The Porcelain in Ming Dynasty
5 min readThe Ming Dynasty is famous in the annals of Chinese ceramic art for having made such great advances under its rule that in the reign of the Wanli Emperor, as the native writers say, there was nothing that could not be made of porcelain. The censors of the time indicted a series of urgent protests against the expenditure by the emperor of so much money on mere articles of luxury, which are preserved in the ceramic archives. The court indents were truly conceived on a magnificent scale: in the year 1554, 26,350 bowls with 30,500 saucers to match, 6,000 ewers with 6,900 wine cups, and 680 large garden fish bowls costing forty taels each were requisitioned, among a number of other things.
These indents, taken from the archives of Jingdezhen and all dated, are a mine of precise information for the investigation of glazes and styles of decoration, now that Chinese ceramic terminology is becoming better known. In the year 1544, for example, we find an order for 1,340 table services of twenty-seven pieces each: 380 to be painted in blue on a white ground with a pair of dragons surrounded by clouds; 160 to be white, with dragons engraved in the paste under the glaze; 160 coated in monochrome brown fond laque, or “dead leaf” tint; 160 monochrome turquoise-blue; 160 coral or iron-red, instead of the copper-red previously required; 160 enamelled yellow; and 160 enamelled bright green.
In the face of these documents, it is no longer permissible to stigmatise any one of the above colours as subsequent inventions, although Père d’Entrecolles did so in the case of the fond laque colour, a glaze affording all shades of brown from chocolate to “old gold”. The Hongwu Emperor, founder of the Ming Dynasty, rebuilt the imperial porcelain manufactory at Jingdezhen in the second year of his reign (1369), and the production remained concentrated at this place and gradually developed under the direct patronage of the later emperors. From this period on, artistic work in porcelain became a monopoly of Jingdezhen, in the province of Jiangxi. All the older glazes of repute were reproduced here, and many newer methods of decoration were invented and distributed from its kilns throughout China and sent by trade routes to all parts of the non-Chinese world. Many of the other factories either disappeared altogether or degenerated to provide coarser ware adapted only for local consumption. The one exception to this general rule is the factory of Dehua, in the province of Fujian, where the blanc de Chine porcelain is produced. The potteries were established here early in the Ming Dynasty. Their charac teristic production is the white porcelain par excellence, the blanc de Chine mentioned frequently by French ceramic writers. It differs widely from other Chinese porcelain, the paste of smooth texture being of a creamy white tint resembling ivory; the rich, thick glaze, which has a satiny aspect like the surface of soft-paste porcelain, blends closely with the paste underneath. During the Ming Dynasty, these potteries were celebrated for their well-modelled images of Buddhist divinities like Maitreya, the coming Buddha, Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, the Buddhist saint Bodhidharma, the immortals of Taoism and many others. We now pass on to the consideration of Ming porcelain decorated in colours (wucai).
The earliest specimens of this important class seem to have undergone a preliminary firing, the raw body having been worked in relief with defining rims and counter-sunk parti tions, then baked to the consistency of biscuit and filled in with coloured glazes, known technically as glazes of the demi-grand feu because they were fired at a comparatively low heat. The turquoise and aubergine purple porcelain of the Kangxi Emperor’s reign and the Japanese Kishiu ware may probably both be traced back to archaic Ming porcelain of this class. Cobalt blue as an underglaze colour was used in the decoration of porcelain throughout the Ming Dynasty, both in combi nation with other colours and alone. In the general run of “blue and white”, three well defined periods are to be distinguished from the rest. The reign of the Xuande Emperor (1426-1435) specialised in a pale grey-blue porcelain of pure tint, called at the time “Mohammedan blue”, which was somewhat like the later Japanese “blue and white” of Hirado, pencilled under the ordinary glaze; or under a specially prepared finely crackled glaze in the forerunners of the so-called “soft paste”, which are occasionally found with this mark attached. The reign of Jiajing (1522-1566) produced a dark full-toned blue of marvellous depth and lustre.
The joint reigns of Longqing and Wanli (1567-1620) showed a gradually improving technique, especially in the use of the cobalt as a ground wash, foreshadowing the greater triumphs of the coming Kangxi epoch. The decoration of Chinese porcelain in under-glaze cobalt blue and under-glaze copper red, both colours of the grand feu, was already fashionable in the first half of the 15th century, during the reign of the Xuande Emperor. The application of muffle-stove enamels identical to those used in cloisonné enamelling on metal was a later development of the art. The enamel colours were first employed as ground washes to relieve and heighten the blue, then used in combination, until they gradually dominated in the scheme of coloured decoration typical of the reign of the Wanli Emperor and became known to the Chinese as “Wanli Five Colours” decoration. Large quantities of Chinese porcelain were made for exportation in the kilns of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province and traded through Southeast Asia and by an overland route through Turkey into Europe. In 1557, the Portuguese established a trading base in Macau in southern China and began to deal in porcelain. Much of this porcelain went directly to Lisbon, so it was still extremely rare and highly prized in England, although the activities of English pirates did increase the British supply somewhat.
The founding of the Dutch East India Company in 1602 led to greater quantities of porcelain entering the market, with a consequent drop in its status and value. Some pieces made in Jingdezhen were for the domestic market and some for export. Chinese porcelain was a particularly exotic and highly valued product in 16th-century England, often considered in the same way as natural curiosities like ostrich eggs, nautilus or trochus shells, serpentine (a hard green stone), coconut or gourd cups, and given expensive silver or gold mounts. Many people were still not certain what it was. Some said it was a precious stone or a composite material made from crushed shells. The possession of such items made of hard, white, translucent material and decorated in fine detail denoted wealth and high social standing.
