Porcelain. Dillon Edward

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href="#n24" type="note">24

      It was under Imperial patronage that the art was developed in China, and the excellence of the porcelain of that country has in a measure varied with the taste and intelligence with which that patronage was exercised in different reigns. The native scholar and connoisseur has for ages been a collector of choice pieces, and his influence has always been exercised in a conservative direction. There is, indeed, in the whole world no such consistent laudator temporis acti, and it is this conservative spirit, resulting in a constant ‘returning upon oneself,’ that it is essential to bear in mind if we are to understand the involved relation of the old and the new in the history of the arts of China.

      But the Chinese potter was not working only for the court or for the learned connoisseur, or again for the supply of the towns and villages. From the earliest times, or at least for the last thousand years, there has been a demand for his ware, small at first but slowly spreading, from the outer barbarian. Porcelain, or something akin to it, has been exported from China, by one path or another, from the time of the first Arab settlements at Canton and Kinsay in the eighth or ninth century; and thus a countervailing influence, acting in the direction of variety and change, at least as far as the decoration of the ware is concerned, has always been present. To give but two instances of this influence—we shall return to the subject later on: in the intimate connection of the Chinese court with Western Asia, and especially with Persia, in the thirteenth century, we may probably find the occasion of the first introduction into China of the blue decoration under the glaze; and with more certainty—the fact is indeed acknowledged by the Chinese—we may attribute the second great revolution in the decoration of porcelain, the use of enamel colours over the glaze, to European or Arab influence.

      On the other hand, the decline that set in at the end of the eighteenth century was not a little hastened by the increased demand for ware decorated to suit the depraved taste of the ‘Western barbarian.’

      For in spite of his rigidity and his conservative spirit, the Chinese potter has always understood how to adapt his wares to the changing taste of his customers. Indeed the variation in the decoration, the subtle nuances in colour and design, that enable us to distinguish between the Chinese porcelain exported to India, to Persia, and to the nations of the Christian west, might be made the basis of a most interesting study.

      When we come to consider the various factories of porcelain that sprang up in Europe in the course of the eighteenth century, we shall find that what strikes the inquirer above all (in comparison with the kindred arts of the time) is the little we can observe in the way of development either in the technique or decoration of the wares. The art springs up full-blown; what history there is is concerned rather with an artistic decline. It is only in China that we can hope to trace the steps by which this special branch of the potter’s art attained to the perfection that we find in the products of the eighteenth century, and this alone is a reason for dwelling, even in a treatment of the subject so general and brief as this must needs be, on what may seem to some mere antiquarian detail.

      But there is another and perhaps even a more important reason for our trying to form some idea of what the earliest wares of the Chinese were like: unless we make some such endeavour we shall find it impossible to understand the later history of porcelain in that country. One point must be specially borne in mind when we are attempting to follow the order in which fresh styles and designs were introduced in China. When a new method of decoration had been adopted and had come into general use—the introduction of underglaze blue in early Ming times, and that of coloured enamels at a later period, are cases in point—this did not involve the abandonment of the older styles. There was a constant effort to maintain the old methods, and in the most flourishing times of the emperors Kang-he and Kien-lung, the series of great men who had charge of the imperial works at King-te-chen, some of them practical potters themselves, were constantly occupied with the problems of reproducing the glazes, if not the pastes, of the earliest wares. During the reign of Yung-chêng (1723-1735), perhaps the culminating period in the history of Chinese porcelain, when Nien Hsi-yao was superintendent, a list was drawn up of fifty-seven varieties of porcelain made at King-te-chen. In this list the titles of all the old wares of the Sung dynasty are to be found, and to them the place of honour is evidently awarded (Bushell, chap. xii.). The names of some of these old wares, the Ko yao and the Kuan yao, for instance, are applied to porcelain in common use at the present day, an attribution based on the greater or less resemblance of this modern ware to the Sung porcelain, at least in the matter of the glazes.

      It is only quite of late years that we in Europe have been able to make any clear distinction, not only between the different classes of Chinese porcelain, but between what is Chinese and what is not. A few years ago the most characteristic porcelain of Japan was classed as Chinese, while on the other hand Corea and even local English factories were credited with porcelain made and decorated in one or other of the former countries.

      It is nearly two hundred years since the famous letters of the Jesuit missionary, the Père D’Entrecolles, were written, and these letters still remain our best source of information for the processes of manufacture at King-te-chen. There was little further information on the subject from the Chinese side25 until, in 1856, Stanislas Julien translated part of a Chinese work treating chiefly of the same porcelain factory—this is the King-te-chen Tao Lu, a book which contains in addition some information about the history of the different wares. This translation was for many years the only native source of information available to students of Chinese porcelain, and many were the misconceptions and blunders in which these students were landed. The book was indeed accompanied by a preface and valuable notes by M. Salvétat, the porcelain expert of Sèvres, but Julien himself, though an eminent Chinese scholar, had no practical acquaintance either with the matter in hand or indeed with the country generally.

      The beginning of a sounder knowledge of the subject was made when that collector of genius, the late Sir A. Wollaston Franks, published a catalogue of the private collection of Japanese and Chinese porcelain which he afterwards presented to the nation. His marvellous intuition and his vast experience enabled him to seize upon points of resemblance and difference which threw light upon the origin of the various wares, and to expose at the same time the inconsistencies of the arrangements then in vogue. He it was who first pointed out the general worthlessness, as a guide to the date or even the country of any piece of porcelain, of the name of dynasty and emperor which it might bear. His successor, Mr. C. H. Read, has well carried on the tradition. At the present moment the British Museum is one of the few places where an attempt has been made at a systematic arrangement of a representative collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain.26

      In the meantime in China itself, both in connection with the embassies at Pekin and among some of the merchants at Shanghai and other treaty ports, much information was being collected, and it was above all the merit of Franks to keep himself in communication with and to encourage all such research. Dr. Hirth, long in the service of the Chinese at Shanghai and elsewhere, has published a series of learned studies treating of the relation of the Chinese to the Roman empire, of the Arab traders during the Middle Ages, and of the early history of Chinese porcelain generally. But it is to a former member of our embassy at Pekin, to Dr. Bushell, that we are above all indebted for the throwing open of Chinese sources of information upon the history of porcelain. A worthy successor of the Père D’Entrecolles in his intimate acquaintance with the country and its language, Dr. Bushell is well abreast of the chemical and technical knowledge of the day, and his position as physician to our embassy at Pekin has given him access to information from the best Chinese sources, as well as to the treasures of many of the native collections of the capital.

      Dr. Bushell has written the text to a sumptuously illustrated work, nominally a catalogue of the collection of porcelain formed by the late Mr. Walters of Philadelphia, and into this text he has woven all the vast wealth of material that he had accumulated during many years of study both at Pekin and in Europe. This work has thus superseded all other sources of information on the history and manufacture of Chinese porcelain. He has, in fact, ransacked all that has been written in China on these subjects, and his translations have this advantage over the works of Julien, that they are made by one who knows thoroughly the subject that the Chinese author is dealing with.

      We

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