Of late, ‘tis true, quite sick of Rome and Greece
We fetch our models from the wise Chinese;
European artists are too cool and chaste,
For Mand’rin is the only man of taste…
On ev’ry shelf a Joss divinely stares,
Nymphs laid on chintzes sprawl upon our chairs;
While o’er our cabinets Confucius nods,
Midst porcelain elephants and China Gods *
Blanc de Chine - Ming Period. Surely the most beautiful of all Chinese ceramics are its most simple
According to an old Chinese adage “Knowledge comes from seeing much” a particularly relevant comment for those studying art, especially ceramics.
Chinese ceramics became known to the wider world from the Tang Dynasty (618- 907) onward; the word ‘China’ eventually became the generic name for porcelain so successfully had its potential as an export trade ware been exploited by the west at the end of the nineteenth century.
The enthusiasm the English, European and American trade market displayed for oriental goods from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries inspired the invention of porcelain in the west and established the whimsical stylistic language known as Chinoiserie, which affected designs for architecture, interiors and gardens.
For the most part using the dating period of Chinese Dynasties or the ruling period of an Emperor to assign dates to Chinese ceramic wares and their development is more than difficult. At all stages during their stylistic and technical development there was a good deal of overlapping and copying of previous dynasties designs. Reproducing a previous dynasty wasn’t at first a commercial objective, it was the intention to honour ancestors, but as time passed and China opened to the commercialism of the west, that would, and did change.
Founded upon a prosperous economy, the Tang Empire witnessed a great flowering of creativity; science and technology, art, music, painting, pottery, calligraphy, literature and religion – it was a golden age. Chinese potters discovered that when stone wares were fired at higher temperatures they changed their characteristics and the progression to what are now regarded as wares made from ‘true porcelain’ was a gradual process.
Ding Ware Northern Song Dynasty - The unobtrusive decoration is of incised lotus and sagittaria sprays that is incised into the body that has been ennobled by a mellow ivory-white glaze and the rim is protected by a metal cap 11th - 12th century
From the very first during the reign of the Tudors in England, when the west accessed wares made of so- called ‘hard paste, or true porcelain’, it was seduced by them. They were magically translucent, resonant when struck, impervious to liquid, considered refined and aesthetically pleasing in both proportion and style, as well as having great beauty of form.
The material used was a fusion of fine white ‘china clay’ [kaolin, named for the hill in China called Ko-ling where it was discovered] and powdered feldspathic rock [petuntse], which when fired together at an intense heat [about 1450° C] produced a new type of ware that would captivate the world for centuries.
From the beginning of the ceramic industry in China to set up a large kiln there needed to be plenty of natural quantities of heavy clay, plenty of natural fuel to power the kiln, including water and a cost effective way of taking the products to a ready market.
Once a kiln had been installed generations of artisans flourished with each area becoming renowned for the style and techniques of decorating the wares they developed.
A kiln atmosphere heavily charged with carbon monoxide is termed ‘reducing’. Its effect is to profoundly modify colours yielded by certain metallic oxides, particularly iron and copper. Chinese potters achieved the desired concentration of carbon monoxide by feeding their furnaces wet wood.
The dexterity and skill of the potters in controlling the way that a glaze was fired also meant they were able to crackle it deliberately. This style of decoration more than likely came about at first by accident; however the potters found the effect so aesthetically pleasing they spent a great deal of time learning how to bring it about intentionally. This was achieved by using the differing coefficients of contraction and expansion and by submitting the piece to rapid cooling after firing.
Northern Song (960-1127) 11th century Porcelain-like stoneware with céladon feldspathic glaze H: 20.5 cm Musée Guimet
Beginning with the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) and during the Tang (618-907 A.D.) Sung (960-1279 A.D.) Yuan (1279-1368 A.D.) and Ming (1368-1644 A.D.) dynasties large quantities of pottery and porcelain were exported from China to the eastern and western world.
There are many romantic attributions for the term Celadon. It became a generic term for ceramics finished with a glaze ranging in colour from olive-green to sea-green first developed as a protective coating for stoneware.
Celadons were sought by the Persians during the Northern Song Dynasty 960-1112 because they believed they would break, or change colour if poisoned food was placed in them.
Chinese porcelain factories catered to their Middle Eastern customers and because of both religious and cultural bans on the representation of human and animal figures most porcelain sold in Islamic markets featured floral designs.
The Chinese dynasty known as Ming seems relatively near and modern in the long context of Chinese history. In 1368 when it began, many of its scholars consider the supreme periods of the major arts, such as literature, calligraphy and painting had already passed.
Blue and White Plate Yuan Dynasty 1279 - 1368
In the European experience the word Ming is almost inseparable from porcelain, which was beginning to arrive in the west in increasing quantities. However it was considered by the Chinese of the Ming period only one of its minor arts.
The use of cobalt as a blue colouring agent was considerably developed in connection with porcelain wares in China from the Yuan Dynasty (1260-1368) onward. The artist who painted a fish swimming through aquatic plants on this very early plate proved his worth at managing cobalt decoration by rendering the scene with great skill, dexterity and vitality.
It was during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) that the use of cobalt oxide would reach a crescendo in painting, style and technique. Cobalt has an ancient history and was known as a colouring agent in other centres such as Persia, Syria and Egypt 2000 years before Christ.
Native minerals on their own had impurities that resulted in a dull or greyish colour producing often an unstable patch blue termed, heaped and piled decoration, one of the main characteristics of Ming Blue and White painted decoration. Hui hui Ch’ing or Mohammedan Blue exhibited very rich colour when mixed with a native material discovered at this time, as it had a distinct tendency to run when used on its own and the porcelain painters needed to be quick and their brush strokes very deft and sure.
Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) Mid 14th century Porcelain with cobalt blue decoration H:33.6 cm
The Ming period in China [1368 to 1644] is considered by many historians as the last great dynasty that was truly Chinese. From the middle of the 17th century when Chinese influence on western culture really began to intensify, it was ruled by the Manchus who invaded from Manchuria (north eastern China) and were considered by the mainstream population, the Han Chinese, as usurpers.
We are looking at a typical mei p’ing vase used to display blossom branches brought indoors in the warmth and forced into blossom for the celebration of New Year. This specimen has a baluster body; it is high shouldered with a small mouth. New Year was an important festival that generally fell around February, or late winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
Blue & White Jar Ming dynasty, Xuande mark and period (1426-1435)
There was a resurgence of Chinese nationalism under the Ming Dynasty when the ancient barrier between East and West was reaffirmed. By far and away the most splendid wares of the Ming period were made for the Imperial Court, as well as the more exacting home markets of China.
To quote Hobson, an English authority on Chinese ceramics ‘Ming shapes are often distinguished by a certain rugged simplicity, and always by the directness and strength of an art, which is still young and virile’.
Ming porcelain generally has a fine grain body is white in colour and tinged buff on the unglazed footring. Thick glazes are often slightly uneven, with a bluish tinge due to traces of iron which also confer the buff colour on the footring.
The texture of the glaze surface exhibits what the Chinese call ‘chicken skin’ with ‘pinholes’ in the glaze surface. Also this is only a general rule, to which there are always exceptions.
Jar Ming Period of Emperor Jiajing 1521 to 1567
The most prized of Ming period porcelains were made in the Hsuan Té period (1426-1435) noted for its painting in cobalt blue and copper red under the glaze. Potters finally mastered both of these capricious materials, ensuring that the wares reached a high standard of technical and decorative achievement.
Copper red particularly, was very difficult to control and they eventually abandoned it for an iron red enamel glaze painted over the glaze.
Rim of Imperial Yellow and Cobalt Blue Plate
Yellow glazes in various nuances appeared in the late Ming period and continued until the nineteenth century.
The use of Imperial yellow during the reign of the Emperor Xuande (1426-35) was based on iron, was very brilliant and served as a ground colour for a design painted in blue under the glaze.
Flowers [plants and trees generally] are used very widely in the decoration of porcelain in the Far East, and there is an elaborate symbolism attached to most of them. Eg. The seasons are represented by the prunus [Winter], the tree peony [Spring], the lotus [Summer], and the chrysanthemum [Autumn].
The most important innovation during the reign of Ch’eng Hua (1465-1487) was the introduction of the tou ts’ai or contrasting colours, a combination of underglaze blue with enamel colours, the latter laid on top of the glaze within the outlines of the underglaze blue.
So-called Chicken Cup
Excellent examples of this particular group are the so-called ‘chicken cups’, which became very popular again when copied during the C18.
Portugal was considered one of the most adventurous of the European sea faring nations and it reached China in 1517. From Macao they traded Chinese, and other Asian goods for spices in Europe.
The Society of Jesus founded at Rome in 1534 also sent missionaries to East Asia. From the 1540’s onward Jesuit Priest Matteo Ricci, along with his colleagues learned Chinese, mastered the canon of classic Confucian texts, dressed as mandarins, demonstrating to Chinese intellectuals that the west had far superior skills in some areas the Chinese recognized as vital, like cartography and astronomy.
Burghley Bowl
When Emperor Wan Li, the last ruler of the Ming Dynasty sat on the Throne of Heaven ruling over the Middle Kingdom in the Forbidden City from 1573 to 1620 in England Elizabeth 1 was contending with Mary Queen of Scots and many other thorny issues.
The earliest accurate record we have of Ming porcelain in the west was pieces specified in the will of Elizabeth 1. From the inventory compiled following her death, we can deduce they were highly prized and very precious like the bowl belonging to the Cecil family of Burghley who served the Queen well.
It was the year 1600 when Queen Elizabeth 1 of England granted a Charter for her seafarers to challenge the Portuguese monopoly of the spice trade followed by the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-indische Compagnie 1602 and the French Compagnie des Indes Orientales) 1664 and by the middle of the seventeenth century a lively trade for lacquer, silk and other small objects to European Courts was in full swing.
Porcelain painted in underglaze blue and overglaze polychrome enamels.
An important innovation was the appearance of the so-called ‘Wucai’ (five colour) decoration during the Jiajing period (1522-1566). A method was developed where cobalt blue was painted under the glaze and then after being fired the potters then overpainted the glaze with polychrone enamels before firing it again. Fish were often used because they were an important symbol as they symbolized the wish for wealth.
By the late Ming Period c1573-1644 there were new developments in the ancient arts of calligraphy and painting. In the Songjiang and Jiaxing regions the literati strove to surmount petty struggles by devoting themselves to creative artistic activities.
They concentrated on heightening an awareness of the individual, his position in the world and his relationship with his fellowman. This led to a simultaneous blossoming of all art forms and through mutual discussion and creative interaction the works they produced would attain a high level of artistic merit tinged with extreme, poetic elegance that reflected a healthy attitude toward art and society.
The years surrounding the fall of the Ming dynasty and founding of the Qing dynasty in China were uncertain and foreign trade suffered. The first Manchu Emperor Kangxi (1662-1722), was a patron of classical studies, a poet and calligrapher. He was also vigorous and reforming and during his reign China’s exports and industries, boomed. In 1682 he ordered the reconstruction of the kilns at Jingdezhen, partly destroyed during the early troubled years of the dynasty.
From the beginning of the seventeenth century trade with Cathay (China) was always, seemingly, far more important to Europeans than it was to Chinese rulers who prided themselves on their nation’s self-sufficiency. It is often said Ming wares lacked the precise finish of the porcelains of the later Ch’ing dynasty. However they were made to cope with the hazards of transport by ship, or camel caravan and their continuing appeal has meant a demand ever since by both European and Asian collectors and connoisseurs.
Taking Tea in Fine Style
Charles II was restored to the throne in England in 1660 with the accompanying surge in, and a delight of, new fashions. He and his wife Catherine of Bragazna would set a style for the taking of tea.
Taking tea was first recorded in 1660 in the diary of English Naval Administrator and Member for Parliament Samuel Pepys who sent for his first cup of this ‘China drinke’…and in the most well to do families, tea was drunk in the Chinese manner out of Chinese porcelain.
A typical feature of Kanxi porcelain was the paste, which was often sandy and gritty on the surface and on the glaze. Painting in cobalt reached new heights of artistic and technical achievement, the colour having an almost luminescence quality while the techniques attached to rendering the decoration both over, and under the glaze, were further refined.with an assorted assemblage of wares used for the ceremony and in England imports of tea alone multiplied 40 times between 1723 and 1830.
sang de beouf Vase with over painted decoration
During the reign of Emperor Kangxi technological advances allowed for splendid decorated and coloured wares. The rich blood-red glaze was developed using copper oxide in the formulation and firing the climbing kilns in a smoky, reducing atmosphere. It was highly unpredictable, and the result by no means a foregone conclusion. It still is so today, red glazes are the bane of a potter’s existence. Ming emperors were highly discerning, and anything not measuring up to their expectations was rejected. A literal mountain of rejected and wasted pieces exists outside of Jingdezhen where archaeologists have had a field day. This red glaze is sometimes called ’sang de beouf’ (literally, blood of the ox in French).
A description of the manufacture of porcelain written in 1713, by French Jesuit priest Father D’ Entrecolles a resident in Peking at that time describes the seeming magic connected with the firing of blue and white porcelain ‘a beautiful blue colour appears on the porcelain after having been lost for some time. When the colour is first painted on, it is pale black; when it is dry and the glaze has been put on it, it disappears entirely and the porcelain seems quite white, the colour being buried under the glaze. But the fire makes it appear in all its beauty, almost in the same way as the natural heat of the sun makes the most beautiful butterflies, with all their tints, come out of their eggs’
In 1731 a fifteen year monopoly was also granted for a Swedish East India Company to trade in the East. By that time too Chinese officials were realizing the monetary potential of Europe’s expanding interest and started to increase the access of increasing numbers of European traders to their wares, with porcelain gradually becoming the largest, and most desirable, of all Chinese manufactures, shipped in bulk and great variety. It was packed into tubs and wooden boxes cushioned with rice or marketable goods such as pepper, sago, or tea and packed into the bottom of the ships for ballast.
A Fleet of East India men at Sea by Nicholas Pocock 1802
The China Trade would flourish for two centuries. It was a risky venture. Taxes, tributes, bribes and deceptions were rife. Storms, pirates, disease and rival traders were a constant threat during the two-year round trip voyage to and from Europe. Most went well but sometimes disaster struck – and wrecks are still being found with marvelous porcelains still intact, such as the Longquan found in 1996 loaded with superb celadons, although since much of its cargo has been lost or destroyed by fishing trawlers.
Despite the risks, traders made huge profits for their companies, themselves and their countries. England’s East India Company, popularly known as John Company, was the most powerful commercial enterprise of its day.
Plate decorated with the Arms of the East India Company
Based in Leadenhall Street, London, the English East India Company presided over the creation of British India, founded Hong Kong and Singapore, employed Captain Kidd to combat piracy , established tea in India, held Napoleon captive on St Helena and its products were the subject of the Boston Tea Party. Its red and white horizontally striped flag, more than likely inspired the design for the American Flag, however, initially it made little impression as it could not establish a lasting outpost in the East Indies.
In the western world from classical Greece and Rome onward the fashioning of a human identity was an ever evolving process. During the late and high Middle Ages in England and Europe elite members of society, whose circle was expanding rapidly, fashioned themselves according to what they believed were ideal patterns for living. These consisted, not only of good manners, but also were an expression of what was considered good, and in the eighteenth century, correct aesthetic taste. These precepts satisfied their own internal adornment while manifesting themselves externally in bodily ornaments that reflected the fact that their possessors belonged to a certain unique aspect of society, one everyone was clamoring to emulate, or join. One of these outward symbols was a coat of arms; quite literally a linen or silk surcoat worn to protect armour from the sun’s heat, dirt etc…on to which each knight or noble had his Heraldic arms embroidered.
Plate decorated with Heraldic Arms A pattern for this plate survives, the only complete design for an armorial service to be recorded. It was made for Leake Okeover, whose arms are impaled with those of his wife, Mary Nichol; their conjoined monogram, LMO, appears in cartouches on the rim. The service was shipped from Canton to England in two instalments in 1740 and in 1743
Traditionally in heraldry the Coat of Arms consists of a Shield at its centre, crowned often by a Helmet which is in turn surmounted by a Crest, a decorative ornament meant to afford protection against a fatal blow. Added to this group was the Mantling; i.e. ornamental drapery flanking or accentuating the central shield which again in turn is flanked on each side by a pair of standing figures known as Supporters.
The demand for Chinese decorated armorial porcelain increased from the mid seventeenth century onward in Europe and during the eighteenth century thousands of services were ordered. Drawings of individual coat-of-arms were dispatched to China to be copied as faithfully as possible. Some were lavishly painted in polychrome enamels and gilding, covering much of the surface, while others, particularly those toward the end of the century, might simply incorporate a small crest or monogram.
Crests, like arms, were sometimes allusive. Grey of Wilton used a gray, or badger; Lord Wells had a bucket and chain. In the early days of the crest it was confined to persons of rank, but in later times it has been included in every grant of arms. A high degree of understanding between Private trader and the Chinese Merchant who placed the order was important if a good result was to be achieved for the client at home in Europe. Sometimes this went massively wrong and while today examples of what happened affords us much amusement, to those literally waiting for years to receive services for the East only to have them arrive wrongly painted must have been frustrating beyond belief. How it happened is that the families in Europe or England would record their instructions re colouring or about the design in English and these along with the design were faithfully copied by Chinese workers who had no English. Why did the private trade in armorial wares at this time in history prove so popular? The Emperor Ch’ien Lung a noted patron of the arts was also interested in Western culture, and there is no doubt he more than likely encouraged the making of many pieces based on the design of French articles sent as presents to Peking from the King of France, or ordered from Paris by the Jesuits at the command of the Emperor.
The technique of painting porcelains over the glaze in the famille rose palette of opaque and semi-opaque enamels was perfected at the Jingdezhen kilns of Jiangxi Province in the eighteenth century, during the reign of the Qing-dynasty Yongzheng emperor (1723-35).
The terms famille rose and famille verte were first coined by Albert, I JACQUEMART, 1808-1875, and Edmond LE BLANT, 1813-1897 in their work Histoire artistique, industrielle et commerciale de la porcelaine.
Published at Paris by Techener, 1862. Famille, meaning family, was meant to describe an enamel palette with one predominant base colour developed for use on porcelain in the second half of the seventeenth century. These included rose, verte, jaune, or noir porcelains and are still sought after by collectors
I went to dine
With a friend of mine
Who dined off porcelain plates
Of a kind so rare
That it stirred your hair
To think of their possible fates
For some were Ming
and others were Ch’ing
(Whatever those names may be)
And the food was divineAnd the wine, the wine
Intoxicated me
There were ices – those
were of famille rose,
and coffee of famille noire
and a choice dessertof famille verte
Preceded a choice cigar.
But alas for the end
Of dinner and friendFor he happened his eyes to raise
As I started to rub
The burning stub
On a bit of his finest glaze.
He was perfectly nice,
But as cold as ice,
As he rang for my coat and hat,
For Ming is a thing,
And so is Ch’ing,
That mustn’t be used for that **
View of the Western Hongs of Canton. Oils on fine linen
Throughout the C17 and C18 Dutch East Indian ships plied their trade at Boston, New York and up the Hudson River to Albany, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Williamsburg and Charleston in the Americas.
Initial contact was at New Amsterdam and the first Williamsburg settlement as early as 1620.
A considerable volume of porcelain was bought at auction in Europe by China wholesalers and shipped to flourishing cities on the East Coast, where they adorned many a fine table and the distribution point for ‘China’ became one of the causes of complaint leading to the War of Independence in 1775. Of all the wares traded those that catered to the new craze for tea were the most popular.
China Trade Dinner Service for the American Market
By the eighteenth century two varieties of tea dominated the trade. Bohea, a black tea originally the choicest grade until the turn of the eighteenth century when Hyson, which translates to “Flourishing Spring“, then became the luxury tea. (Green tea is made from the steamed and dried leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, a shrub native to the mountainous regions of Asia. Black tea is also made from this plant, but unlike green tea, is made from leaves that have been dried and fermented.) Tea mania swept England, as it had earlier in France and Holland, and tea imports rose in weight from 40,000 pounds in 1699 to an annual average of 240,000 pounds by 1708. Hyson was so highly favoured during the eighteenth century the British Tea Tax was levied at a higher rate for it than any other variety.
All was mayhem when on April 1, 1774, a posse of Bostonians, greatly deplored at the time even by George Washington, disguised themselves, not too convincingly, as Mohawk Indians and merrily dumped cargoes of Hyson tea into Boston Harbour and
The waters in the rebel bay
Have kept their tea leaf savour
Our old North Enders in their Spray
Still taste a Hyson flavour…
Boston Tea Party from an engraving by Currier
The mood that moonlit night was jubilant. One merry maker exclaimed, “Boston Harbor a teapot tonight! Hurrah!” But the morning after was sobering. The party was over and to give up their beloved, ancient tea, made of cured dried Camellia sinensis leaves, posed a practical problem: what to drink instead? After all, wrote Samuel Johnson, the average colonist, including himself, was “a hardened and shameless tea-drinker’ and forsaking the ritual and comfort of a nice cup of tea was sure to be difficult
‘Thank God for Tea! What would the world do without tea. How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea’ and the fine china cup to drink it from.
Carolyn McDowall 2010′
Poetry
* British Poet 1756 James Cawthorn – On Taste
** Anonymous poem inserted into an C19 Publication on Ceramics by Carolyn McDowall 1997
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