The Porcelain on Kangxi Period of Qing Dynasty
5 min readWe have now reached the culmi nating epoch of the ceramic art in China by common consent of all connoisseurs. The brilliant renaissance of the art of porcelain that distinguishes the reign of the Qing Dynasty’s Kangxi Emperor is shown in every class: in the single-coloured glazes, in the overall quality of the ceramics, in the painted decorations of the grand feu, in the jewel-like enamels of the muffle-kiln and their manifold combinations, in the pulsating vigour of every shade of blue in the inimitable “blue and white”.
The viceroy of Jiangxi in the beginning of the reign lent his name to two glazes, both derived from copper silicates: the rare apple-green lang yao and the still more celebrated ruby-red lang yao, the sang de bœuf of the French that was really a revival of the “sacrificial red” glaze of the previous dynasty and a precursor of the costly peach bloom, or peau de pêche, which was fired from the same elements later in the Kangxi Emperor’s reign. The renaissance of ceramic art during the reign was mainly due to a secretary of the Metropolitan Board of Works, appointed in 1683 to be superintendent of the imperial factories of Jingdezhen, which had lately been rebuilt. For all the new monochrome glazes introduced under his tenure and for his other ceramic triumphs, there are many books on Chinese porcelain available for reference that also describe the character istics of the famille verte that came out of the reign and the famille rose that developed towards its demise. Various themes and patterns adorn porcelain pieces from this period. There are examples of charming jars, intended to hold New Year’s gifts of fragrant tea, that are painted with floral, symbolic designs appro priate to the season.
Prunus flowers burst forth in the warmth of returning spring while the winter’s ice, seen through their meshes, is just melting. Other jars are strewn with single prunus blossoms and buds reserved in white on a pulsating blue ground, cross-hatched with lines of darker blue to represent cracking ice. Another artistic phase of cobalt decoration involves finely pounded pigment that is blown upon the raw biscuit to produce, when glazed, a “powder blue”, or bleu fouetté ground, which is interrupted by shaped panels reserved in white. Panel pictures are sometimes painted with under glaze colours in the same tone as the ground; occasionally, bright overglaze enamel colours of the famille verte style are applied.
In other examples of the class, the powder blue ground is pencilled over with gold or has reserves of fishes and other designs filled in with vermilion and gold. But the bleu fouetté is at its very best as a monochrome, unadorned, thickly strewn with tiny specks of intense blue shading down as they mix and melt into the pellucid glaze. Some pieces are decorated with archaic dragons and cloud-scrolls mingled with symbols of longevity and happiness, all pencilled in underglaze copper red (rouge de cuivre) of the grand feu, the technique and firing of which are the same as those of the cobalt blue. A vase with imperial dragons grasping characters as it rises from the sea is painted in the soft coral red of the muffle stove, derived from iron peroxide (called rouge de fer). This last colour, of paler coral shade in combination with gold, has been used in the charmingly artistic decoration of other bottles. In addition to coral red, the same iron peroxide, fired at the heat of the demi-grand feu, furnishes all possible tones of brown, ranging from chocolate and “dead leaf” (feuille morte) tints to “old gold”.
Some decoration involves a brown ground overlaid with flowers in white “slip”, a kind of pattern that has sometimes been wrongly attributed to Persian ceramic masters. For a typical example of the sancai or three-coloured decoration on biscuit, see the fish-shaped water pitcher (p. 159), which is painted with the brownish-purple, green and yellow enamels of this genre. The remaining examples of the wucai or five-coloured decoration in enamels of the period can hardly be illustrated properly without a full palette of colours. Another form of decoration, the black lac, is an effective patterning that is spread as a thick coat upon the body of the vase, left unglazed for the purpose, while the rims and interior are glazed; the mother-of pearl is occasionally artificially tinted and so minutely carved that every leaf of the tree is distinct; the houses are inlaid in plates of silver, and gold leaf is applied at frequent intervals to heighten the general effect. Yet another common form of decoration is the glaze called the “mustard crackle”, which corresponds to the millet-coloured glaze of the Chinese. This crackled glaze dates from the Song Dynasty, but it is difficult to identify, because with age the glaze can be inaccurately described as “rice-coloured”, and consequently taken to be a kind of grey crackle, not the rich yellow in well preserved pieces. In Chinese silks, the millet colour is a full primrose yellow – as a colour applied to ceramic glazes, it often deepens to mustard, although always paler than imperial yellow, which is more like the yolk of an egg in its deepest tint.
The turquoise blue or “peacock-green” (also known in Chinese books by other names originating from its resemblance to the blue plumes of the kingfisher that were used in jewellery) is a self-coloured glaze of charming hue and truité, or finely crackled texture. It is prepared from copper combined with a nitre flux and generally – although not always – applied on biscuit. The glaze is really the master quality in porcelain, and some of the other single coloured glazes of the time require a word of notice. The brilliant oxblood red of the earlier potters was succeeded by its derivatives of softer hue, the “haricot red” and “apple green” of the Chinese, which are known to us as peach-bloom (peau de pêche) or crushed strawberry (fraise écrasée); a new bright black appears, shot with purple, the “raven’s wing” glaze of collectors, which is occasionally overlaid with a surface decoration pencilled in gold. Also delicately etched on the surface is the more recent “Mazarin blue” and the soft-toned, coral-red glaze derived from iron. Some of the most brilliant monochromes in Chinese ceramic history were plain washes of one of the enamel colours used in polychrome decoration, such as the green of the famille verte, which supplies an intense shade of colour that flashes with iridescent hues known as “snake-skin green”.
This was a monochrome used in the imperial factory under the Qing Dynasty, together, we are told, with an “eel-skin yellow” of brownish tint, turquoise, imperial yellow, cucumber green and brownish purple. The palace services of the period were yellow, green or purple, with white for use in mourning, and five-clawed dragons were usually etched in the paste under the monochrome glazes.
