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What we somewhat vaguely call ‘blue and white,’ that is porcelain decorated under the glaze with designs painted with cobalt blue, has always formed the most important class in the eyes of European collectors, at least of those of England and Holland. This preference has been even more marked with the people of India and Persia, and no wonder, for no combination of colour more suggestive of coolness could be imagined. It has thus come about that this class of ware, more than any other, has been made with the direct object of exportation. This blue and white porcelain of China and Japan, which has found its way into so many lands both of Europe and Asia, has for centuries had the profoundest influence upon the native wares of these countries, whether of porcelain or of fayence.

In China, by the introduction of this process of freely painting with a brush upon the surface of the paste, the potters art was for the first time brought into contact with that of the painter, and thus fell under new influences. The artists of China at that time were divided into many schools, but what we may call the literary or dilettante influence was predominant, and this influence is reflected in the subjects treated on Ming porcelain—subjects which, as usual in China, were handed on to the ceramic artists of the next dynasty. The earliest decoration in blue and white in no way followed, as far as we know, the hierated types of the old bronze ware. Such motifs we do indeed sometimes see repeated on porcelain, but only on pieces that may safely be attributed to a much later date, especially to the pseudo-archaic revival of Yung-cheng’s time (1722–35).

There is no class of Chinese porcelain to which it is more difficult to assign even an approximate date than to this blue and white ware. We may say at once that the nien-hao, or the characters giving the name of the dynasty and the emperor, so often found inscribed on the base, are in the vast majority of cases of no value for fixing the date, and this is especially true when the name of a Ming emperor is thus found. What is more, these marks, as far as we can judge (from the knowledge we now possess derived from other sources), do not, as we might have expected, even help us in giving hints of the style prevailing at the period indicated by the date. To take but one example, the reign-mark of Cheng-hua (1464–87) is the one most frequently found on the finest pieces of blue and white (in the Salting collection, for instance), but by far the greater number of the pieces so marked undoubtedly date from the beginning of the eighteenth century. On the other hand, the Chinese books all agree in telling us that this Cheng-hua period was noted for a decline in the excellence of the blue, but on the other hand was pre-eminent for its coloured decoration. It was rather the earlier Hsuan-te period (1425–35) that was renowned for the brilliancy of its blue. These statements of the Chinese authorities are confirmed by an analysis of the Ming specimens illustrated in the Bushell manuscript. The Japanese, perhaps a little more rationally, give the preference to the reigns of Hsuan-te and Yung-lo (1402–24), for the date-marks of these emperors (‘Sentoku’ and ‘Yeiraku’ in the Japanese reading) are to be read on the commonest modern blue and white in domestic use in that country.

This is a point that cannot be too strongly dwelt upon. Perhaps if a little more of the care and research that have been devoted to the reading of these nien-hao and other inscriptions on Chinese porcelain had been earlier directed to a careful examination of the glazes and enamels, and to questions of technique generally, the misconceptions that so long prevailed as to the dating and classification of Oriental porcelain would have been sooner dispelled.

But what means have we then for settling the date of a piece of Chinese blue and white ware? What criterion is there for distinguishing between specimens of early Ming, late Ming, or Manchu times?—or indeed between those of Chinese and Japanese origin? That we even now possess no very exact criterion is shown by the wide difference of opinion so often found in individual cases. If we are to form our judgment from the rare extant pieces of blue and white known to have been imported into Europe in the sixteenth century, we must regard the Ming ware as distinguished by a certain irregularity of surface, seen best by side-reflected lights; the pieces are generally moulded, and the marks of the lines of junction of the moulds are often to be traced on the surface; the paste, too, is generally very thick, and sometimes shows gaping fissures at the margin. The drawing of the design is somewhat hasty and summary, although at times distinguished by a freshness of handling and by a certain caligraphic freedom. But we must not draw too hasty an inference from the few specimens in our European collections, many of which must have been made, as we shall see later on, at a period of temporary decline; nor are we justified in regarding mere articles of commerce, as most of these specimens undoubtedly were, as representative of the higher artistic products of the time.

The blue in these early pieces is generally of a full tint but not of any remarkable quality. There are, however, to be found a few specimens, heavily moulded indeed and of irregular contour, decorated with cobalt blue of a full sapphire tint. Of this class there are one or two brilliant specimens both in the British Museum and at South Kensington. In these and in other Ming wares the surface of the glaze is often dulled, and this is not always the result of minute scratches, for sometimes a process of devitrification appears to have set in.[42] Another class of Ming ware is distinguished by a decoration delicately painted in a pale blue tint, and it was this style that was copied by the Japanese in their Mikawaji ware of the seventeenth century.

It is to later Ming times that we must attribute the bulk of the rough heavy ware of which so much is found in India.[43] These are generally large plates and bowls, often discoloured from having been used for cooking purposes. The decoration is hastily executed

PLATE VI. CHINESE, BLUE AND WHITE WARE

in a dull indigo blue (derived of course from cobalt, as in other cases), and the outlines are often accentuated by black lines. Many fine specimens of this picturesque ware, from the collection of Mrs. Halsey, were shown in the exhibition of blue and white ware at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1895. It was claimed for one large vase that it came from the palace of the Moguls at Agra, and that it had been presented to Jehangir by the Chinese emperor Wan-li (1572–1619). It is often stated that this class of ware was made at some factory in the south of China, probably in the neighbourhood of Canton, the port from which doubtless most of it was exported. As yet, however, no evidence, as far as I am aware, for such a factory has been brought forward, and no definite locality indicated. The statement made by the Abbé Raynal, about a factory at Shao-king Fu, rests probably upon a misconception.

There are several specimens of blue and white in England, the metal mountings of which date from the early seventeenth or even from the sixteenth century. Of these the most famous are the four pieces from Burleigh House (now belonging to Mr. Pierpont Morgan), which are believed to have been in the possession of the Cecil family from the time of Queen Elizabeth. One of these bears the date-mark of Wan-li, the contemporary of that queen. This ware is not particularly fine, the surfaces are irregular, and all the pieces are apparently moulded (Pl. xxviii.).

This subject, however, of the early presence of Chinese porcelain in other lands we shall return to in a later chapter.

So far, then, with such imperfect lights as are at our command, we have attempted to follow up the history of porcelain, and so far, say up to the middle of the sixteenth century, China is practically the only country with which we are concerned. Some fair imitations of celadon, the martabani of Oriental commerce, had probably by this time been made in Siam and perhaps elsewhere, and the Japanese were already in a sporadic way experimenting with imported and native clays. But up to the sixteenth century the Chinese had practically the monopoly of the art, and as we have seen they had at that time the command of three processes of decoration—that is by monochrome glazes, by painting with glazes of a few simple colours on the biscuit, and finally by means of cobalt blues and copper reds painted on the surface of the raw paste.

Not but that some attempts may have already been made to apply coloured decoration over the glaze—the next and final step in the history of porcelain. There are some passages in contemporary Chinese books, giving descriptions of elaborate subjects painted in many colours on porcelain of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which it would be difficult to apply to our class of painted glazes. Thus—to take a pronounced instance from an unexceptionable source—the miniature wine-cups, No. 59 of the Bushell manuscript, are attributed by Tzu-ching to the reign of Cheng-hua (1464–87), and he describes them thus—‘They are painted in enamel colours’ (so Dr. Bushell translates the original) ‘with flowers and insects; … the cockscomb, the narcissus and other flowers, the flying dragon-fly and crawling mantis are minutely painted after life in green, yellow, and crimson enamel.’ (This, by the way, is a combination of colours which it must have been difficult to apply at one firing with the pigments known at that time.) And yet in the absence of any specimen of enamelled ware (using the word enamel in its restricted sense for a decoration applied over the glaze) that can with certainty be attributed to so early a period, it will be safer to postpone the date of the introduction of this decoration, sur couverte, for another hundred years.

It will be remembered that the distinctive feature of this decoration with enamels is the use of an easily fusible silicate, containing much lead—in fact a kind of flint glass. A glass of this description is capable of being stained by the addition of small quantities of certain metallic oxides, some of which would not stand the heat requisite for the firing of the porcelain. This, in fact, is the application to porcelain of the arts of the glass-stainer and of the enameller, arts already at this time fully developed in the West. For once the Chinese authorities all agree in finding in an exotic and indeed Western art the origin of their enamelled porcelain. When, however, we attempt to interpret their statements we are landed in an even more than customary chaos—so many are the different readings for the names of foreign countries and for technical processes.

Let us then consider for a moment what the materials were that the Chinese had to draw from—whether from Arab or other sources.

Putting aside the application of stained glass to windows, for specimens of this art are not easily exported, these may be summed up as, first, the enamelled glass of the Saracens, and secondly, the cloisonnés and champlevés enamels of the Byzantines and other Western nations.

As to the first—the application of coloured and easily fusible enamels to the surface of glass, which was then exposed to a second firing—this process had been used by the Arabs for the decoration of their mosque lamps and other vessels probably as early as the twelfth century, and this was an art identical in its system with the application of the same colours to the surface of porcelain. The beauty of the effect cannot have failed to have struck the Chinese if they had had any opportunity of seeing the finer specimens. But the material was fragile, and apart from a statement by M. Scherer that glass was exported from Aleppo to China,[44] I cannot find in the accounts of the Arab trade of the time any record of such ware being imported into China.

On the other hand, we know that enamels on metal are first mentioned in the Ming annals about the middle of the fifteenth century. They take their name of Cheng-tai enamels from the emperor who reigned at that period; but the proper Chinese term for such enamels is Folang chien yao—‘the inlaid ware of Folang.’ Julien interpreted these words ‘Porcelaines à incrustations (ornées d’émaux) de France,’ and Dr. Hirth carries us to Bethlehem! But the word Folang is probably the same as the term Folin or Fulen, used as early as the sixth century for the Roman empire of the East, and it may possibly be connected with the Greek πόλις (cf. Stamboul = Εἰς τὴν πόλιν).[45] It is definitely stated by a later Chinese writer that the same colours are employed by both the enameller on metal and the decorator of porcelain.

If we examine the colours found on both the wares to which we have tentatively traced back the enamelled porcelain of the Chinese—the enamels on glass on the one hand, and those on metal on the other—taking in each case the earlier specimens as examples, we find on the mosque lamps from Cairo little except a deep blue generally used as a ground for a design which is outlined in an opaque iron red. On the famous flask from Würzburg, now in the British Museum, for which a ‘Mesopotamian’ origin of the thirteenth century is claimed, a turquoise blue relieved by gilding is the predominant note; there is also a sparing use of yellow, of an opaque white, and, what is especially interesting, of a fine pinkish red, which is possibly obtained from gold. (The way in which this colour is shaded into the opaque white reminds us of the similar use of the rouge d’or in later times in China.)

If, on the other hand, we turn to the earlier Chinese enamels on metal, the so-called Ching-tai vases, attributed to the fifteenth century, we find among the colours used an opaque iron red, a yellow, an opaque white, and finally two kinds of blue, a turquoise and a full deep blue that looks like a cobalt colour.[46]

Some time, then, during the sixteenth century, whether before or after the accession of Wan-li (1572), the Chinese began to decorate the surface of their porcelain with jewel-like enamels appliqués to the glaze. At first, apparently, these colours were confined to three: a copper green, a yellow generally of a buff tint, probably containing antimony as well as iron, and a purple derived from manganese. These are the San-tsai or three colours of the Chinese writers, and it will be seen that they differ from the colour triad of our ‘painted glazes’ (painted, that is, on biscuit and reheated in the demi grand feu) in that the copper silicate is of a turquoise blue in the latter, and in the former of a full leafy green. The Chinese authorities further tell us that a second scheme of decoration was given by the Wu-tsai or the five colours which were made up by the three already mentioned, with the addition of an opaque red derived from the sesqui-oxide of iron (otherwise known as hæmatite, bole or red ochre),[47] and finally of a cobalt blue, sous couverte, surviving as it were from the earlier blue and white ware, for, as we have mentioned, the use of the blue as an enamel over the glaze belongs to a later period.

So much for the teaching of the Chinese books; but when, attacking the subject from the other side, we examine the specimens of enamelled ware which for one reason or another—the coarseness and thickness of the paste, the moulded form, and the irregular surface—we should be inclined to attribute to the Ming dynasty, we are led to classify these earlier examples somewhat as follows:—

1. On a white ground a design, often, it would seem, of textile origin, roughly painted in an opaque red (like sealing-wax), with the addition of a leafy green and very rarely of a little yellow. This is a class of decoration much imitated in Japan at a later date, especially by the artist potters of Kioto and at Inuyama.

2. The same colours with the addition of blue, sous couverte. The design often takes the form of figures in a landscape, the whole broadly treated. The earliest type of the Imari ware (apart from the Kakiyemon) seems to be based on this scheme of decoration.

Both these classes are distinguished by the white ground, the sparing use of yellow, and the almost complete absence of manganese purple and turquoise blue.

3. A transparent enamel of leafy green, yellow and manganese purple painted on in washes so as to cover the whole ground. When with these colours we find the outline drawn in black, we have the basis of a large part of the famille verte. On the other hand, it is this class of decoration which probably carries on the tradition of the early Ming ware, sometimes described as ‘enamelled,’ but more probably all of it painted on the biscuit and fired in the demi grand feu.

In China it would seem that these enamelled wares