

dred and more pieces

of white
porcelain,

Ting-chou

some

tens

of purple,
the

while
variety

of
I

black

have

only seen this

solitary example. The black extends over the head

one

and
tirely
it

neck,

the
so

body
that

of the vase being enwhite,

precisely resembles

the
bird

plumage of the itself, and is

to

rightly

be
as

char-

acterized

rara
bottle

avis in Ting-chou porcelain.

The

holds about one pint

and
wine.

three-tenths
I

of
in

saw

it

the collection of
wife's relative Li

my
Tu-

chien.
' The imperial catalogue of ancient bronzes

cited

under

Fig.
of

i.

The

application

duck motive as a warning to

the

winebibbers is also duly impressed by the editors

of
tills

catalogue.

FIGURE

;$(i

LuNG-CH "iJAN Yao of the Sung dynasty. Wine The gourd-shaped jar {fao tsun) was fashioned
dimensions are reproduced in our illustration. The ancients had a saying: 'Ladle the wine out with gourds.' In olden times they had no wine jars of bronze or pottery in general use, the few that existed were only seen in the houses of mandarins and noblemen the common people, however, made gourds of pottery for

jar

in the

after a figure in the Hsiiau ho l\>

shape of a recumbent gourd. kn fn

/,'

and

its

several

^ jg^
^

-1^
^^ "n^
___ ^]

A^

Ml
;f
)

llrj

v ^ ^^ AL
-i^

-^
\S\
liJ

//

-f

"Kl^

^aL
i-fg

-vr

-^

^
.>^

C
;^
-tit,

-^

^
-^
-prn

a|-gA

w^
>

>t

^l^

u
"cT

'^X^

fj^

^S
%L

/{^

7']^

-^
i^

jr

y^
-^1"

^'
.!^

',

'<^

^*W^

"f"^

ordinary use,

like

this

jar,

-^

which they kept full of wine ready to be drunk. In later times, when the gourds were
fashioned in pottery instead
of gold or copper, to spare un-

^
^^ '
1

,^
iJ^

yg^

-^
't -*^^ ""''^

^
^'n "
^"^^^

-|J51
-^

^^
^^

^4
'

i| ^^
1

^
i^
A.%

^*
-

-^

necessary expense, they were modelled in the style of this

jar.
It

^^
y^
^ ^J
i

'^
_;!:_

--^t

-^ J^
-^

-j^

.^,

"^^

^ ^V

^^,

^^

^^

holds
of

somewhat over
and has a

pint

wine,

handle attached to the body by chains, so that it may be

carried on mountain trips or

vT

excursions to
temples,

the

Buddhist
is

^
,

^ n
,->-

<rt^

ft
-^

%
fli
ta-,
1

i^

K
^
u
-?r
)"o7

^v%
cjA

where wine

M
""^
>L
'f\
'^'f

-*
>>fr

not

This jar, both in its form and colouring, which are most antique and distinguished, is no comlikely to be found.

TX
-^
-/-

J^
>

^\
/

5J
i'A

^ ^ ^
-^ ^O
'fi^

"V'

/'^N
-^5]

^S*

mon

object.

acquired

it

in

^k
/-.^

^
*Hl>
_j]^

y:^
JtJ
y-;?

the province of Chiang-yu after the death of

'

its

former owner.

Jl.

-^
^^-z

'^
/,^> -*^

^>^
'J''

The

imperial catalogue of ani.

'^
*J^

cient

bronzes cited under Fig.

^ 'T^

>^ l\

-^

FIGURE

-M

HsiJAN

Yao

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Wine

Jar

in

the shape of a goose painted in bkie on

a white ground.

The source of the form of this jar {hti) cannot be traced its several dimensions are The reproduced in our illustration. Respectfully refer to the C/iin Citing,^ which says domestic bird is a goose which is naturally wakeful \^ >^ >>< -^J) 'Si. at night and drives away ^j.
;
:

'

^
^
-J

^^
'^B S
]g^
> ^

robbers.'

Men

of old

when

had this metaphor in view, and adopted the form of the goose as a warning to the
they
wine-jars

made

/^

^
-|~
*

-^
)

,^ it.
"^

^ ^ ^ ^ ^| ^ /
v
iK^

^']

^^
'^
-

yj^

drinker not to become

-SI

so

i^ ^
-H^^

-^^

^
'^
Jli

'^

^^
,

'S^ "^

deeply intoxicated at nightfall as to be unable to wake up at

J
-7>

^>^

/<!^

H^
^J

^ ^-^

yfcT
l'^^

-^
fj

Tt^^^^t^L
The form and technique
are

^
-<-

r]
J^
^i/

m
,

A,
^
^|Jt
ji^ /q"
.

^
^t

^
jC-

'^
iA^

well finished, the details of

the crest and the plumage ^^ the wings and
tail

41!

^
-^r

^^

'^
'^*

being so
re-

-^^

carefully filled in as to

4^

every respect the The blue with real bird. which the design is pencilled is bright and liquid, and the

semble

in

"^

^
^<^

|^

^
^

^ -^
^ .^^

A.
"?]"

^ J^
^

^^
-T
j^

?^

Jz,

-^1^^

'^

^^
^
-*^^^

.J^
jS.
^

^^
>1L

^
^

3^
h

J^
>^>

glaze rises in faint

like

milletit

i^
7^

^^
-i"

points, so that

is

a
at

choice example of Hsuante

porcelain.

saw

""^

'^

it

<^ '

^ ^^
,

-^A^

t
'

One

of the earliest Chinese

4 ^
. .

^-^
^

I'j
^^

ti
,

j^

books on ornithology, supposed

to

.<^
i-t

^K"

be as old as, if not older than, Cf Wylie's the Christian era.

A^o/fs
'

^^

iJ^f "

OM C/fSc Literature,

p. 123.

1^^_.

-?^
"J^

y/T
>-

Jt.

pn/
a

-d^ "t-***
y^V ^^^
v>/

i/

i-^

quarter of the city of Shaohsing-fu, in the province of Che-

y^
*rt*

J^^
"yTx.

^T'T^ /
4

^^

^?^>

/'

'{^y.

'

FIGURE

.-58

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming dynasty. Melon-shaped Wine Pot decorated with coloured glazes. The form of the wine-pot (/;), which was fashioned after a design from some unknown
source,
is

figured in the exact lines

of

its

original size in our illustration.

yt^
^
y.

In the reign of the

emperor canon'

^
-^
*-
*

At ^
.y-

J^ ^
^y^
tl

^
"i"
w?-

i
'jZ.

ized in the ancestral temple as

ex-

emplary'Mhe
lain

art of painting porce-

^f.

^
jji^

w-

^,i
t" J

^^
-H/J
\'i>t

-^^^
'^

p-b
'7

with vitrifiable enamel colours was most highly appreciated, and we know that at this time the designs intended for use in the porce-

^^

f^
-T -^^^

"^
-=^
,>t

li
' '

'^-^

M^

^'^

-^^
"^

yT

'^
-^
r^

''^

J^ 7

-^

SECTION

VI
(FIGS. 39
45)

CONTAINING SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURE
The

31)

HstJAN Yao of the Ming dynasty. Elephant Jar painted in blue. elephant jar [hsiaiig fsttn) was fashioned after a figure in the K'ao ku i'u,^ and its several dimensions are the same as those of our illustration. Referring to the San It t'u,^ we are told that in the grand sacrifices to the tutelary gods of the land a pair of elephant jars were used.

The

elephant
of

is

the great domestic animal of

Nan Yueh,^ which

can carry on

its

back a thou-

sand chiin;*

its

tusks at the

sound

thunder

become

t|

it
^1

i^
^^i

variegated with lines, and it understands the language of

men.
tive

The
for

use of

it

as a mo-

^^ ^ i
jj.

^ ^

i^r^
l^l,

^ ^
-^

-^
.*

j^ '^
^
i

^ ^ ^ ^
t

^
at\ J^
rir'

vases
to

indicates

the

intention

civilize

distant

it)

foreigners
guests.

when they come

the

^^

Prr

In

present day,

^P
tj^
Yi}

^r

^i ih

-^
^t

M
iL -^

"^^ ^^
fJt>

T^
.gi

^
^^

1J
:% Z;

^^
.rA^

^
&I

although not used in the grand sacrifices to the earth, they are still moulded by the potters, who thus carry on old The jar holds traditions.

-^ -^-^

Yi\

M^^
.

rr^

4. "J

J^
i /f
^

jl

^^ -^ 7^ J-^
fgj

-^
r^
-$"

about

three

pints

of
its

wine.

form and technique and the beauty of its glaze combine to make it a choice example of the Hsuan-te ceramic kilns. I saw in it at the southern capital the library of T'ao, Tutor of the Hanlin College.

The

finished skill of

A>>7-/5^^i.,i_.^ )^>#^S-A-^T ^
^

^ ^J

u^
^f]

^ ^ g
^^
^A

l^j

-J^;-

^^

^
t

;^

j?

^^^

^
C4

^^s

^^^

j|l

-^

4 ^
"i"

|TI

A,
-ClJ
yO

'

^ J^

!^ ^A

'^ &

^
^

'

The

'illustrated
'

examination ot

antiquities
'

of the eleventh century

cited

which has been

a

under

Fig. 3.

'Illustrations of the three rituals,'

work in twenty books, by Nieh Tsungyi, who lived in the tenth

century
ritual
'

^ ^ ^ % ^ Jp ^ * 4 ^>\ :i ^ % ^ K K
%
>-[T

-^

JL>
j.

_^

_>

a. d.

The

three

ancient

books are the Chon Li, the the Ritual of the Chou dynasty and the Yi Li, Decorum Ritual
' ;

'

'

$.
J^^

^
--c

i%
T^
'

^
^/s^

4)
^\

-Aa

official
5
*

Z/

C/;/,

'

Book

of Rites.'

Southern Yueh,

i.e.

Annam.

The

chiln equals 30 catties, about

^"'Nanking.

^j^

i--

"

j^ "^

^^

FIGURK

40

HsiJAN Yao of the Ming dynasty. Deep red Wine Pot with phoenix-headed spout. The phoenix-headed wine-pot [feng shou hit) was copied from the form of a jade wine-pot

used by the emperor on state occasions Among the cerain our illustration. mic productions of the reign of Hsuante, deep red is the one variety that is Probably this the most valued of all. is because in the preparation of the colour, red precious stones from the west were pulverized for the glaze, so that, after the porcelain had been fired, flashes of ruby-red sheen shone out from the depths of the rich glaze,
*

in

the palace, and

its

several dimensions are reproduced

^
//>

fg'\

^
U^
'^^*"
.\h
'

^^
^X.

-^\3

)M^
'fl

pfc

'/
-^

I^
'^

^f\

-5^
^

f^^

H
X-, -^

^^ -^

r^
_!$!

-rr

t^
'

>WL*
^-fr*

J^
-^J^
riV*

^^ '^
-

"*"
ii.

^^
,

dazzling the eyes.

lain

No
in
it

other porceparticular

^^
^
.

_j'Jl^

-^

/^
_^
-T^ ,^
ji\,
-<1> A"

jA^

^
^

-J^

?l]

can

rival

it

this

quality.

Besides,

came from the

palace,

1 J

-^

+f

^^
/,{-

> /,

-^ ^^
*i-

_^

interior

of the imperial

and

^
PP
/ -^f^
1
7(|_^

^
w
.^
^-Tsj

there

nothing of the kind to be found outside, hence it is very costly.

is
I

-^^

fit-.

7^

^^
-I^P

saw

it

when

the collection the emperor's

was at the capital of Huang, a general

I

in

of

^
'^j'

c?

tLi
>/

Tl
J* J

-^
eJ

bodyguard, who told me that he had bought it for two hundred ingots - of silver in paper Chung-kuei.' money from

_^
li^Cj

^^ ^i
""^

1
_X:.

I?^

-^

.^^

Wu

^^

r^

'

The prevalent Chinese

notion that the

% S
^-p

'k

K
%^
i^^

^t

colour is due to rubies, ground down for the purpose, must be a misconception, as their colour would disappear in the high fire of the

^
i2,
1

^
^']

Carnelian China, used as one of the ingredients but its function seems to be to make the glaze more liquescent during the
kiln.
It is

really a

copper colour.

was

actually,

and

is still in
;

firing.

4 t
^.

S7

sterling,

about six hundred pounds although the government notes were at a large discount at the time. ^ Probably one of the chief eunuchs of the palace at the period, Chung-kuei representing an official title, or grade of dignity, conferred upon a eunuch.
*

Nominally

yi^
^.x^

mL
**

l_

.1^

I.

iip,

7\

.^>^
,1 '

r T^

*J

jWr
7^^*

-^ TTA

FIGURE

41

Chun Yao of the Sung dj^nastj'. Wine Pot of flattened form decorated
with floral scrolls.
(//;/) is designed from some unknown source, and yet quaint form leaves nothing to its desire. The productions of the Chiinchou kilns were, in fact, for the most part, of novel original design, and not modelled after the antique this was
;

The

wine-pot

the general

rule,

so that the piece

finest

before us
spect.

is

not singular in this rethe

Among

coloured

glazes produced here, none surpassed the two known as vermilion red and
'

'

'aubergine purple'; as for the

de liine
'

'

clair

and the pale green

'

','

these

last were inferior colours in the Chunchou potteries. So a fine specimen

of 'aubergine purple' like this winepot,

decorated profusely with

floral

scrolls in

pronounced
It

relief, is

of the
full,

highest class.
rather

holds,
a

when

more than
it

pint

of wine.

There ought
top, but
I it

to be a cover on the has apparentl}- been lost. discovered this piece, and purchased forthwith, in the shop of Li, the soy

seller.

Literally moonlight white

'

',

but the colour

China by this name is always a sky-blue tint, whether in ceramic glazes or in dyed silks and cottons.
in
-

known

Literally

'

oil

green

'.

FIGURE

42

^
HuNG-CHiH Yao of the
shaped

41

7.
^7.

4'

^ ^
J^^

^\

^}\

Ming

dynasty.

Gourd
-^j^
after

Wine

Pot with pale yellow ground.

of the wine-pot
{Itu)

-^~

-^T7

^^
:
Jiiv

The form
a

was fashioned
source,
its

design

from

some unknown
like

several

if

45
J^

^ ^
-i/ijt-

dimensions are

those of our illustration.

The
filial
'

^
^^

reign of the emperor

who was canonized

as

'

the

was

particularly

famous

for its porcelain painted with

it

Jpf j

/jj-

p^j

"^
^^

a pale yellow ground of pure tone, but

pieces decorated with

also had

some

polychrome

vitrifiable

enamels,

^
"^
,*

5g-

>fu\

which were worthy of being ranked with the similar

productions of the reign of Ch'eng-hua.^
is

^J^
&

J^
Jl
*
' ^

This wine-pot

a case in point.

It

holds

when
I

full

one sheng and

it

"

four

ho

measures'' of wine.

obtained

for

my
in

ya,

Ty ^k

^^

own

collection

from our fellow

citizen

Chu, doctor

literature of the Imperial

Academy.

' The emperor canonized in the ancestral temple as Hsiao Tsung reigned a.d. 1488-1505 under the title of Hung-chih.

" ^

A.D. 1465-87.

About a

pint

and two-fifths of our measure.

FIGURE

43

t
HsiJAN

Yao

of the

Ming dynasty.

Rouge

Pot overspread with deep red ground.

The

rouge-pot

(/lu) is

complete represen-

tation of a

persimmon^

fruit,copied

from nature,

the several dimensions of which are repro-

duced
glaze

in
is

our

illustration.

The

colour of the

as red as fresh blood, the twigs, stalk,

in

and leaves are painted

shades, true to
life.

brown and green

little

This

pot also

came
it

out of the interior of the palace,

where

had
to
It

been used by one of the imperial consorts

hold the rouge she painted her face with.

was

ticketed for sale at a very high figure,

a

and was certainly worth more than

taels.
I

hundred
on

saw
of

it,

when

was

at the capital,
at

the

stall

a dealer in curios

the Pao

Kuo
'

Ssu."

Diospyros shitse (see note to Fig.

lo).

'

The famous Buddhist temple

3.

in the

Chinese

city
in

at

Peking, which has been already referred to

a note to Fig.

FIGURE
Yi-HSING
pale

44
of Kungcli'iin's

Yao

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Tea Pot

make with

'

transmutation'

brown body.
;

The teapot (hit) is fashioned after a design the source of which is unknown its several dimensions are the same as in our illustration. The potteries of Yi-hsing were founded during our own dynasty in the reign of the emperor who was canonized as 'the warrior',' when
potter lived there named Kung Ch'un, a native of Yi-hsing, who made various earthenware for use as tea services. These were occasionally transmuted in the kiln ^ like this teapot, the original colour of which, a greyish brown like felt, changes to a jade-like green when the tea is put in, and gradually returns to its proper tint, line by line, as the tea is poured out, till it is empty, when the whole becomes brown again. This is only owing to a fortuitous freak in the baking, and yet modern virtuosos prize it most highly. This teapot, and the brick-red one which follows, were both made by Kung. I saw them once when I was near the capital, in the possession of a mandarin. They say that Chang, an official eunuch of high rank at the southern capital,'' has bought this, together with the other teapot, for 500 taels, and carried them both
a celebrated
articles of

itl

off.
'

The emperor

who Cheng-te, reigned A. D.150621 ,was canonized with the dynastic

titleofWuTsung.
^

Furnace
is

transmutation
{yao pien)
a

term of frequent in occurrence Chinese ceramic

books. It is applied not only to
flamln's

glazes,

due

to varied

ox-

idation of copper
silicates,

but also

to

many other forchanges

tuitous

in the decoration,

body, or form of
particular pieces,

occurring somehow during firing.

The

cele-

brated yao pien image of Kuan yin in the Pao

at

Ssii temple Peking is so called because

Kuo

the spirit of the

goddess is said to have descended into the kiln and to have miraculously shaped the image with her

own
"

lineaments.

Nanking.

FIGURE

45

Yi-HsiNG

Yao

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Tea Pot

of

Kung

Ch'un's

make with 'transmutation' vermilion

red body.

The

teapot

{/in)

is

fashioned after a design from

its

some unknown
the

source, and

several dimensions are

same as those of our

illustration.

When

it

is full

of tea, the colour changes in the

last piece,

same way
is

as in the

so that no further description

required.

As
of

for

such curious lusus 7taturae the creative power

is

heaven and earth

I

great

and anything may

it

happen, yet
seen
it

could not have credited

eyes.

had

not

with

my own

Now

that

have actually

seen the strange peculiarity of these two teapots

I

cannot but believe

in

its

realitv.

SECriON

VI
(KIGS.
4t)-53)

CONTAINING EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURE

4(;

HuNG-CHiH Yao of the Ming

of

d^-nasty.

Pair

Tea Cups shaped

as hibiscus flowers ena-

^'^

-^\^

^^

/-I

melled pale yellow.

^
have been fashioned from
the several dimen-

^^,

^
^^
^

^^^
4K^
-y

-^^^

The cups

^^
7a
'^
'^'^

ipci)

some unknown source, and

yt^^

A^
^^ ^ *
"i^

^^
t

sions are reproduced in our illustration.

The

colour of the glaze

tint

is

a pure fresh yellow, the

y
Jt

'J

of a newly

opened hibiscus blossom. Yellow

cup
is

^,
^V^

'W^
j^

outside, the interior of the

white to bring
I

out effectively the colour of the

tea.

have seen
but

^ "^^

^ ^
-.A

many specimens

of Hung-chih'

porcelain,

^-

j^

-^

J^

it

nothing that could surpass these cups

of form and colouring.
I

in beaut}-

got the pair of cups

in

M
s;

^
lu

^
.

^L
jA
'*"

from a friend named Chu, of Chi-sha,

ex-

.,^
^'~-'

change

for a

manuscript

roll

of the

Thousand
^yi
,j^

Character Classic^ written in running hand by

Ji^

"^^
SI
'^/J
Si

a^>

Wen
'

Cheng-chung."

The emperor Hung-chih reigned a.d. 1488-1505. " The well-known school primer, Ch'ien tsii iveii, which was compiled bj' Chou Hsing-ssu in the sixth century of
our era.
^

^
-JL'f

-f
j^r,]

yL"~

y
"^

^
\
.J

_^
jX
j-i.

^A

Wen

Cheng-ming, styled Cheng-chung, who

lived

^^

A.D. 1470-1559,

was

a native of

Ch'ang-chou

in

Kiangsu.
of

^
r

/^
>\-~

Celebrated as a calligraphist, he rose to be a

the Han-lin College, and wrote the
reign of VVu Tsung, 1506 21.
official

member

-^jh^ -""Xv

annals of the

^{_^

^
f^

-J^

^^ "^

/A

-X-

FIGURE

47

^
Kuan Yao
Cup shaped hke
of the
a

Sung

dynast}-.
citron.

Tea

Buddha's hand

The cup
after a design

(pei),

which has been fashioned

is

from some unknown source,

figured of the size of the original in our

tration.

illus-

The

colour

of

the

glaze

is

pale

purplish blue, scored in the kiln with ice-like

crackle.
fully

The form
in

of the cup

is

very care-

modelled

the exact form of a fragrant

'

citron of the

Buddha's hand
is

variety.

The

indented rim of the cup

perfectly regular

and

level,

none of the

flutes projecting

beyond
is

the rest.

The

glaze, inside

and

out,

uni-

formly crackled with an

ice-like reticulation,

and there

is

not a hair-line of fault or crack in

it

an}- part, so that

is

a fine

example of the

highest class of the imperial ware {kuanyao)

of the time.
in the
I

saw

it

at the

southern capital

palace of Prince Hsu, a ducal scion of

the imperial blood.

'

Citrus Deciiiiiaiia, Lour.

'

Nanking.

'

^'^:M^''^i^^
iK\

r-'

i''i(.Lki':

i.s

jade of mutton-fat texture strewn with millet-hke grains nsing in faint relief The blue decoration is pure and bright so as to dazzle the eyes, having been pencilled in the typical Mohammedan gros bleu- o[ the time The pine IS sketched with a gnarled trunk and interlacing branches, resembling the coiled form of some huge dragon, an ancient pine, as it were, taken from a landscape picture by the artist Kuo Hsi/ Underneath the pine are rocks with chih^ fungus and orchids springing * from them, drawn with lifelike

HsuAN Yao of the Mmg dynasty. Set of Tea Cups decorated ,n blue with dragon pines The eups (pet) vv-^re fashioned after a design of unknown source, copied in all probability from a jade wme-cup (fe;.) of the Han dynasty and the several dimensions are the same as in our illustrafons. The colour of the gla.e is a clear white, like fine
; '

accurac}'.
is

The
of
it

work

that

no

ordinary hand,

must,

/^^

on the contrary, have been executed by the brush of some celebrated painter of the
imperial court.^
I

^|?
<

iJ-)

-^

%\

^/J

-^

/^^

^Y^

^
;{f

K
y|^
c\

^k^

T>

'^

pur-

chased

for

my own

^
/v
>^

^^
^fe

^^
'g

^fcr?

^ST

-^
^^
-^1

collection a set of four

of these cups for ten

^
^n ^"

,^

W-

from Ching-yu ot Tsang isang Uhing-yu of Wu-hsing, Director of

taels

of

silver

^^

-If-

'M~

^ "^^

/I ^^

^
S^

A ^^

Ml^

the Imperial Stud.

'

B.C. 206-A. D. 220.

Hiti-hii ta ch'ing, see note to Fig. 31. ' Kuo Hsi, known to the
-

Japanese as Kwakki, one of the greatest of Chinese

landscape painters, flourished in the eleventh century of our era. (See
Giles's

Chinese

Pictorial

Art, p. loi.)
*

The

sacred

fungus

{ling-chih), the

Polyporiis

lucidtis of botanists.

In the reign of Ch'enghua, 1465-87, we are told in the ceramic annals that the court painters were

employed
tures
for

to

paint

pic-

the decoration of the porcelain wine-cups of the period.

FIGURE

4!>

$1.
Ch'Sng Yao of the Ming dynasty.

^ ^
<^.

4']

A
% t
ifj

Wine Cup

simulating a crimson blossom of the Magnolia Ytdan.

iL

M
IC

-#
-t

A
>K
1^

The cup
white
glazes.
inside,

{pel),
is

of novel form, purple outside and

skilfully

decorated with

coloured

Moreover the bright green leaves and brown

instinct with the art of a clever water-colour
It is
'

%
^^

stem are

painter of flowers.

just a single flowering spray

of the magnolia tree

with a newly opened blossom,

which makes an
procured
it

ideal

cup for the wine-drinker.

-

at the

southern capital

in the

Taoist

temple Ch'ao T'ien

Kung from

the prior of the com-

munity Hsu Tao-chi.

4
formerly called Magiioh'a Yiilan after
,

'

Magnolia
Nanking.

coiispicua,

its
-

Chinese name.

Ji-'eij-

^E"!

7
/-

k4^^W

}
% \

h^
%\

FIGURE

50

iU

Kuan Yao
Cup

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Sacrificial

with dragon's-head handle.

The

sacrificial libation

cup
ho

{cliiieh)

was designed
t'u

after a figure in the

Hsuan

Po ku

lu^ and

its

several dimensions are reproduced in our illustration.

The
form

colour of the glaze

is

a purplish

blue of pale

shade, crackled with a network of ice-like lines.

is

The
it

archaic and the colour attractive, so that

is

a choice

specimen of the imperial ceramic manufac-

ture of the time,

worthy of a chief place

1

in

any

col-

lection of wine-vessels.

saw

it

at the

house of

my

fellow citizen

Chou

Tzu-fa, the

Grand Tutor.
under

'

The
I.

imperial

catalogue of ancient bronzes cited

Fig.

FIGURE

51

^
Purple Ting
ficial

Yao

of the

Sung

dynasty.

Sacri-

Wine

Vessel with grotesque dragon scrolls.

of the wine-vessel (chia)

The form
and
our

was fashioned
kti

after a design figured in the

its

Hsiian ho Po

fu lu^

several dimensions are identical with those of

illustration.

The

colour of the glaze

fruit,*
;

is

purple,

of the tint of the ripe aubergine

bright,

transparent,
lines

and beautifully lustrous

the

of the

decorative designs are artistically worked, and finished

to

a hair-like fineness

so that

it

is

indeed a rare

specimen of the ceramic productions of Ting-chou.

I

added

it

to

my own

collection

by bartering a wine-

cup of carved jade with

shih, a

my

fellow citizen Li Liang-

graduate of the second degree.^

imperial

'

The
I.

catalogue of ancient bronzes cited under

Fig.
''

Solatium Melongena.
Hsiao-lien
is

equivalent to

C/V-y<',

the second grade in the

official

examinations,

FIGURE

52

Cheng Yao
of plain

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Libation

Cup

rounded form.
of the Hbation cup
in
(chileh)

The form
and

was copied

from a figure engraved

Ih^
its

the Hsiian ho are

Po ku fn
in

several dimensions

reproduced
is
it

our

illustration.

The

colour of the glaze

a rich
rises in

yellow, of the tint of a baked chestnut, and

faint elevations like the skin

of a plucked fowl.

The

form

is

pleasing in

its

antique simplicity, the body

is

entirely plain

and untouched with the graving-tool and

it

classical but artistic withal,

is

altogether a fine

example of the ceramic productions of the reign of the

warrior emperor.it

had the opportunity of seeing

in

the collection of

my learned

kinsman Wei-sheng,

member
'

of the Imperial

Academy.

The
I.

imperial catalogue of ancient bronzes cited under

Fig.
'

The emperor Cheng-te, who reigned

a.d.
title

1506-21,
of

was
'

canonized in the ancestral temple with the

Warrior.'

Wu,

the

FIGURE

53

1^

iH

J^
^l.

^ H
^M
.

T
Kuan Yao
The
of the

4rL
'I

%.
?

Sung

dynasty.

Libation

Cup

decorated with scrolled designs.

libation

X
\

J^

cup

(chileh)

was fashioned

after a
lu,^

f^
n

V
-(4

design figured in the Hsiiaii ho

its

Po ku

f'u

and

several dimensions are

illustration.

identical

with

'f

those of
is

our

The

colour of the glaze

sky

tf

m t
^
Mr

blue, not

marked with a
is

single hair-line of crackling,

and the bowl

so artistically engraved with scroll-

work

of delicate and complicated design, executed

it

without a blur, that

worthily represents the finest

I

handiwork of the imperial potteries of the time.

acquired
ch'iao of
it

for

my own

collection

from

Wen

San-

'^

Wu-men,- Doctor of

the Hanlin College.

'

The
I.

imperial catalogue

of ancient

bronzes cited

under

Fig.
'

One

of the quarters of the city of Shao-hsing-fu, in the

province of Kiangsu.

^%

i"^

f K
H\

^^

SECTION

VIII
(FIGS. M-GG)

CONTAINING THIRTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURE

54

HsiJAN Yao of the Ming dynasty. Tazza-shaped Cup decorated in deep red with three fish. The cup (pet) was fashioned in the shape of a stemmed cup {pa pei) of the Han dynasty' carved in jade, and its several dimensions are reproduced in our illustration. The white
part of the
glaze, looking
like

con-

gealed

fat, is

as pure in tint as driven

and the deep red of the three fishes, outlined with a vigorous brush, Flashes is as crimson as fresh blood. of ruby rays shine out as in painted glass,- dazzling the eyes with their
;

snow

brilliance, so

that

it

is

truly a

rare

gem
the

in a highly prized class.

Under

foot of the cup in the middle, which is level, there is faintly engraved under the paste the six-character mark Ta Miyig Hsiian te nioi chili, Made
'

in the reign of Hsiian-te

"

of the Great
this

Ming

(dynasty).'

bought

for twenty-four taels of silver at

cup Shao-

hsing-fu

from the collection of

Chu

Chi-chien.^

'

Han

dynasty,
'

The somewhat unusual

here for liu-li, annals of the

206-A. d. 220. characters used glass,' are taken from the

b. c.

Han

dynasty.

The name

is

a contraction oi
'
*

fii-liii-li,

a transliteration of

the Sanskrit vaidurya.

A. D.

1426-35.
to Fig. 33.

See note

FIGURE

55

Ch'eng Yao
grapes.

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Tazza-shaped Cup decorated

in

enamel colours with

The shape
the bowl
is

slightly

of the cup (pet) resembles that of the cup figured above (Fig. 54), but the rim of more expanded ; its several dimensions are reproduced in our illustration.
is

The

colour of the glaze bright greens, the stem

a greyish white, the leafy twigs

and

tendrils of the vine are

shaded

in

is touched with brown, while the grapes hang down in purple clusters The decoration in the five enameF colours is artistically like bunches of amethyst beads. designed and painted with the utmost delicacy, so that it is truly a fascinating object. The

of the glaze rises colouring of the little winecup would single it out in
surface

in

faint

millet-like

elevations,

and the perfect

taste

and antique

1.

>,

the midst of the rarest productions of the porcelain

kilns of the
'

"^^ ^^^ ^
)r^
-<-?

a
i.

"^
4/

,^

>^

If]

peror.^
fault

No

exemplary emone could find

'

^P

2j
.

^^
As^
iC f^

^ '^^
^\^
,^
-*^

with the price

at

it

cost as
is

^^
Ovnli.

'^'J

too high.

The cup
Chin-sha

enthe

shrined

in

M ^^
j_^
',%

_J^
^,_^

collection of

Wang Sun-ch'i,
that

who

told

me
it

he had
large

^t

M-

purchased
ch'eng,''

for ten

^
^^

'W

ingots of silver

3 at Hsuanfrom the collection

^
^^

^
/^
"

jtn

^ ^
-^ "^*

of Hsu, the sub-prefect of

the city.
'

!^ -J.

^
<1^

H'^ii ts'ai,

'

five colours,' is the

technical ceramic term for poly-

chrome

decoration

in

enamels

muffle stove. Five might be taken to mean 'many', rather than literally. ^ The emperor who reigned
fired in the

^ ^
^_ ,

4a
_^

^^

^ ^
"jfi^

I.

under the

title

of Ch'eng-hua

(a. D.

^\l

/j(K
I

1465-87) was canonized in the ancestral temple as Hsien Tsung,

the 'Exemplary'. ' The large ingot
'

^^
rp^

.i.
,--.

f^
J'3

'

of silver

pa
>3. Jv
j.

xj

K^
^jj ^^

^\ ^
p^ -*I

weighed probably ten taels. There is abundant contemporary

literary evidence of the apprecia-

/ ^

tion

of these

little

cups

at

the

time.
(a. D.

The

emperor

Wan-li

^
^T

,y
},u^

'pji.

1573-1619), for instance, is said to have always had a pair of them placed on his dinner-table,

-rf

J
^

' '^

-TV

'^ ^

which
silver.
'

were valued

at

100,000

/^
H
>fl

^
-eLy.

^^ "^

cash, equivalent to

100 taels of
yfi

<

An

in the

old name of Ning-kuo-fu, province of Anhui.

II

S.

XJP^

FIGURE

5B

HsiJAN
of peaches.

Yao

of the

Ming

dynasty.
is

Tazza-shapcd Cup painted

in

deep red with three pairs

hke that of the first cup illustrated in our list (Fig. 54), and its The colour of the twin peaches shades several dimensions are reproduced in the illustration. off effectively, the brilliant red being of the tone of ripe red cherries, or, rather, like the precious stones brought by the turbaned red-socked nomads, bright red rays of wonderful brilliance flashing out of the very depths of

The form

of the cup (pci\

the liquid glaze.

is

The

effect

__+,.,, -^ -^
^]

r^^

,;ri

i\\^

very different

to that

of
old

later

imitations of the

red, which are painted over the glaze with red ochre and
re-fired,

^
yjs^

-f

]%\
^(l?

^/^
^t
1

>T
^*

'^

^f

f X.

^
-^U

in
^^
r*--

xl
;f^f^

j^
>
>

and which look ex-

^ ^
:
'f^l

^
t?

_&

actlylikebrick-dust.^

Very

few of these cups have survived to our day, and only

three or four are
that those

>L
^^'

ly

^
^
^ ;.^

-t.

^
tg
,iClL

known

to

^
^^ >^

^^ ^

^^^

|^
'^

t^
-

exist within the four seas, so

-^

who

possess them

t
'

ought

to value

them as high-

ly as gu'dle

buckles of jade
in fine gold,

^^ f

^ ^
,

f
t*3

4/

^^ ^f

f
;5

>^
'*t

^^
Tf^^

-^

:^;|;

J
#^

or filigree

work

and cherish them accordmg-

^
'j

^1 fu

vf.jr

^
*i
-in
'^^^

iTppol^I^of
one
at

s'eei^g

.hi:

<f

ff
-^
I^J

yf\
/"

^t
>
ji-

^>

^
-i-T

the capital" in the

collection

of

Li,

palace

-^

4'-^

^ i^
^1

^^
^-^

Cjr>

^"^^

eunuch of high degree.

-^

-^
-f

x^

^
^v
^^
Or*

'

We know from other sources,

under the

that the art of painting

glaze in red prepared from cop-

^
'ip

^
^
Jll-

W *
^^
$.
'n'-ir

per failed towards the end of the Mingdynasty, so that in the reign of Chia-ching (1522-66) even the imperial potters petitioned to be allowed to decorate the porcelain required for the palace with overglaze vermilion red produced by
the incineration of iron sulphate, in place of the old copper red.

^J^

^
-7
v

J(_
<iij
it

:^jj ^

j^(\

^ ^
"

/K
->r

A
'J*
1

j/>)fff

1>^\1^

'Peking.

y^

^yf^

if^^

^
u7

-^P

FIGURE

57

/v

Ting Yao of
like a plaited

the

Sung

dynasty.

Cup

fashioned

willow basket.
of the cup
{pei)

The shape

has been modelled

in
its

every respect after a basket of plaited osier, and

several dimensions are reproduced in our illustration.

The
tint

colour of the glaze

is

of the characteristic white

of the finest class of Ting-chou ware.

The

outlines

of the curved sides of a willow basket with the twigs

bound together with cords are followed out

detail,

in

every

so that the cup simulates exactly the handiwork

of a basketmaker, and

makes
I

a quaint design of novel

it

form for a wine-service.

at

saw

once

at

T'ung-ch'eng'

the house of a collector

who

is

now no more.
province of Anhui.

'

city of the third

order

in the

'\c

FIGURE

58

HsiJAN
Conical
painted

Yao of the Ming dynasty. Wine Cup of archaic form

deep
red.

^A

<^

in

The
cup
[pet]

source
is

of

design
its

of

tlie

not

known,

several
illusis

dimensions are followed

tration.

in

our

The
is

colour of the glaze

fat,

of

the white tone of mutton

the tint

of the red

crimson

like fresh blood,

and the body of the archaic dragon

coils closely

round as
and

if it

were
is

alive.

The whole
scrolls,

surface of the cup

finely

pencilled, inside

out, with cloud

whirling round in spiral curves

like

an

autumnal storm-tossed

sea,

a congenial

medium

for a

draught of

invigorating wine.
of these cups are
seas,

Only one or two

left

within the four

taels to

and a hundred

would not
pay
for its

be considered too
fellow.
I

much

have figured

this

one from

the

cabinet of His Excellency Hsu,

the lieutenant-governor of the southern

capital.^

'

The

archaic dragon of ancient bronzes,

is

called ch'ih lung,

of lizard-like form with

a bifid

spreading

tail,

as represented in the

illustration.
'

Nanking.

FIGURES

59,

60

Ch'en'g

Yao

of the

Ming

dynasty.

Pair of

little

Wine Cups
thin,

painted in 'five colours' with

flowers and insects.

and when poised on the tips Each cup of the fingers one can detect spiral traces of the revolutions of the potter's wheel. does not exceed three-tenths of a Chinese ounce in weight, an indication of their extreme The decoration, consisting of growing flowers with flying and crawling insects, with delicacy. which they are painted is as minute as flies' heads or mosquitoes' claws, yet it is painted in all the enamel colours, and carefull}' finished in every detail so as to produce a life-like effect. That so much fine work should have been lavished on such tiny cups as these is full

The form

of the cups {pet)

is

very small and beautifully

'

evidence of the power of the sacred glance

of

the

emperor who

^^ 4^
^_^^

;t
"g'

J^t,
i^T^

^
^f^

JL

%
^^
1

4|.
i^^^

^^,
^.]

was canonized as Hsien, the 'Exemplary'. Not

like the ordinar}^ productions of the period \ki\ih technique hurried tprhniniie with humeri

y^^,
_^_^

^
|.^
/

'|<^

^
"^
'

-^
*
ij

and
these

unclassical

form,

wine-cups are generally works of art of the highest class,

'

% ^
^^

1.

^
% ^
\^ -^
,

^
-^

^
^^^

-ft U.~
^

^^
-rr-

'^
_.

^^ ^^

^ ^
t^
^
/j.

gp %.

%X, tlj

^^
'A -^-J:Z^

and each pair IS well worth a hundred taels.

In the present day,
in-

^^
l^
^^^
._>l^
__-.

^g
-^-^^

^ ^
-ri

^ ^
3-.

-^^ <ra)
ai-.

^% ^y
,

deed,

it

is

far easier to

'^
cr

-<^
a,^
tfj

T^
__
^^^

-^^
1^^

7^
:,).

ff

get a hundred pieces of silver than to find

a pair of the cups.
1

v^P

^^
-BL
-t^

^^
.^^
:Jg
jj

^ ^
>

saw these two when I was at the capitaP in the collection of Huang,
general of the imperial

^J

"fx

^ \~

rJl'-i

^U

'S

bodyguards.

'

Equivalent to about 11
Literally
'

grammes.
"^

^
f
"^P
'T^
,

^ ^
f^

^^

^g

1J

^K
?i\

<,
^S^

$X
JL

#X.

^j^^S

1?t

i:.

)%

^
fl^

A ^ ^
3t.
-kVi -tt]

mirror'.

The

designs are said to have been painted by the court

painters and sent

IL

^
^%.
"^T" cj

ip

*t.

down

to
at

the

imperial

potteries

^
'jT'

iL

m
-^~*

%
-tt* ^Vp

^
^W
5^_f^

Ching-te-chen, and they would have been, doubtless,

"i^
v_^

submitted for the approval of the emperor before they

gj^
f^

were

sent.

^ ^ ^

^^

^,

JiSL
'^

"^Xl

'^ ~

^^

'

^
.^

j:^

^^

I'

N^

'^

-^^

FIGURK

.;!

HsiJAN

Yao

of the

Ming

dynastj\
deco-

Small bowl-shaped

Wine Cup
cup

>L
y

%
^'>

rated in deep red with three fish.

The form

of the

(c/iau)

is

very small and shallow, but fashioned

throughout with

perfect

regularity.
is

The

colour of the glaze

white as

J.
rfrj

driven
surface
like

snow, with
rising
in

chicken's-skin

minute elevations

grains

of millet, and the three

deep red
flies,
all

fish,

although no larger than

spiny fins and scales

yet with

complete, flash out ruby-red gleams

^t

.a

1-^

-7^

like

jewels from the west fascinating

the

eye with their

brilliance.
{ho}

The

f }

cup held only about one

of wine, but
it

measure

figured on the wine-

#
^.s.

J.

table as a divine
efficacy.
I

medium

of powerful
this one,

have only seen

traveller
told

in the

house of a
country,
it

from the
that

4>

*?r>

Ch'in

who

me

he

had bought
capital.^

for a

good price
which
fully

at the
I

^ 3
l5l

h
^J

Since he disappeared
its like,

have

never seen
to

proves

my mind

that there are not

in

many
in

such wine-cups
present day.
'

existence

the

^1

Less than two ounces.

The province
Peking.

of Shensi in the north-west

t
Jb-

of China.
"

rn

FIGURE

(52

Yao of the Ming dynasty. Small Eggshell the paste under the glaze. engraved in The form of this cup [pet) is very beautifully designed
YuNG-i.o

'

Cup

with dragons and phoenixes

available either for tea or

making

it

When held up to for wine, and the body of the cup is very thin, not thicker indeed than paper. the light and closely examined, one sees that there is a very fine decoration of dragons and phoenixes engraved in the paste. Under the bottom of the cup there is the six-character mark
Ta Ming Yung
also
style.
lo

nien

chili

engraved

in

perfect

|g]

There are

still

some
yet
the

A^ ft

^Q

^^
r^
-x-

yoi

J^
yij-^

i_

^ ^\

M^
#]
^^/l

J-

few of these cups

them, and
I

left,

*
--cj

connoisseurs very rarely see

^l9

f
-,

^
^^^

^yf^

>'i]

j^
"^

now draw

picture of one in order to

^^
y'A

)i^

A\

\ii-

^^ i^

M^
Ik^ ^^
tl

^Y^

^K
A.

^^
'^

give a general idea of their

character, so that collectors

,^

9-k T^

of taste

enabled to recognize a genuine speci-

may be

^
/^

^^
^^

M"I
^ ^^
^-^

^
J^ "X

^^
-^jjj
"'

L*
-4^

^ ^
-^
^^
of
M)t
tf^

men and not grudge

price
for
its

a liberal

acquisition.

U
J^
f,'i?y

lK
-fi^

-^

M yf^
^0y>

i^ ^^
rb

For those of

my

successors
in-

^^<^

who

are fond of art and

imperial house.

^^

^M>

FIGURK

(;:,

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming dynasty. The form of the cup (pet), which
is

Flat-bottomed

Cup

painted

in five

colours with geese.

fashioned after a design from

source, resembles

unknown
in

some somewhat
is is

1-

shape a large pottery garden-bowl,'

so that the
also

name

of the latter (kaiig)

It

given to the wine-cups. figured in the original size

illustration.

in

our
is

The body
in
is

of the cup

very thin and light

colour of the glaze

weight.

The

a lustrous white,

and the decoration painted over the glaze consists of geese represented as sporting in the water with wings erect in life-like poise as if about to fly into space, the waves spreading all round
being
all

dotted

in

the

inter\'als

with

floating branches of the sacred fungus,

painted with the finished touch of

a clever student of nature painting in

The cost of these cups and increases as one day succeeds another, so that very few complete table rounds of them now remain. This cup, and the wine-cup of the same shape decorated with chicken which follows, have both long been in the possession of our own familj*.
water-colours.
is

high,

The large bowls which usually stand in the middle of a Chinese courtyard and are
'

used for gold-fish or for growing nelumbium

lotus flowers in.
vii-kaiig,
'

They

are

commonly

called

fish-bowls,'

and are made either

of porcelain or of glazed earthenware.

FIGURE

r.4

Ch'eng YAOof the Ming dynast}'.

Flat-bottomed Cup painted in five colours with chicken.

The form

of the cup (pel)

little

is

wine-cup decorated with geese which has just been illustrated in Fig. 63, and
similar to that of the
it is

also reproduced of the original

size in

our

illustration.

The

sides

of

bowl are as thin and diaphanous as a cicada's wing, so

the
that

the

finger-nails

show

clearly

through.

The
is

decoration

with

which
life

it

painted displays a pair of

fowls, a cock

and hen, instinct with and motion, reminding one in

little

every
of the

detail of a water-colour

picture by one of the court artists

Sung

dynasty.'

The

cocks-

comb
in

flower and the grass are pen-

cilled in

subdued colours, very much the style of Huang Ch'iian,- and

a soupcon

with

of his

skill

as a

colourist.

So much
its

artistic

work

has been devoted to this tiny cup as

enhance responding
to

costliness to a corI

figure.

am

myself

now
'

its

happj' possessor.
flourished during

The Sung dynasty

the years 960-1272 of our era. - A celebrated Chinese artist of the tenth century a. d., whose pictures were mostly of birds and flowers. (Cf. Giles's Chinese
Pictorial Art, pp. 80, 8r.)

fr

w
Y

FIGURE

(55

^
Ch'kng Yau of the Ming dynasty.
Small

Wine Cup shaped

The
small,

like

chrysanthemum

blossom and decorated

size of the
it

in colours.

cup

{f^ci)

is

extremely
'

and
it

only holds half a ho measure

its

of

wine

is

figured of

original size in our

leaves,

illustration.

The

flower,
all

and
in

stalk

with twig attached are

painted
tints,

enamel

colours of effectively shaded

employed

with the studied

skill

of one of the court painters

of the time, porcelain being then considered

to

rank with jewels of great price.

little

piece of ceramic ware brought to such a high point of technical perfection

to
is

indeed

rarel}'

be found. This wine-cup, together with the

rustic

little

cup which follows,

is

taken from

the collection of

my

esteemed friend Chang

Yuan-lung.
Equivalent to less than an ounce.

'

FIGURE

(ifi

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming dynasty.

Wine

Cup shaped hke

colours.

the root of a tree painted in

The form

of the cup {pei)

is

extremely

small, corresponding to the chrysanthemum cup

which has just been

its

illustrated in Fig. 65,

and

several dimensions are also the

illustration.

same

as in

our

The cup

is

fashioned in the

shape of a rustic tree root and painted reddish

brown, the knots, prominences, and hollows on the surface are outlined by pencilling
in

darker shade of the same enamel colour, the

spiral designs in their free

and

skilful treat-

ment being

truly instinct with evidence

of

supernatural power.'

There are few smaller

cups than these tiny ones which are roughly

fashioned to represent the hollow trunk of
a tree, and which hold but a single sip ot

wine.
in
I

My

friend

Yuan-lung^ has pledged

to

me
and

it

with wine

swear friendship,

now draw
it

the very cup, and thereby con-

firm as
'

were our sworn bonds of union.

'

Kiiei-ktiiig, literally

devils'

handiwork

',

is

a term

applied to anj' elaborately intricate craftsmanship of

unusual character, such, for instance, as that of the

concentric
^

openwork

balls carved in ivory at Canton.

Referred

to in the description of Fig. 65.

SECTION

IX
(FIGS. e7-74i

CONTAINING EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURE

(17

d^

HuNG-CHiH Yao of the Ming dynasty.

Vessel moulded
in

Wine

the form of two winged monsters.

The

wine-vessel {yu)

was modelled
fit lit}

after a design

figured in the Hsiiaii ho

Po ku

The

colour of

the glaze

is

a pure yellow of palish tone like the

petals of the hibiscus flower, and the whole surface

is

free from the slightest stain or flaw.

With

four

legs, a

handle springing from two looped projections,

is

and a movable cover, the form

in
its

classically correct
is

graceful lines, and the colour

tint

of the fresh
finest

bright

which

distinguishes

the

class
filial

of the ceramic productions of the reign of the

emperor.^

saw

this in

the province of Shan-yu,

in the collection

of Chou, the Recorder.

'

The
I.

imperial

catalogue

of ancient

bronzes cited under

Fig.

- The emperor who reigned as Hung-chih, a. d. 1488-1505, was canonized in the ancestral temple with the title of Hsiao,
'

Filial.'

The modern

Shansi.

FIGURE

68

AL
Lung-ch'uan Yao of the Sung dynasty.

Wine

Vessel with a transverse

bowed handle

attached by chains engraved with four deer.

The
a

wine-vessel (yn)

was copied from

in

sacrificial

bronze design figured

fit
lii,^

the
di-

Hsilan ho

Po kn

and

its

several

mensions are the same as those

tration.

in

our
is

illus-

The

colour of the glaze

a fresh

bright green, like green onion-sprouts in the

autumn, a lovely
is

tint.

The bow-shaped handle

attached to the looped sides by ceramic

chains composed of links, joined together in

the

same way as ordinary chains of gold or

skill in
all

copper, an instance of extraordinary

moulding

clay.

The

surface

is

covered

over with carved designs of intricate pattern,

as fine as bullock's hair or floss
it

silk,

making
I

a striking art object of great beaut}'.

at

saw
Mei

it

Hsuan-ch'eng,-

in

the collection of

Ching-fu.

'

The

imperial collection of ancient bronzes cited

i.

under
-

Fig.

An

old

name

of the

city of Ning-kuo-fii. in

the

province of Anhui.

f=\

FIGURi:

Hit

HsiJAN
Sacrificial

Yao

of the of

Ming

dj'nasty.

Vessel
in
sacrificial

^
t
t7

">:

archaic

form

decorated

blue and white.

wine-vessel
fit

The

>L

(yi)

^ ^

-f
i^f

#L

^/I

was fashioned
in the Hsi'tan

after a design

figured

'^
-37

and its several dimensions are reproduced in our illustration. The colour of the glaze is whiter than driven snow, the painted designs are a deep rich blue, having been pencilled in the Mohammedan gros bleu of the period. Where the blue and white blend into each other, faint elevations like millet grains rise up, so that it is a most important specimen of the porcelain production of the reign of the famous emperor.When placed upon the
ho
lit,'''
'

Po kn

A ^ ;l % ^ ^ % &
4ei
i:

M^

-k^
\|

^ +

altar the

brilliant
it is
it

decoration dazzles

the eyes and

I

exceedingly admired.

acquired

in

exchange

for

two
eight
Tu,'*

# 4 X t
i^
;i.

manuscript
written

rolls,

containing
^

\%

-k^

verses on autumn by the poet

by Hsien-yu Po-chi

of the

Yuan

dynasty, from the collection of

Wen
'

Hsiu-ch'eng of Wu-men.
imperial catalogue of ancient bronzes
Fig.
i.

The

cited
-

under

t
M^

The emperor
'

canonized
the
'

in the ancestral
'.

Hsiian-te, a. d. 1426-35, was temple as Hsiiaii,

Famous

^
M
4>

^
J^

Tu

Fu, one of China's most famous poets,

calligraphist

lived A. D. 712-70.
'

of

the

Yuan dynasty,

which reigned a.d. 1280-1367.

tf^

-^

FIGURE

70

;IL
HsiJAN

^
-^^

Yao

of the

Ming
in

dynasty.

Palace

H
%
Ml

^^

Rice Bowl decorated

fish.

deep red with three

4-

The bowl

{ztmt),

which

is

of a very un-

common

elegant form,

came out of the inner

;

precincts of the imperial palace

its

several

dimensions are reproduced

in

our

illustration.

The

colour of the glaze

is

as white as driven

snow, while the three

vermilion
tint,

fish are of

an intense

and

the

granulated surface

rises into millet-like elevations

wrinkled as

it

were by the wind.

of
a
'

It

would make a present

kind
for
'

4iL

a
>f^it.

the

most

recherche

holding
for a con-

river' of wine, a jewelled vessel

circle

vivial

of brilliant compan}^ although

scarcely appropriate for the study of a cold,

sour Confucianist scholar.

saw

X K
f

it

m3'self

when

was

at the capital

in the collection

of

Liang, one of the chief eunuchs in the palace.

'

Literally 'a jadeite ewer'.

'

Peking.

v
"V

FIGUR

Tung Ch'ing Tz'u

Hexagonal
graved with

of the

Sung

dynasty.
en-

Bowl

for

washing brushes,

^
t
'^1

-f^

-^

floral scrolls.
{hsi) is
its

The washing-bowl
some unknown
sions are the

fashioned from
several dimen-

source, and

\-X

I's

same

as those of our illustration.

is

^ ^
-

,4i_

A-l

The

colour of the glaze

as blue as king-

fisher

plumes

in

layers,'
relief.

with

millet-like

granulations in faint

The

floral scrolls
artis-

-it

engraved on the sides of the bowl are

tically

&

-f
^i<^

>k.
ij

^k

designed, after the style of

Huang

Ch'uan,- or one of his celebrated school of

nature painters.

It

is

very useful also for

filled

the decoration of the dinner-table,

with
;

water and a rockwork

pile of rare stones

or,

more

especially, for the cultivation of flower^

iL
^^

^^

"3^

-^u

ing bulbs of the short-leaved sacred narcissus

or of dwarf
into

chrysanthemum

flowers.

It

came

my

possession from the collection of

my

maternal uncle

Chuang

Tu-chien.

'

Silver-gilt jewellery is often

with the turquoise-blue

decorated in China plumes of the kingfisher,

gummed
^

on

in layers.

painter of birds and flowers of the tenth century

of our era, cited in a note to Fig. 64.

Yittff,

The
is

character

used

for the

surname

in

the text,

probably

a corruption of the copyist.

^

Narcissus Tazctia, var. chinensis.

FIGURE

72

m
HsiJAN
for

1^

^-i-

Yao

of the

Ming

dynasty.
in

Dish

i M

washing brushes, decorated

deep red

with pairs of fishes.

The

dish [hsi)

was fashioned

after a design
lit,^

figured in the Sliao Using Chieii ku fu

its

and
:T

several dimensions are identical with those

of our illustration.

The

colour of the glaze

'1
is

over the body of the dish

like
tint

a lustrous white
XT

congealed

fat

the fishes are of the red

of fresh blood.
level

The

outside of the dish

all

and the

bottom inside are pencilled

in

over with undulating waves,

of which are fish
instinct
it

the

midst

swimming about
and

in pairs,

with

life

movement,

making

truly a very rare

specimen of the kind.

saw

it

in

the collection of P'ing Cho-an,

Libationer of the Hanlin College-.

'

The

Illustrated

the Shao-hsing period

Mirror of Antiquities, published in (a. d. 1131-62), which was cited

under
'^

Fig. 6.

The College

of Literature at Peking.

A
4~

FIGURE

7:5

>L
HsiJAN

Yao

of the
in

Ming

dynasty.

Palace Dish

decorated outside
in the paste

deep

red, with

dragons engraved

underneath.
of the round dish
{tieli) is

The form
and
tion.
its

very pecuhar,

several dimensions are given in our illustra-

The
'

colour of the glaze

is

redder than fresh

is

blood

and the whole surface under the glaze

delicately

engraved with five-clawed dragons, while

is

the inside of the dish

coated with a white glaze.

Underneath the bottom of the dish the six-character

mark Ta Ming Hsiian

graved under the glaze

te

nien chih

is

lightly enscript.

in

very finely-written

This dish was drawn by

Chang
it

Kuo-ch'i,

me from the who told me that he

collection

of

had bought

for a high price from a curio-dealer.

The typical sang de Made in the reign Ming (dynasty^'

^
''

6a;</

monochrome
(.\.

glaze of the period.

'

of Hsuan-te

d.

1426-35) of the Great

FIGURE

74

sc.

Kuan Yao
The form

of the

Sung dynasty. Shaped Saucer

fashioned after

engraved with carved lacquer ornamentation.

of the saucer
{f'o)

is

the design of a shaped saucer of the

Sung dynasty

carved in red lacquer, and

its

several dimensions are

reproduced
glaze
line
is

in

our

illustration.

The

colour of the

of the bluish tint of an egg, without a single

of crackle over the whole surface.

is

The
This

en-

graved decoration

entirely copied from an original

is

saucer of carved cinnabar red lacquer.

very congenial design for the reception-room to hold

a cup of tea, so that
for occasional use.
it

is

a most serviceable object

it

found

at

Wu-t'ang, where

bought
'

it

in a

shop.
flourished a.d. 960-1279.

The Sung dynasty

The carved
i,

cinnabar lac-work of the period

China.

was made

in several parts of
p. 121.

Cf

Bushell's

Handbook of Chinese

Art, vol.

SPXTION X
CONTAINING NINE ILLUSTRATIONS
(FIGS.
7r,-83|

FIGURE

75

T.
HsuAN Yao
of the

Ming

d^'nasty.

Round
in

Box

perforated through the middle, painted

deep red.

The

design of the box

is

[ho),

which

is

of

unique character,

an exact copy of an ordi-

nary copper cash of the reign of Hsiian-tO,

and
that

it

is

perforated through the middle so

it

may

be tied on the corner of a handglaze

is

kerchief.

The

white, and the fourtc

character inscription Hsiian

pencilled
in
it

t'ling

pao

'

is

red on
piece

the
of

top of the cover,

interest.

making

exceptional
is

The

interior of the

box

painted with two

flowers very beautifully executed.

celain of the Hsuan-te era
tically decorated,
is

The
most

porartis-

all

and even such small pieces

finished with
truly a

as this

little

box were cunningly

it

no careless hand, so that

is

gem
toilet

among
table.

small ornamental objects for the

I

am

myself

its

fortunate

owner

at the

present time.
Current money of Hsuan-te.' a reproduction of
inscribed on the copper coinage of the

'

the legend

reign, a.d. 1426-35.

FIGURE

76

4
Ch'eng Yao of the Ming dynasty. Round

^
k

^
^
JL

Box

for

rouge decorated
(ho)
is

in

enamel colours.

The box
scrolls of the

very small and finely

finished in technique and design, the green

decoration contrasting charm-

ingly and effectively with the yellow ground.

It

^
J^
r*-'o

also originally

came out

of the

imperial

palace,

where

it

had been used by one of the

ladies of the court to hold cosmetics for paint-

m
4-

ing her
floral

fair lips

and cheeks.

The

intricate

decoration

is

artistically executed, crisply

and clearly defined without any blending of

^^.

the colours,

making
art.
It

it

another choice specimen

A.
sit

of ceramic

might be used very well

as a casket for scented tea, for betel nuts, or

for

perfumes prepared from the arum

is

plant.

This

another of the old pieces

in

my own

cabinet.

FIGURE
HstJAN Yao of the Mino; dynasty. Relic Pagoda The pagoda {fn) measures a Chinese foot and

77
painted
in five

colours.

height and has seven stories. Each story is six-sided, surrounded by a carved open-work railing, and hollow inside. Fn the first story there is an altar, with a little vase of white jade about an inch high standing upon it, containing three grains of sacred relics of the Buddha. The seven stories are all hung round the eaves with tiny gold bells only half an inch long. Within the chamber of the fifth story there is enshrined a little jade "Huddha, about eight-tenths of an inch high, carved with fine features and dignified pose, and enthroned on a lotus pedestal, exactly like the canonical images of the compassionate one^ worshipped in ordinary religious temples. This Buddha, the temple bonze assures me, was brought from a foreign country as an offering to the emperor. The structure of the pagoda is modelled in porcelain, and the
a half in
'

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polychrome enamels of different colour are cleverly painted on in their turn, the tiles coloured emerald-green, the railings red, the walls white, and the windows yellow. The sacred relics I have actually emit every day at noon and midnight a radiant halo of many-coloured rays. seen light proceed from them on two occasions, and been convinced myself thereby ol the saw the pagoda at the southern capital in the Pao deep mysteries of the Buddhist faith. en ssi:i,-*"in the apartments of the official prior of the monastery, who told me that it had been presented by the palace authorities in the Lung-ch'ing reign to the Empress Dowager, who forthwith issLied a decree that it should be bestowed upon this temple to be preserved here and reverently worshipped.
'

Avalokitcsvara. Kuan Yin of Chinese Buddhists. towerat Nanking, which was destroyed during the Taipins Our pagoda is an exact model, in inmiatiirc. of the rebellion, about the middle of the nineteenth century. famous tower. The inscription pencilled on its base in blue is 7Vj Mi\i: Hsiiaii tr iiirii chili, i.e. 'Made in the reign of Hsuan-te (.\. d. 1426-35) of the Great Ming (dynasty).' * The emperor Lung-ch'ing reigned a. d. 1567-72.
>

In Chinese

s/it'-Zi,

'

The Buddhist temple

transliteration of Sanskrit sarira. containing the famous porcelain

FIGURE

78

>^;i

iit

ip
n

'y-

t
Chun Yao
Lamp.
of the

Sung

dynasty.

Dragon

Oil

'I

^
of the lamp
{fcno'] is

The form
it

most quaint, and

^

is

one Chinese foot and

in
its

a third or so

high.

It

is

fashioned

the shape of a grotesque hornless

dragon with
with
ing.
life

body

coiled round in a ring, instinct

tail,

from head

to

alarming and awe-inspiris

The

colour of the glaze

in

a purplish blue of the

shade of bulrush heads hollowed out

autumn.

The body
oil,

is

in the interior to

hold the

and the

wick protrudes from the mouth of the dragon, so

that

t
y
\

when
It
it

lighted the flame

is

may

illuminate the
object.
I

whole
have

room.
figured

really

most

rare

^>

from the collection of

my

wife's

kinsman

Li Tzu-kao.

'

One

foot three-tenths

and six-hundredths

in the text.

The

Chinese

foot is equivalent to about 13 inches of our

measure.

1 ^ ^

;>;

:\S^

FIGURE

Tit

K
Lung-ch'Uan Yau of the Sung dynasty.
Oil

Lamp

with

branched

pedestal

supported

by

a clawed foot.

The lamp

(teitg) is

fashioned after the model of

an archaic bronze design.

is

The

colour of the glaze

green, of the
is

tint

of fresh

onion-sprouts.

The

form

quaint and archaic in

is

its lines,

and when the

oil,

saucer-like receptacle

filled

with vegetable

the

flaming wick lights up the whole room, so that with

its

help one can read

in

the library at night.

Its

acquisition

would be a

real boon, only its like is rarely

I

to be seen in the present day.

have taken

it

from

the collection of our fellow citizen P'an Tzu-ming,

Member

of the Imperial

Academy.

FIGURE

80

M
Cheng-t Yao of the Ming dynasty.
shaped
Saucerb}'

Lamp

with projecting handle supported

tortoise.

phoenix and

The form

of the lamp iteng)

was copied from the

kti
f'li}

figure of a bronze

lamp
is

in

the K'ao

The

colour of the glaze

a pure yellow, of the rich tint

of steamed chestnuts.

The

outlines of the phoenix

out-

and tortoise are boldly modelled with wings

spread and firmly planted
a
feet,

another design for

lamp of uncommon
is

merit.

On

one side of the

receptacle there

a projecting handle,

by which the
to another,

lamp can be carried about from one place

an adoption of
the

invention

by His Excellency
'

Chu-ko
his

of
I

'

travelling

lamps
one
in

handed down from

the

time.

saw

this

house of Chou

Liang-han, a Hsiu-ts'ai.^

'

The

Illustrated

Examination of Antiquities of the eleventh

3.
niilitarj'

century cited under Fig.

-

Chu-ko Liang, a celebrated

lived A.D. 181-234.

commander and

states-

man, who

He was

generally regarded as

a mechanical and mathematical genius and credited with

discoveries and inventions.
'

many

The

first

degree

in

the mandarinate, conferred after the

provincial examinations.

Oi

-'

FIGURR

SI

/O

Ch'eng Yao of the Ming

dynast}-.

Oil

H^.

i o
L
J:^-^

^
Z>
:^a

Lamp

in

the
in

form of a Nelumbium lotus

decorated

enamel colours.
of the

The form
unknown
duced
in

lamp

[teng)

has been
is

^
jL
X3

-i-

fashioned from a design the source of which

;

^
%

its

several dimensions are reproillustration.

-f
'M

our

The

glaze colours

display different shades of the enamel palette,

the red petals of the lotus and the greens of the

leaves being filled in with deeper and lighter
tints, after

^^A

# ^
^v

J:

;5

the style of the best water-colour

artists in their studies of nature.

At the top

a large leaf spreads out horizontally to shield

the flame from draughts.

of the lotus blossom
the
oil, is

The

cup-like centre
to

hollowed out

hold

rf

>h

which when lighted illuminates the

darkness of the night.

applied their
small
detail,

The men
workmen
the

of

old

mind

to a careful finish of every

y^

aL

not like the

of the
in

present day

who scamp
I

work
at

their

^^

^
i>
rrr

careless hurry.
in the

saw

this

lamp

Wu-sung,

possession of

Chu

Tz'u-pu, a phj-sician

of the Imperial College of Peking.

FIGURE

82

Ting Yao of the Sung dynasty.

Pricket

Candlestick with phoenix and lotus blossom

details.

The

candlestick

[teiig),

which

is is

modelled

after a design the

is

source of which

unknown,

one Chinese foot and about two-thirds high.

of the candlestick
is

The stem

surmounted

with a phoenix head, from the beak of which

hangs a ring chain with

on the chain.

a lotus leaf

suspended

From

the leaf springs a stem

lifts

which curves downwards and

lotus blossoms, in the middle of

up three

which are the

prickets on which the candles are stuck.

At

the base of the stem

is

a solid quadrangular
clouds,

pedestal
a

simulating

scrolled

giving

firm

support

to

prevent

the

structure

toppling over.
for

It is

a rare and choice design

table, to

use

on the library

light

up

curios,

books and
vessels

pictures,

as well as the
finest

sacrificial

and dishes of the

collections,

and

it

may be

classified, to

sum

up, as a select specimen of Ting-chou ware.

1

am

fortunate in having this candlestick at

in

the present time

'

my own
and
five

collection.

One

foot, six-tenths

hundredths exactly,

equivalent to nearly twenty-two inches of our measure.

,o

-ry

</

I i

r^'

WV..

'>

AfWi^nj^

FIGURE

s:?

HsiJAN

Yao

of the

Ming

dj'nasty.
in

Oil

^
#

>'t

')<

^h

Lamp

with four nozzles painted

blue with

white ground.

The
after

four-burner lamp (feng)

of

is

fashioned
its

some design

unknown

source,

several dimensions are

identical with those

of our illustration.
is

The

colour of the glaze

a lustrous white like hard mutton-fat, with

millet-like

granules rising
is

in faint relief.
in

The
deli-

whole surface
catel}^

decorated

blue with

pencilled designs of intricate pattern

and

attractive beaut}'.

From

the body pro-

ject at regular intervals four nozzles for the

wicks.

Above

the lamp
is

is

a horizontal bar to
is

which the cover

a

chained, below there

dish

saucer like a

flat

with

an
with

upright
oil,

border.

When
in the
all

the bowl

is filled

the

wicks placed

in the four nozzles,

and the lamp

its

hung up

middle of the room,

light

illuminates
It is

the four seats round the table.

fine style for
it

an object of remarkably
I

use

in a scholar's library.

purchased

mj-self
at

for a long price,

and
in

after

my

return

home

once hung

it

up

my own

study.

OXFORD
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS BY HORACE HART, M.A. PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

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