THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART COLLECTION OF W. T. WALTEES TEXT EDITION TO ACCOMPANY THE COMPLETE WORK LIMITED TO FIVE HUNDRED COPIES NUMBER OMENTAL CERAMIC ART COLLECTION OF W. T. WALTERS TEXT EDITION TO ACCOMPANY THE C0MPLE2E WORK TEXT AND NOTES BY S. AV. BUSHELL, M. D. Physician to H. B. M. Legation, Peking NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1899 Copyright, 1896, By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. /VK PREFACE. THE late William Thompson Walters, of Baltimore, (lied on November 20, 1894. The work ^vhich is here briefly introduced was begun by him nearly fifteen years before. At his death he left it practically com- pleted. It only remained, therefore, for those intrusted with its details to assemble the several parts and dis- charge the mechanical duties necessary to its publication. That publication is now entered upon in conformity V! with his expressed wishes and instructions, and as, had ^ he lived, he would himself have had it. Furthermore, it is done in the belief that it will add one more to the many useful things that were the outcome of his purposeful and well-filled life. Mr. Walters was the first American to create a collection of Oriental ceramics, and in the many years that he devoted to the subject he became more and more impressed with the need there was of some authoritative work respecting it — a work which should treat, with such precision as was possible, of its origin, its history, and its qualities, and take it in at least some slio-ht deo;ree from that vasiue and indeter- minate condition in which all contemporary or recent European writers have left it. Not that the literature of Oriental porcelain is copious in any modern tongue, but that those who have written best about it have had hardly anything to say, while those who have written at any length have been capricious, empirical, and only too misleading. The only way in which this purpose could be effected, if at all, was to seek in China itself 705S00 VI PREFACE. whatever historical matter might exist in relation to the one distinguishing art of that country, the art of the potter. In the inti'oduction, written in 1883, to a very useful and instructive little volume on Oriental art, privately published by Mr. AValters in the ensuing year, he set forth his opinion on this point with a clearness which it is interesting at the present time to recall. "Notwith- standing," wrote Mr. Walters, "the numerous works that have been published on this subject, we hav^e as yet but an imperfect knowledge of the age, history, and meaning of much that appears in collections of Oriental porcelain ; and until some European residing in China, well versed in the subject and ^vell acquainted with the Chinese language, has obtained access to the stores of native col- lectors, we shall l)e to a certain extent ^vorking in the dark." The more deeply the subject was looked into the less prospect there seemed to be of a successful issue. The only translation that existed of the writings of a Chinese authority was that made in 1856 by M. Stanislas Julien, of the Citing -te-clien T''ao Lu. This was for years the ultimate reference of students of Chinese ceramics, but, although M. Julien was a great scholar and eminent sinologue, it was of little value and in some essential matters misleading. The difficulty was with the Chinese text. Given a sentence or tw^o in Chinese descriptive of a piece of porcelain, its shape, the quality of its paste, its color, or other of its attributes, and the sinologue who is learned only in the language 7?^?' se may translate it with the profoundest erudition and yet not convey its real meaning; but if he have before him the actual piece which the Chinese author has been describing, and if he have also a well-founded knowledge of Chinese por- celain, then his translation Avill be of a very different PREFACE. Vll <;haracter and much more instructive. In such matters the Chinese author is perfectly intelligible onl}'- when the reader adequately understands the subject. If, for instance, the reader knew that the Chinese writer was discussing celadon, he would not, in translating, read blue for green, although the Chinese word used meant equally blue or green, according to the application made of it. The illustration is a radical one, but it indicates accurately a case in which a very learned sinologue befogged many patient students. It was while pursuing the matter with the best authorities abroad that Mr. Walters heard indirectly from Prof. A. W. Franks (now Sir Wollastou Franks), of the British Museum, of a translation of a Chinese work called the T^ao Shuo, which had been made by Dr. Stephen W. Bushell, of Peking. Dr. Bushell had already become well known as a sinologue, and especially for his unremitting industry in the direction of the ancient literature of porcelain. He had been for many years the medical officer of the British legation at Peking, and had devoted himself to the study of Chinese until he had attained among European scholars the reputation of an authority of the first rank. Prof. Franks w^as greatly interested in the T''ao Shuo, pointed out the importance that it possessed for students of Oriental ceramics, and expressed the hope that it would secure publication. Dr. Bushell's translation of it was accordingly secured for that purpose, and was found to be most instructive and interesting. It was proposed then to publish the trans- lation together wdth other papers on the subject, includ- ing a new version from the Chinese text of the Cldiuj-te- ohm T''ao Lu, already done into French by Julien. The whole would have made a considerable and a not unim- portant addition to the stock of information relating to Chinese porcelain in the English language. When, how- Vlll PREFACE. ever, a year or two later, Dr. Biishell visited the United States and entered upon a discussion of the question with Mr. Walters, it was decided to revise the project and bring out the present work, which contains, so far a& all niodei'n knowledge of the subject goes, the best infor- mation that Chinese letters convey respecting the origin of porcelain and its history through successive ages.* Mr. AValters laid the foundation of the present collec- tion nearly forty years ago. As has been said, he was the first in this country to create a collection of Oriental ceramics. The ceramic store of the United States was never great. We have had a modest share of English pottery since our earlier days, but no accumulation of it. Of Oriental porcelain a very little found its way to Colo- nial families, and only a few traces of it remain. Our first President had a domestic service of Chinese manu- facture, and it was very fine in its way ; but it belonged strictly to the category of commercial porcelain familiar to the last century as East India china — that is, porcelain made for export from Chinese ports and fashioned for household use or conventional household decoration, and having no relation to the artistic product of the China- man's kilns. The remains of this set of china are pre- served in the National Museum at Washington. Prob- ably the most artistic of our early acquisitions of Chinese porcelain were the pieces of blue and white that New England ship captains brought back from their voyages to the North Pacific, and of Avhich many interesting examples are still to be found in old New England * So far as the Chinese texts relating to processes of manufacture are con- cerned they are of slight and only incidental interest. They tell about the petuntse and the kaolin, about the composition of glazes and the management of kilns, but no European potter has ever added from them a scintilla to his knowledge. The Chinese potter's formula is not unlike the chemist's analysis of one of Nature's healing waters— it is complete ; but in the one case it is in- dispensable that the application be made by a Chinaman, and in the other that the compounding be done by Nature herself. PREFACE. IX homes. As far as any broader awakening of taste in the matter of Oriental porcelain is concerned it must be referred to the occasion of the Centennial Exhibition of 1876. Many people had long before acquired an ac- quaintance with the subject at the great European exhi- bitions and through the op^^ortunities of foreign travel, but our first popular knowledge of it most undoubtedly dates from our exhibition at Philadelphia. Now there are numbers of collections in the United States, some of them of great extent and value. It can also be confi- dently said that nowhere else do collectors betray any keener intelligence, or, perhaps, an equal knowledge of the general subject; whereby it has been rightly ob- served by Chinese and Japanese connoisseurs that if one wants to study fine Oriental porcelain he must come to America. The plates in color with which this work is illustrated were made by Louis Prang, of Boston. Several experi- mental plates were made abroad, and the work of every European house of importance was examined, before Mr. Prang was asked to make lithographs of three pieces of porcelain of different colors. His immediate success determined the question ; and when, two years later, some twenty of the plates were shoAvn to French lithographers in Paris, their criticism was that the im- pressions from the stone had been foi'tified by color applied with the brush. They could not believe that work of such excellence could be produced by simple lithography. This very satisfactory opinion has been since confirmed by many lithographers, and it is conceded that these plates represent the highest type of work that has been produced in that branch of art. Tlie color of Oriental porcelain is more akin to the color of . some brilliant mineral than to the familiar pigments of an artist's palette ; and as truth of color was the first X PREFACE. requiremeut, many and serious difficulties had to be over- come. Mr. Prang, however, was equal to the task, and during the years that it was in progress at his house in Roxbury he devoted to it a degree of watchful care and untiring energy that were far from commercial in their inspiration. William M. Laffan. May, 1896. CONTENTS. PAGE Preface v Introduction 1 CHAPTER I. Origin of Porcelain 12 CHAPTER II. Relations of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Ceramics . . 25 CHAPTER III. Introduction to the Classification of Chinese Porcelain. In- scriptions. Chronology .39 CHAPTER IV. Marks on Chinese Porcelain. Marks of Date. Hall Marks. "^ Marks op Dedication and Felicitation. Marks op Co>imen- dation. Marks in the Form of Devices 59 CHAPTER V. ! Classification of Chinese Porcelain. Primitive Period. Sung , Dynasty. Ju Yao. Kuan Yao. Ting Yao. Lung-ch'uan Yao. Ko Yao. Tung-ch'ing Yao. Chun Yao. Three Fac- ! TORIES AT ChI-CHOU, ChIEN-CHOU, AND Tz'tj-CHOU. UtENSILS of Sung Porcelain 127 CHAPTER VI. Yuan Dynasty 177 CHAPTER VII. Ming Dynasty. Reigns of Hung-wu, Yung-lo, HsOan-te, Cii'eng- hua, Hung-chih, Che;ng-te, Chia-ching, Lung-cii'ing, Wan-li, T'ien-ch'i, Ch'ung-chen 189 xi Xll CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. PAOH TECHNiqUE DUIUNG THE MlNG PeUIOD. CoLOKS. EMBOSSING. Chiseling. Openwork Carving. Gilded Decoration. Deco- rations IN Enamels. Firing 260 CHAPTER IX. Ching-te-ciien. Thk Imperial Porcelain MANirFACToiiY . 276 CHAPTER X. The K'ang-hsi Period 293 CHAPTER XI. Letters of Pere d'Enthecolles 332 CHAPTER XII. The Yung-cheng Period 359 CHAPTER XIII. Official List of the Designs and Colors produced at the Imperial Manufactory in the Reign of Yung-cheIng . . 367 CHAPTER XIV. The Ch'ien-lung Period 391 CHAPTER XV. The Twenty Illustrations of the Manufacture ok Porcelain described by T'ang Ying 420 CHAPTER XVI. Modern Period (1796-1895). Imperiai> List of the Year 1864 . 463 CHAPTER XVII. The Forms of Porcelain Objects and their Uses in China . 488 CHAPTER XVIII. Peculiar Technical Processes. Cracki,e Porcelain. Furnace Transmutations. Souffles. Laque Burgautee. Pierced ^-^ and "Rice-grain" Designs. White Sup, etc. . . . 508 ) CONTENTS. XI 11 CHAPTER XIX. PAGE Chinese Cekamic Colors 525 CHAPTER XX. Motives op Decoration of Chinese Porcelain .... 557 CHAPTER XXI. Porcelain made for Exportation. Special Forms and Designs. Indian China. Armorial China. Jesuit China. Hindu Style. Oriental Porcelain decorated in Europe. Imita- tions 604 CHAPTER XXII. Porcelain Production in the Other Provinces of China. The White Porcelain of the Province of Fuchien. The Yi- HBING BoCCARO WaRE OF THE PROVINCE OF KlANGSU. ThE Potteries of the Province of Kuangtung .... 622 CHAPTER XXIII. Chinese Bibliography in Relation to the Ceramic Art . . 639 CHAPTER XXIV. Korea 670 CHAPTER XXV. Ceramic Art of Japan 685 CHAPTER XXVI. A General Sketch of the Ceramic Art of Japan . 708 CHAPTER XXVII. The Principal Ceramic Wares of Japan. Owari Pottery and Porcelain. Kyoto Wares. Hizen Productions: Old Imari Porcelains, Hirado Blue and White, etc. Satsuma F.aIences, KuTANi OR Kaga Wares 723 Appendix. — Descriptive List of the Illustrations . . 767 Index 90S ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. INTRODUCTION. DURING a residence of twenty-five years at Peking, as physician to her Britannic Majesty's legation, the study of Chinese ceramics has been my chief distrac- tion. I have obtained access, in the exercise of the duties of my profession, to several palaces and private houses, and have in this way had many opportunities of seeing the treasures of native collectors, which usually are so rigidly closed to foreigners. The Chinese themselves maintain a profound interest in the subject, especially from an antiquarian point of view, and the literature which relates to it is very extensive, ranging as it does ' over many centuries. The best special work is the T''ao Sliuo, "A Description of Chinese Pottery," in six books, published in the year 1774, by Chu Yen. The learned author quotes many of the older wi'iters, and describes all the varieties of the potter's skill that became celebrated before the close of the Ming dynasty in 1643. I translated this work into English, at the request of the late Mr. AV. T. Walters, some years ago, so that I now have it before me for reference. For the older wares there is also the manuscript catalogue, illustrated by eighty-two water-color drawings, of Hsiang Yuau-p'ien, a celebrated collector of the latter half of the sixteenth century, which I brought before the notice of the Peking Oriental Society in 1886,* and which I hope some day to '* Chinese Porcelain before the Present Dynasty, by S. W. Bushell, M. D. ; extract from the Journal of the Peking Oriental Society, 1886. 2 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. publisli ill full. The colored illustrations are fairly exact, and are indispensable for the proper comprehension of the text of Chinese writers on this subject, in the absence of actual specimens of the different kinds of porcelain described. The author of the T''ao Shuo is not so satisfactory as a guide to the porcelain of the reign- ing dynasty, of which he gives only a short resume in his first book. For this we must turn to the Ching-te-chen T'^ao Lu, the well-known memoirs on the productions of Ching-te-chen, published in 1815, which were partially translated into French by Stanislas Julien in 1856,* and which have been the main source of information for all European wi'iters. The ti'anslator seems, however, to have had little if any practical acquaintance with Chinese porcelain, and he had, moreover, no native expert at hand to refer to in case of difficulty, so that his rendering of technical points is often erroneous. It is always safer to turn to the original, which is happily no longer rare, as the book has been lately republished in China. Ching-te-chen, which has been for centuries the seat of the imperial manufactory of porcelain, occupies a place in China like to that which Sevres does in France or Meissen in Germany, It is, indeed, in the present day the sole source of artistic porcelain in the Chinese Empire. The regulations and detailed accounts of the imperial works are to be found in the different official statistical de- scriptions of the province of Kiangsi, of the prefecture of Jao-chou-fu, and of the district of Fou-liang, in which the manufactory is situated. But, unfortunately, these books, which at irregular intervals are issued and republished in a revised form by the authorities, are very difficult to procure, even in China. The most complete account is contained in the Fou-liang Hsien Ohih, the " History of * Uistoire et Fabrication de la Porcelaine ehinoise, par M. Stanislas Julien, Paris, 1856. INTRODUCTION. the Walled City of Fou-liang, " and I am most grateful to the director of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris for his generous loan of this rare work, the eighth book of which includes a long memoir entitled T''ao Cheng, or " Porcelain Administration." This edition was published by a commission presided over by Ho Hsi-ling, a member of the Hanlin College and of the National Historiog- raphers' Office, whose preface is dated the third year of Tao-huang (1823), although the list of officials in the book is continued up to the twelfth year of the emperor (1832). The first edition, which was published in the period Hsien-shun during the /S'^/i^ dynasty, in the year 1270, was burned. The present edition gives twenty-one old prefaces, which are all printed in full, and the first of these is dated 1325. The fifteenth, by - ang Ying, the most celebrated of the superintendents of the imperial manufactory at Ching-te-chen, is dated the fifth year of CJi'ien-lung (1740). The entire series of these official statistical works, ^vere it possible to obtain it complete, would furnish the most authentic of accounts, in chrono- logical sequence, of the imperial manufacture of porcelain. Since my return to Peking last year I have succeeded in acquiring a recent edition of the Chiang-lisi T''ung Chill, the " Genei'al History of the Province of Ki- angsi," published in the seventh year of the reigning Emperor J-^uang-hsu, by an imperial commission presided over by the famous Tseng-Kuo-fan. It is bound in native fashion in one hundred and twenty volumes, and contains one hundred and eighty books, of whicli the ninety-third gives the T\io-Chmg, or "Porcelain Administration," of Ching-te-chen, brought up to date. I am indebted to M. Garnier, the talented director of the museum at Sevres, for the opportunity to consult a report written by my lamented friend, M. Scherzer, who visited Ching-te-chen in 1883, at which time he was 4 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. Freach consul at the river port of Hankow. It is curious to compare tliis recent report witli the two valuable letters of the old Jesuit missionary Pere d'Entrecolles, written from the same place in 1712 and 1722, toward the close of the long reign of the Emperor K''ang-hsi, the culminating period of ceramic art in China.* The worthy Father collected his information from his converts among the artists and workmen, and his letters are all the more valuable in that we have so little from native writers during this reign. From the foregoing some idea may be gained of the material which is available to the student who under- takes to present a general account of Oriental ceramic art. To illustrate such a work there could be no better opportunity than that which is afforded by the W. T. Walters collection. Such is the object which it has been sought here to attain. The illustrations and text have had to be arranged independently, most of the colored plates having been completed beforehand. The text-cuts will be inseited, as far as possible, in appro- priate places, and there will be a descriptive list of the figures included later on, which it is hoped will remedy the disjunction which the issue of the book in j^arts has rendered unavoidable. For text-cuts of the first section a selection has been made from the series of objects of Chinese porcelain mounted in metal, in which the collec- tion is so very rich. The mountings are generally in gilded bronze of French workmanship, dating for the most part from the 18th century. Some of them by the famous Gouthiere are of the highest artistic mei'it, and indicate the vivid appreciation of Chinese colors for the decoration of the luxurious interiors of the time of Louis XV and Louis XVL It is difiicult, indeed, to * Lettres edifiantes et cuneuses, xviii, pp. 234-296 ; xix, pp. 173-203, Paris, 1781. INTRODUCTION. imagine anything more effective than the soft changing tints of the turquoise glaze of the vases in Figs. 1 and 20, and of the bowl (Fig. 40), when exhibited in sucli perfect contrast with the gilded material of their grace- ful framework. The same may be said of the lovely openwork mounting in gold, fashioned to strengthen the etched turquoise vase of Fig. 8, and of the filigree mounts of the beautifully decorated K\mg-lisi vases exhibited in Figs. 11 and 30, lovingly executed and signed by the modern jeweler, Boucheron of Paris. Mountings of Persian and Japanese workmanship will follo^v in other sections. Some of these mounts are interesting as aids in determining the age of the piece, like the Elizabethan silver-gilt mounting with the hall mark of 1585 of the blue and white Chinese Jug, No. 7,915, in the South Kensington Museum, and the blue and white pieces which are said to have been at Burghley House in the possession of the Cecil family since the days of Queen Elizabeth. The Walters collection is remarkable for its single color or monochrome examples, and comprises many choice specimens of brilliant beauty in this attractive branch of art, in which the Oriental potter stands unrivaled. There is room for much difference of opinion on the question of the comparative merits of mono- chrome glazes and of painted decoration in enamel colors upon porcelain. With the Chinese collector, as with the European or American amateur, it is a matter of taste, and the preference appears to be equally divided. Tlie earliest acquaintance of European collectors with the porcelain of China was confined to monochrome examples, including, of course, blue and Avhite. Of the five-color pieces of the Ming period it is difficult to find any trace in the early European collections ; and, indeed, it appears that it is only within recent years that such ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. pieces have left China. M. Vogt, the director of the porcelain manufactory at Sevres, the most recent writer on the subject and a thoroughly competent judge, writes (pages 22, 23) : " The form commands the decoration ; the Chinese have wisely preferred simple, absolutely ceramic forms, of which their vase {poticlie) is the essential type. In this shape, fashioned in one opera- tion, the surface is unbroken from the base to the mouth ; it is in reality a cylinder witli flowing depressions. For the decoration of Chinese vases, whatever may be the merit resulting from the fantastic art of the composition or from the harmony of the colors, we pi'efer, for our part, not the decorated vases, but the pieces which have the ground left as they come from the kiln, the beauty of the enamel being the dominant quality (la qualite maitresse) in ceramics. The more beautiful the enamel, the more opposed it is to decoration ; no color, no gild- ing, could resist the vibrating force of absorption of the -jlambes called lo-kan^ mule's liver; ma-fei, horse's lung — mixtures of red, blue, violet, and yellowish-green run- ning over the porcelain like a stream of lava, so much chopped-up blood, lungs, and liver, as it were, melted into enamels ; any addition would spoil the softer colors, such as the tea-dust glaze, or the iron-rust of the Chinese." * Mr. Walters wrote, in the introduction to his early catalogue,f " Our interest and effort have been more in the direction of securing characteristic examples of the beautiful, either in form, color, or material, than of the merely curious." This aim has, in truth, been fully realized ; for what can be imagined more beautiful, in all these three respects, than the famous peach-bloom * La Porcelaine, par Georges Vogt, Directeur des Travaux Techniques de la Manufacture Nationale de Sevres, Paris, 1894. f Oriental Collection of W. T. Walters, Baltimore, 1884. INTKODUCTION. vases, which he was one of the lirst to appreciate, out- side China, excelling as they do in purity of form, in perfect finish of material, and in a diversified play of color, whereby they have been so aptly likened to the warm and varied hues of the skin of a j)each "^'^ ripening in the sun ? They mark the culminating point of Chinese cei'amic art. The contemporary vases of similar form of pure white, of the sea-green tint called celadon, or of the pale gray-blue known by the Fi'ench as clair de lune^ after its Chinese name of yueh pai^ are almost as attractive. The ci'imson and pink monochrome glazes of the succeeding period, derived fi-om gold, ai'e less pure, but have the softness of the muffle stove in wliicli they are developed — a quality which the}' share with another famous color, the coral red, which is derived from peroxide of iron. The older colors, which attest the pre- eminence of the Chinese potter, include a camellia-leaf green of deepest iridescent sheen, sapphii-e blue, and powder-blue, ap])le-green and citron-yellow, a finely crackled turquoise glaze of purest tint, and, last but not least, the celebrated Xrtv/f/ //<7o, or sang de h(eut\'A broadly crackled glaze imbued ^\ itli i-ed of marvelous depth, the despair of modern imitatoi's. This is a short list of some of the successes of the Oriental decorator in the line of single colors. Working as he does with impure materials, with the chemical composition of which he is totally unfamiliar, his chief successes are often due to pure hazard. jNIany (»ther colors will be described later. * " Peach-bloom " is a better name in English for this charming glaze than " peacli-blow," because the latter is only applicable to the flower, while the former corresponds to the peau de peche^iheianw adopted by French ceramists. Neither of the two is Chinese ; they generally call it CMang-toti Hung, from its resemblance to the variegated beans of the Dolichus sinensis {Chiang-tou), which are pink spotted with brown ; some call it P'ing-kuo Hung, "apple- red." The green mottling which so often accompanies it is termed P'ing-kuo Gh'ing, or "apple-green." 8 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. as well us the decoration of the paiuted pieces, on which the artist works with the same palette. According to a Chinese adage, " Knowledge comes from seeing much," and 1 would like to refer the student to some of the collections available for the study of the subject of Oriental ceramics, and at the same time seize the opportunity of tendering my grateful tlianks to the owners of the private collections in the United States which I have had tlie opportunity of seeing, and from which I have learned not a little. There seems to be a widespread enthusiasm in America for the beauties of Oriental art, and the beautiful objects illustrated in this book kave doubtless, by tlieir exhibition in the galleries at Baltimore, helped in no small measure to form a gi'ow- ing taste for the rare and beautiful. There are, so far, no national collections in Amei'ica, but thei*e are objects of interest in the private collections of Mr. Charles A. Dana, Mr. James A. Garland, and Mr. W. M. Laifan, and in the Avery collection in the Metropolitan Museum at New York, and in the Hippisley collection on loan at the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, of which a cata- logue,"^ rich in Chinese lore, has been published by my friend Mr. Hippisley, who is a sinologue of foi'emost rank. Among the European collections of most easy access are the Franks collection in the British Museum ; the Salting collection, Avhich includes so many magnifi- cent pieces, in the loan exhibition at the South Kensing- ton Museum ; and the Grandidier collection at Paris. Sir Wollastou Franks, who has presented his treasures to the British Museum, \% facile princeps among European authorities, and the author of a well-known handbook. f * Catalogue of the Hippisley Collection of Chinese Porcelains, by A. E. Hip- pisley. Report of National Museum, 1888, Washington, D. C. f Catalogue of a Collection of Oriental Porcelain and Pottery, by A. W. Franks, F. H, S., F. S. A., second edition, London, 1878. INTRODUCTION. 9 M. Grandidier, ti critical as well as an enthusiastic admirer of Chinese porcelain, and the compiler of a fine book * illustrated by forty-two heliogravures, has recently presented his collection to the republic, and it is ali'eady worthily installed in one of the galleries of the Louvi'e. The Sevres Museum contains an Oiiental department of considerable value. The museums of Amstei'dam and The Hague display a selection of the porcelain l)rought over in such quantities by the Dutch East India Com- pany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Dresden Oriental collection is })robably the most ancient in Europe, having been chiefly brought together, accord- insc to its former director, Dr. Grraesse,f bv Auo;ustus tlie Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, betAveen the years 1694-1705. This is the palmy period of the reign of the Chinese Emperor I^Cauij-liHi (1662-1722), to which time most if not all of the more important Chinese pieces in this large collection must be referred. This collection is also remarkable for its series of old Japan Jars and beakers decorated with polychrome enamels. It was stored awa}^ for many years in the vaults of the Japanese palace, but is now full}^ exhibited in the Johauneum on the opposite side of the rivei". The question of celadon is one of the most interesting of ceramic problems, and its solution has thrown a flood of light on the intercourse bet\veen distant nations in early media3val times. ;^ Celadon, as is well known, is the name applied to a peculiar kind of porcelain of sea- sreen tint, which is found distributed throuo-hout southern and western Asia, along the eastern and northern coasts of Africa, and in the adjoining islands, * Let, Ceramique chiiioise, par E. Grandidier, Paris, 1894. ]; Die K. Porzellan uiid Gefuss-Sammlung zu Dresden, von Hofrath Dr. J. G. Th. Graesse, Dresden, 1873. X Ancient Porcelain: A Study in Chinese Mediivval Industry imd 'I'rade, by F. Hirlh, Pli. D., 1880. 10 ORIENTAL CERAMK' AKT. from Cera 111 aud the Key Island on the east to Mada- gascar and Zanzibar on the west, as well as in Japan and China. A quantity has been dug up in recent times in Cairo, and Persia is a never-failing source of the thick,, round dishes with fluted borders, foliated rims, and tooled decoration under the glaze, which Mohammedans value so liighly because they are supposed to change color at the contact of poisoned food. The Arabs called them iiKiiiaham, a name derived from Mai'taban, one of the states of ancient Siam, the modern Maulmain ; and one of their eucyclopyedists, wi-iting early in the seven- teenth century, declared that *' the precious magnificent celadon dishes and other vessels seen in his time Avei'e manufactured at Martaban." Starting fi'om this. Prof. Karabacek, of Vienna, has lately ti'ied to prove that this old celadon was not Chinese. Others, like Jacquemart, had previously ascribed it to Persia or to Egypt, arguing princij)ally fi-om the difficulty of transporting such large quantities by caravan traffic across Asia. But this diffi- culty vanishes now that we know from Mohammedan as well as Chinese sources of the long sea voyages under- taken by the Chinese in early times. Arabian Avriters speak of fleets of large Chinese junks in the Persian Gulf as early as the ninth century, and theii' I'oute may be followed in the official annals of the T\ing dynasty. Chinese authors of the Sung dynasty describe how their ships travelled along the coast of Africa as far south as Zanzibar, "which they call Tsang- pa, and copper " cash " of the 2)eriod have lately been dug up there mixed with fragments of celadon vessels. They carried eliding fzii^ "green, or celadon, porcelain," and brought back ivu ming y% " cobalt mineral." In the next dynasty, when the Mongols ruled Bagdad as well as Peking, the traffic by sea was still more constant. Marco Polo ti'a veiled homeward in the suite of a Mongolian INTRODUCTION. 1 1 princess, and described the route from Zayton to Hor- muz ; and Ibn Batista, who came to China soon after- ward, also alludes to the trade in Chinese porcelain. In the Ming dynasty, which succeeded, the andjitious Em- peror Yjuig-lo dispatched the figliting eunuch, Admiral Cheng Ho, who carried Chinese arms into Ceylon, and who was again sent on a more peaceful mission by the next emperor, Hman-te^ in the year 1430, to the south coast of Arabia, to the port of Magadoxo in Africa, and to Jiddah, the seaport of Mecca in the Red Sea, to which he carried celadon porcelain, as well as nuisk, silk, cam- phor, and copper " cash." This was the time that >SV- tTia-ll blue was brouo-ht to China. Cobalt liad lono; previously been employed in Persia in the decoration of tiles and other objects of faience. After the appearance of the Portuguese ships in their seas Chinese junks were no more seen, but celadon porcelain was left behind in all the coasts they visited, and there seems little reason to doubt its exclusively Chinese origin. CHAPTKR I. OHKilX OF PORCELAIN. PORCELAIN was invented in China. The exact date of the invention, however, is wrapped in mys- tery; it is, in fact, liardly likely that it will ever be definitely settled, as it must have been by a gradual progress in the selection of materials, and in the perfec- tion of processes of manufacture, that porcelain was at last evolved from oi'dinary potteiy. For the creation of a scientific classiiication of ceramic products we are indebted to M. Brongniart,* and it will be well first to define the distinctive characteristics of porcelain. Por- celain ought to have a white, translucent, hard paste, not to be scratched by steel, homogeneous, resonant, com- ])letely vitrified, and exhibiting, when broken, a con- choidal fracture of line grain and brilliant aspect. These qualities, inherent in porcelain, make it impermeable to watei', and enable it to resist the action of frost even when uncoated with glaze. These characteristics of the paste, es[)ecially the translucence and vitrification, define porcelain very well. If either of these two qualities be wanting, we have before us another kind of pottery ; if the paste possess all tlie othei' properties, with the excep- tion of translucence, it is a stoneware; if the paste be not vitrified, it beloui^s to the cate2:orv of terra cottas or of faience. The Chinese define ])oj-celain, \\hich they call ^ (/.c'l')), as a harorate detail of the various officers, with their respective duties. It has been translated into French. ■^'' The officers were classed then, as now, undej" six boards. But when the Ijook was edited in the first century n. c. b}- Liu Hin, the sixth section, which \vas that of the Board of AVorks, ^^as found to be wanting. To sup[)ly the deficiency he incor- porated the K^io hmtg chi^ an artificer's manual of the same period. This includes a shoi't section on pottery, which gives the names and measurements of several kinds of cooking vessels, sacrificial vases, and dishes, in the fabrication of which the different processes of fashioning upon the wheel and of molding are clearly distinguished. The vessels are described as having been made by two classes of workmen, called respectively fao-jen, "pottei's,'' and fang-jen, " niolders." But few specimens of ])ottery that can l)e cei'tainly referred to the Three Ancient Dynasties have survived to the present day, although ritual vessels and other antiques of bronze are to be seen in native collections by thousands. These last often have inscriptions upon them, beginning perhaps with the number of the month, the \vaxing or waning period of the moon, the day of the month and its cyclical number; rarely is the year of the reigning sovereign or feudal suzerain prefixed ; never his name, as far as I knoAv. It was during the JIan dynasty, which i-eioned from b. c, 202 to a. d 220, that the system of dividing the I'eigns into periods of years with honorific * Le T'-heou, U, oh liifex iki Tcheou . traduit du Cliiiiois par E. Biot, Paris, 1851. 16 OKIKNTAL CEHAMIC ART. titles {^nien. Juio) was inaugunited in \^. v. 163. This pro- vided for the first time a convenient means of dating vases and otlier objects. Bricks and tiles are among the most useful of ceramic products. They may even rank as historical monuments when inscribed. The Chinese antiquary collects them in chi-onological series to show the changes in the style of the written charactei', or ])uts one upon his writing-table for daily use, excavated into the shape of an ink pallet. They were first molded, with the date inscribed on one side, during the Hau dynasty. Some of the pottery of the period is also inscribed. There is, for instance, a bottle-shaped vase of dark reddish stoneware in the Dana Collection, in New York, molded in the shape of a l)roiize ritual vessel of the time, enameled with a deep-green iri- descent glaze, much exfoliated, which is engraved on the surface with a date corresponding to b. c. 133, the second year of the period Yuaii-l-Kang. A similar vase in the British Museum, although it has no insci'i})tion upon it, evidently dates from about the same time, and specimens of this kind are not unconnnon in Chinese collections. The vase illustrated in Fig. 49 is a good example of this class, an ancient stoneware of ljro\vnisli-red paste, invested Avith a thin but lustrous glaze of camellia-leaf green, which came from the collection of Chang Yin-huan, formerly Chinese ministei- at AVasliiiigton, as a relic of the Ha7i dynasty. There is no word, liowever, of porcelain so far in Chinese books, and we have to do only with an o[)aque stonew'are, invested w ith colored glazes. It remained for European wi-iters to asci-ibe the existence of porcelain to so remote a period, as in the case of the little medicine bottles dug u]> out of Egy[>tian tombs that had not, it was supposed, been disturbed before, and which were conse- quently attriliuted to the eighteenth century b. c. Their ORIGIN OF PORCELAIN. 17 pretensions to sucL an antiquity have been so abundantly disproved that it is hardly necessary to refer to them here. They must have been fraudulently provided and surreptitiously placed in these tombs by the Arab \vork- men, Avho were rewarded wdienever any antique was discovered. Other authorities consider the muri'liiiie vases of the ancients, which were described as " cooked in Parthian fires," and wliich were so hii^hly valued that the Emperor Nero gave the equivalent of a quarter of a million dollars for one, to have been made of Chinese porcelain. It is far more probable, as has been suggested by Mr. Nesbitt in his notes on the histoiy of glass-making, that these murrhine vases were made of agates and other hard stones, the colors of which had V)een modified in the East by heating and staining; and that the false murrhines wei'e glass bowls imitating hard stones, but with various strange tints not to be found in natural stones. With regard to the origin of porcelain in (yhiua, the Chinese themselves confess that previous to the com- mencement of the T\(N<>, Sanskrit jx/tnf) and their ablution vases (Jcun-cliHh-ka, Sanskrit hiiydiht) made both of porcelain (fz'ii) and of common earthen- ware (?/;«), preferring the new material on account of its simplicity to 1>he gold, silver, bronze, and precious stones which had been employed previously. Tea first came into ireneral use as a ])everaue al)out this time, and there is a classical treatise on tea, called Ch'a Ching^ written by Lu Yii in the middle of the eiglith century, which is still extant. It contains ten sections, entitled (1) Origin of the Plant; (2) Implements foi- Gathering; (3) Manufacture of the Leaf; (4) Utensils 22 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. used in preparing the Infusion; (5) Methods of Boiling; (6) Drinking ; (7) Historical Summary ; (8) Districts of Production; (9) Ilesume : and (10) notes on illustrations. Among the utensils, the bowls {(va/i) used for drinking tea are briefly described, and classified according to the effect of the color of their glaze in enhancing the tint of the infusion, which was made by pouring boiling water upon the powdered tea, the leaves having been previously ground in a mortal'. The bowls prefen-ed by the author were those of Yueh-chou, tlie modern Shao-hsing Fu, in the province of Chehkiang ; those of Hsing chou, now Shun-te Fu in the ])rovince of Chihli, where \vhite j)orcelaiii is still produced in the present clay, being ranked next. He writes (folio 5) : " Yueh-chou bowds are the best. Some persons place Hsing-chou bo\vls above those of Yueh-chou, but they are, in my opinion, mistaken. Hsing-chou poi'celain resembles silver, while Yueh-chou porcelain is like jade — the first point in which Hsing is inferior to Yueh ; Hsing-chou porcelain resem- bles snow, Yueh-chou porcelain is like ice — the second point of inferiority; Hsing-chou porcelain being ^'S'hite makes the tea look ref Oiui, who for iiiany centuries were reputed t'oi' the fahrication of 81iii'aki ware. This is generally quoted as the first iuti'oduction of a foreign element into Japanese ceramic art, although the relics identified with this production are of very ^^I'iniitive construction, scarcely equal to that of the shell heaps, being also handmade, roughly molded, nnglazed, and presenting nothing worthy of the name of decoration. The baking was effected in holes dug in tlie ground. Mr. Ninagawa^ says that in the present day the manufacture of hand- made pottery in the Shiraki style is carried on at the village of Kimura, in Yamato province, but tlie workmen now make use of a raised earthen stove. But the native chronology of these times is very uncer- tain, and it is not till the fifth century, when it becomes more accurate, that we can accept Japanese ac(M)imts of intercourse with the outside woi'ld with any confidence. In the year a, u. 463 the Emperor Yuriahu is said to have dispatched an envoy to Korea to engage the services of a skilled potter, which resulted in the advent of a man named Koki, w^ho settled in the province of Kawachi, and there taught the ceramic methods of his people, which gradually spread to other parts of Japan. The vases fio-ured in Ninas-awa's work Kvmn-ko dzu- setait as prehistoric are probably more recent than, is usually supposed. Many of them contained, ^vhen dis- covered, the curious carved and polished jade ornaments called, from their shape, magatama^ Tciidatama, etc. ; and jade, according to Prof. J. Milne, is a stone foi'eign to Japan, and must have been imported from abroad. The progress of the art in Japan was confessedly very slow, and aided at eveiy step by Korea or China, although * lu his work on Japanese pottery entitled Kwan ko dzu setsii, published at Tokio, in five parts, with colored illustrations, and a partial translation of the text in French. CHINESE, KOIIEAN, AND JAPAXESK ( EliA.MK S. .'U the invention of tlie potter's wlieel is claimed by tlie Jap- anese, as well as in quite recent times that of clay sec-- gars. The invention of the wheel is atti'ihiited to tlie Korean Buddhist monk Giogi, who lived from 670 to 749 A. D. The process of enameling \vas not adopted till the ninth century, according to Mr. Ninagawa, who states that although glazed ware was known in Ja])an in the eighth century, the specimens were prohabh- im])()ited, and that glaze was not applied by Japanese pottei's till the next century. The green glazed tiles used in build- ing the roof of the imj>eriai palace at Uda in 794 are supposed to have been of Chinese manufacture. Mr. Chamberlain's researches into the ancient writings * have demonstrated that the chronology of the Japanese anterior to the opening of the fifth century c)f oui- era is fabricated, and that even the myths and legends, as related in the earliest written documents extant, are so intermingled with imported Chinese elements that mucli of their suggestiveness is destroyed. He shows the nar- row limit of the stock of knowledge possessed by the early Japanese before the commencement of Chinese and Korean intercourse, and that they ^vere certainly not acquainted with a number of the arts and products which figure in true historical periods. " They had no tea, no fans, no porcelain, no lacquer, none of the things, in fact, by which in later times they have been chiefiy known. They did not yet use vehicles of any kind. They had no accurate method of computing time : no money ; scarcely any knowledge of medicine ; neither do we heai" anything of the art of drawing, though they j^ossessed some sort of nuisic and poems, a few of Avhich are not without merit. But the most impoitant art of Avhicli they were ignorant was that of writing." * See the introduction to his transhition of tiie Kojiki in the Trii<'(ions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1883. 32 ORIENTAL CERAMIC AR'J'. The peninsula of Korea, projecting as it does from the northeast of China toward the Japanese islands, has been the route by which the knowledge of many of the arts has traveled to the latter country. Korea, which was anciently divided into three principalities — Kaoli, Petsi, and Sinra — was not united into one kingdom until about the middle of the tenth century, after it had recovered, its independence, toward the close of the Tktng dynasty in China. In a. d. 463, accoixling to the Japanese report translated by Mr. (now Sir Wollaston) Franks,* some Japanese princes introduced from Petsi a number of col- onists, among whom were some potters; but these were stated to have belonged to a Chinese corporation estab- lished in Korea. Koreans were also concerned in found- ing the factory at Karatsu (Hizen) at the end of the seventh century, as well as some other industries, the principal of which was the well-known ware of Satsuma, whei-e the kilns were built on Korean models, and the pot- ters formed a class apart, not being allowed to marry out of their own community. Excepting, however, the Sat- suma ware, the Koreans do not appear to have intro- duced any pottery of remarkable excellence, and we hear nothing of their making- porcelain. The real reason why the Japanese attached such a fanciful value to Korean vessels, and why they continued to import Korean pot- ters long after they themselves had made so much prog- ress in the art, was connected with the Tea Ceremonies, a peculiar institution which they adopted from the Chinese,, and which has been often described. It is to the Chinese that they are really indebted for their greatest advances ; the fii'st good Japanese glazed pottery having been made at Seto, about 1230, by Toshiro, who had learned the art in China; while the first porcelain made in Japan is attributed to Gorodayu Shonsui, who went to study the * Japanese Pottery, by A. W. Franks, London, 1880. chinksp:, kokp:an, and .Japanese ceuamics. .S3 manufacture in China, and returned, to settle at Hizen, in the year 1513. The " Father of Pottery," Kato Shirozayemon, nioie familiarly known as Toshiro, crossed the sea at the age of twenty, in company with the Buddhist abbot Dogen, with a view to studying the nioi-e advanced processes of the art in China, and returned six years latei', in 1229, to carry his exjierience into practice at the village of Seto, inOw^ari. He brought back materials with him and made utensils of China clay which are called by tea-drinkers Kara-mono^ " Chinese w'are.'' The tea jars and tea bowls made from Seto clay by him and his descendants for four generations are known as Ko Seto, " Old Seto." They are fashioned of stoneware, invested with a black, brown, or yellow glaze, and are good in form and color, as well as perfect in technique. Not only have they served as models for Japanese potters down to the present day, but the celebrity of the ware has given the generic name of Seto-mmio, or " Seto ^vare," to all subsequent ju-oducts of the ceramic art. Gorodayu Shonsui, who brought to Japan the art of porcelain-making, was a native of Ise, and imitated the example set by Toshiro nearly three hundred years before, by traveling to China to study the technical methods of an art new to his countrymen. He si)eut several years in Foo-chow, during which time he is sup- posed to have visited Ching-te-chen, and returned in the eighth year of the Chinese Emperor Chtng-te (a. d. 1513). This reion is cele})rated for its l)lue and white porcelain, decollated in cobalt blue undei- a white glaze, and we iind that this is the kind of decoration that was tii'st produced in Japan. Shonsui took the precaution to import a considerable quantity of the petuntse, I'aoJin, and cobaltiferous manganese used by Chinese potters, and employed them in the making of various small 34 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. objects, such as ])0\vl8, sake bottles, and tea jars, painted in })lue under an uncrackled glaze. A specimen marked with his name, made by him in China, is preserved at Nara. He settled finally in the pi-ovince of Hizen, wheie he built several kilns, and he is regarded not only as the founder of Japanese porcelain, but as the first Jap- anese ceramist to apply the princii)les of drawing to the ornamentation of pottery, as the few rude outlines occa- sionally found upon the older ware scared}^ merit the name of painted decoration. But the materials brought over by Shonsui were soon exhausted, and, in default of native material, he was unable to create a genuine native industry, and his suc- cessors could achieve nothing but faience, although that faience was no longer plain, but relieved by faii'ly executed designs under the glaze, copied in part from Chinese models. It was not till the close of the six- teenth century (1599) that a Korean named Risampei, who had l)een brought over to Hizen after the Korean war by a general of the army under the command of Prince Nabeshima, found the lacking ingredients at Mount Idzumi. He established a new industry in Arita for the production of blue and white ware QSo?netsuke), and, as the materials were now abundant and cheap, a large quantity of porcelain was turned out. The novelty of the manufacture, as Captain Brinkley observes in his Historij of Japanese Keramics, combined with the pop- ular taste for jiorcelain already develo[)ed by familiar- ity ^vitll the tine specimens China furnished under the MiiKj dynasty, soon made it exti'emely })opular, though he declares that for us it does not possess so much interest, being copied directly from the Chinese blue and white, to which it is considerably inferior in purity and finish. It is worthy of remark that neither Risampei nor any CHINESE, KOREAN, AND JAPANESE CERAMICS. 35 other among the large number of Korean potters brought over by Taiko's generals could ini[)art to their con- querors a knowledge of decoration in enamels over the glaze. This honor was reserved for Higashima Tokuzaye- mon, a potter of Imari, in the same })rovince of Hizen. He is said to have learned from a Chinese visitor to Nagasaki the method of painting with vitrifial:)le colors upon the glaze, and succeeded, with the assistance of other potters, and after experiments spread over several years, in this new class of decoration. This was al)()tit the middle of the seventeenth century. The official Japanese report * says that it was in the second year of Sho-ho (a. d. 1645) that the export of pieces ornamented with colored, enamels, in gold and silvei', etc., was begun, in the first place to a Chinaman named Ilachikan, after- ward to the Dutch traders. It was made especially for the foreign market, and was distributed b}' the Dutch, who had a settlement upon the island of Desiraa, near to Nagasaki, and were allowed exclusive trading privileges, to all parts of Europe, where it afterwards became known as "old Japan." M. Jacquemartf quotes from the Reports of the Dutch East India Company the record that in 1664 eleven ships arrived in Holland Avith forty-four thousand nine hundred and forty-three pieces of Japanese porcelain. The museum at Dresden is remarkable for a large series of noble jars and vases of the most elaborate form and decoration, which was mainly brought together by Augustus the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, between the years 1694-1705. The Chinese apply the name of icn fsai, or " five colors," to this kind of decoration, the Ja[)anese foi'm of * IjC Japon dV Exposition, Unimrselle d«1878, pviblie a Paris sdus la direction de la Commission Imperiale Japonaise. f Histoire dela Porcelaine, par A. Jacqueniart ct E. Le Blant, Paris, 1862. 36 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. which, go-sai, is also used iu that country, although the name of nishihi, or " silken brocade," is much more commonly employed in eJapan. The reign of Wan-li in China was especially celebrated for its porcelain, dec- orated in colored enamels, which supplied the first models for the Japanese, even the " mark " being often copied. Ching-te-chen suffered very much in the wars at the close of the Ming dynasty, which was finally overthrown in 1643, and the porcelain industry became s^imost extinct. Some of the potters perhaps found their way to Nagasaki, conveyed there by the Dutch, who seem to have done much to develop the manufacture in Japan, if indeed they were not the means of introducing it. The old crackled ware of China that has always been so highly appreciated in Japan is imitated there in recent times under the name of hihi-yahi ; and the sea- green, or celadon, under the name of seiji-yahi,se{ji l)eing the Japanese form of dCing-tx' n^ or " green porcelain," the ordinary Chinese name of this class. A recent report * upon Japanese porcelain exhibited at Chicago in 1893, shows how they are still working in the old lines and succeeding iu producing marvels of imitative art. The author says that, speaking broadly, there are at [)resent two schools of ceramists in Japan, one of which he calls the Yokohama school, the other the Sinico-Japanese school. The former owes its exist- ence primarily to the demand of foreign exporters and tourist amateurs for brightly ornate and decorative speci- mens, and produces a mass of objects in the ornamenta- tion of which pi'ofusion of color and lavishness of labor are set conspicuously above excellences of technique and chastity of taste. They figure by hundreds on the shelves of bric-a-biac Chi., is almost universally followed in China, and foi-ms the basis of tlie two most recent dictionaries of the Chinese language, the large work of Mr. Herbei't Giles, and the small, inexpensive Pocket Dictionarif of the Rev. Cliauncey (xoodrich, Peking, 1891, which every one who is interested in the subject ought to possess. The 20,000 characters of the written script are comprised in a syllabary of some 500 sounds. Tn speaking? these ai-e diffei-entiated into four " tones," which, however, may l)e disregarded in writing. The vowels and di])hthongs must be generally pronounced as in Italian, the consonants as in English. Some consonants at the beginning of words may be .'ispirated ; such as ch, k, i>, and /, when they have an apostrophe affixed, are CLASSIFICATION OF CHINESE PORCELAIN. 45 written Gh\ h\ p\ t\ and pronounced accordingly, fa, for example, being read like " hit hard" witli the first two and last two letters omitted. The initial A-S' is one of the peculiarities of the Peking mandarin dialect ; liaimj is pronounced somewhat like " hissing " without the first i : another peculiarity is the softening of the initials h and ts before certain vowels, by which the name of the famous emperor of the last century has become Chrien- lung, instead of KHen-lung, that of the Ming emperor who reigned 1522-1566, Chia-ching, in j)lace of Kia- tsiiig. This results from the same philological law which causes similar changes of Latin vvorils in the Italian and French of modern days. The written script of the Chinese has also become gradually changed in course of time. Its most archaic form is seen in the inscriptions upon ancient bronze v'essels dating from the three earliest dynasties, which have been discovered at various times buried in the ground, and illustrated in voluminous works by native antiquarians, such as the Po hv fan, which was published in thirty books in the reign of Hsikni-ho (11 19-1125), and the Hsi-Cli'ing hu chien, the well-known large folio catalogue of the extensive collection of the Emperor Cliien-luiig (1736-1795). Among the most a,ncient inscribed monuments are the ten stone drums of the eighth century before Christ, preserved in the gate- way of the Confucian Temple at Peking, which are engraved with odes in praise of hunting and fishing, written in the antique script which was invented by Chou, the grand historiographer of Ih'nini Wang (b. c. 827-780), to replace the archaic ideographic characters.* These are the ^ ^, Clitian tz'u, the cliaracters in ^vhich the ancient aiuials were wi'itten upon tablets of bamboo * The Stone Drums of the Chou Dynasty, by S. W. Bushell, M. D. Transac- tious of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. viii. 1873. 46 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. before the iuveritioii of paper. In foreign books they are commonly known as '' seal characters," because modern seals are usually engraved in this style. The seals and other marks on porcelain are often penciled in this antique script, so as to require tlie use of the Shuo Wen, an ancient dictionary of a. u. 121, for their decipherment. These chai-acters, called ^ ^, fa cluani, or "greater chuan,'' \vere succeeded by the " lesser chuan," lisiao cliuaii^ /J^ ^, which wei'e invented by Li Ssii, the notorious minister of ChHn Shih Huang, the enq3eror of the third century b. c, who burned the old books and built the Great AVall of China. A pair of porcelain seals in the collection, with lion handles I'ichly decorated in colors, of which one is shown in Fig. 58, are inscribed with cJuian fzu. The inscrip- tions are seen in Fig. 59. The first, on tlie left, has three characters in tlie most archaic script, HsiaiKj Sltan SJiih — i. e., " native of Hsiang Shan "; the second is inscribed with four characters, P^ei SJniai-tu Yin, "■ seal of P'ei Shuai-tu,'' the personal name of the individual for whom the seal was made. These w^ere followed almost immedi- ately by the square characters called ^, //, " official," that were first used in writing documents in the official Boards, and were afterward gradually transformed into the regular characters called i^ ^, Ic'iai sJiu, which, first fashioned under the Chin dynasty (265-419), have sur- vived wdtli little modification to the present day, and are employed in printed books as w^ell as in formal written manuscripts. Two different cursive sci'ipts have sur- vived at the same time: the !^ ^, ts'ao shn, or "grass hand," in w^hich the characters are contracted and abbre- viated for the quick write]-, which w^as invented ])y a eunuch of the palace in the first century b. c; and the ^"X ^, lining sh% or " running hand," in which the char- acters are rapidly written without raising the pencil, but CLASSIFICATION^ OF CHINESE PORCELAIN, 47 unabbreviated, wbich was started by Liu Te-sheng in the reign of the Emperor Iluan Ti (147-167). Any of tliese styles of writing may be found upon porcelain. The " grass hand " is the most difficult for the uninitiated, because the characters are contracted according to the fancy of each individual scribe. The stanzas of poetry which are quoted as labels for pictures are often written in this style ; it is found also on the little porcelain bottles which have drifted in such num- bers from Egypt into our museums, and ^vhicli Avere supposed once to be of fabulous antiquity, until the lines scribbled upon them — ^' The flowers open, and lo ! another year," " Only upon this solitary hill " — opposite rudely outlined flowers, had been traced to poets of the T'ang dynasty. Such scraps of verses are often written on small pieces, and form, perhaps, the sole decoration, as in the case of a little pair of hlanc-de-chine winecups from the [)rovince of Fuchien, of which Fig. 60 is one. The stanza carved in the paste under the velvety glaze of creamy tone reads : " Drunken with wine, I leave in you, sir, A libation for the bright moon." There is always presumed to be in China an intimate connection between the art of poesy and Bacchus, and Luna. The verses inscribed on vases are usually connected with the subject of the decoration, which is perhaps chosen to illustrate the verse. The vase, for example, in Fig. 61 is decorated in the lower panel with a picture of a hunting scene, to illustrate an ode of the Emperor Ch'ien-lung's composition, which is written in the upper panel and signed with the imperial autograph:* * The name of the emperor is framed in coral-red, the special color of the imperial " vermilion pencil." The character Ch'ien is here written in antique 48 ORIENTAL CERA3IIC ART. ^' Clouds overspread the vaulted sky, the air at dawn is chill; The ring is spread for the hunt, when the sun is but three poles high. Clad in warm cloak of sable fur, it seems to me like spring: How different for you all round, in your single, unlined coats! " Another beautiful vase of tlie same p^eriod (Fig. 62), decorated on one side with a view of a picturesque laud- scape with temples on a wooded hill, representing the island of Yen Yii Shan, '' The Hill of Mist and Rain," in the lake at the city of Hangchou, has four stanzas of rhyming verse penciled in black on the reverse side (b), perfectly written, and signed in antique style with the seal Yun Ku^ " Valley of the Clouds." They may be rendered : ^' For miles round, orioles warble at dawn in the rose-tinted trees; Botli sliore hamlets and hill forts show the wine-ttags waving in the breeze. Here in the Southern Dynasties stood four hundred and eighty fanes, And as many wood-circled spires, all half hidden by mists and rains." The coral-red bowl of the Tao-Kuang Period (Fig. 63), has an inscription reserved in white on the bright-red ground, which also refers to tlie subject of the decora- tion, reserved on the other side of the bowl, consisting of sprays of \vliite plum blossoms delicately tinted with soft green and i-ed. The verse, >vith a fanciful heading inscribed in a leaf-])anel " Moon Cut," is signed Ya Wa?i, script ; in other siniilur iuscriptions, as in Fig. 65, below, it is replaced in the first small circular panel by three parallel unbroken horizontal strokes, the first of the eight " trigrarns " of divination, which, like Ch'ien, conveys tlie mean- ing of " heaven." CLASsiFicATioisr op^ OHiNEsp: poii(;p:rvAiN. 49 ^' Literary Toy," which occurs also as a " mark," as we shall see later. It may be translated : ■" The trees, enveloped in clouds of melting, d:i\vn-red tint, Show leaves of deepest green and flowers of jadelike white; The buds, like ])recious pearls, spread out earl}' in the spring- time; The powder-pot of [)alace beaut}' sprinkled into snowy flowers." We will give oue more inscription, in verse, from the pen of the Emperor Ch'ien-limg, in Fig. 65, which is a slightly magnified representation of the beautiful little snuft'-bottle shown in Fig. 64. It is interesting as devoted especially to the ceramic question, and as giving the views of an illustrious connoisseur, whose poetic effusions, I may mention, are printed and fill some tens of volumes.* The other side of the snuff-bottle (Fig. 64) is decorated in enamel colors with a miniatui-e garden scene containing a rockery and moinitain peonies, and a boy carrying a basket from which he is feeding a hen and chickens. The inscription is penciled in black and authenticated by the imperial seal in red affixed below in two small labels. There is also a mark underneath, written in one line of seal characters, ClCien- lung nien cltili, "Made in the reign of C hHen-lung '''' (1736-1795). The ode runs: * Wylie, in his Notes on CMnene Litemture (London and Shanghai, 1867), says that, besides several extensive collections of essays and discourses, this monarch left to posterity a quadruple collection of poems. The first, in forty- eight books, contains 4,150 pieces, composed during the first twelve years of his reign ; the second, in one hundred books, contains upward of 8.470 pieces, composed between 1748 and 1759 ; the third, in one hundred and twelve books, contains 11,620 pieces, written during the next twelve years ; and the fourth, also in one hundred and twelve books, includes 9,700 pieces, written between the years 1772 and 1789, the whole work comprising about 33,950 poetical com- positions. — Editor's Note. 50 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. " Yueli-chou porcelain of the Li dynasty of T'ang is no longer extajit: * The imperial ware of the Chao house of Sung is rare as stars at (lawn. Yet the ancient ritual vessels of Yin and Chou abound in the present da}': Their material, bronze, is stronger; vessels of clay are more fragile. But though strong and rude tliey l:ist, the weak and polished perish : So honest worth wears well in daily life, and should be ever })rized. The Chu dynasty of Ming, going back from to-da^', is not so far remote: And the artistic gems of Hsuaii and Ch'eJig may be seen occa- sional I3', Their brilliant polish and their perfect coloring are universally lauded; And among them the 'Chicken Winecups ' are the ver}^ crown of all. The Mutan peonies under a bright sun opening in the balmy spring; The hen and chicken close together, and the cock in all his glor}''. With golden tail and iron spurs, his head held straight erect, In angry poise ready for combat, as if he lieard the call of Cbia Ch'ang. The clever artist has rendered all the naturalistic details In a style handed down from old time, vaiying in each period: But I will think only in iny own tniinl of the ancient Odes of Ch'i, And not dare to cheiish my own ease when it is time to rise early. " Composed by tlie Emperor Ch'ieii-hmg in the cyclical year ping-shen, and sealed by him." *The Yueli porcelain of the T'mty ((518-906) and the "Imperial Ware" (Kuan Yao) of the Sung dynasty (960-1279) will be described presently. The Tin and Chou were the last two of the three ancient dynasties b. c. The reigns of the Ming dynasty alluded to are those of Usiian-te (1426-1435) and CA'e/(5^-7t«rt (1465-1487), both famous for their porcelain. Chia-Ch'aug lived in the reign of Ming Tsung (926-933), of the After T'ang, and was employed by the emperor on account of his skill with lighting-cocks. The Ode of Ch'i, referred to in the last stanza, enjoins the sovereign not to lie in bed after cock- crow. The year ping-sJien of the cycle corresponds to a. d. 1776. CLASSIFICATION OF CHINESE PORCELAIN. 51 A pamphlet was ])ul)lished early in the nineteenth century with a transhition of this inscription and an illustration of the winecup from which it was taken, which is decorated with a picture similar to that described above. It is entitled Ly-Thtnr/^ An Imperial Poem in Chinese, by Kien-Lung, with a Ti-anslation and Notes by Stephen Weston, F. li. S., F. S. A., London, 1809. Dedicated to Sir Geoi'ge Staunton, Bart. It is quoted in Marks and Monograms on Pottery and Porce- lain^ by W. Chaffers, 1891, seventh edition, pp. 310, 312, " to show the difficulty of translating Chinese." The translation certainly differs fi'om mine. It begins : '' Ly-T'ang, idle and unemployed, in a vacant and joyless hour spake thus : ' Behold the sun, star of the morning, rise on my furnace and illumine my hall undei- an imperial dynasty.' Great is the beauty and high the antiquity of sacred vases," etc.; but I will refer the curious to the Catalogue of the British Museum, a whole page of which is filled with the titles of the Avorks of Mr. Weston, who seems to have been a leadins; lioht of the Society of Antiquaries of the time. The marks on Chinese porcelain are ^vritten on dif- ferent parts of the piece. In the more ancient speci- mens they occur generally on some part of the surface, written in a vertical or horizontal panel which forms part of the decoration, because the base is so often left unglazed. Under the reigning dynasty, on the con- trary, the mark is usually either penciled or inq>ressed underneath the vase or bowl. The inscription generally marks the date according to the native systems of chronology, of which there are two : first, the cycle of sixty years ; second, the nien-hao, or title of the reign of the emperor. The cycle of sixty is indicated by a combination of the " Ten Stems " with the " Twelve Branches." 52 ORIENTAL CERAMIC AllT. The "Ten Stems" which compose the Denary Cycle are: 1. ^, Chia Corresponding tu the element yfC 2. 2i. Yi j -^^'^^ Wood. •^- PS? i^iiig j Cori-esponding to the element ^ 4. T, Ting ] Huo, Fire. 5. yXi, Wn I Corresponding to the element i. 6. a, Chi j rV, Earth. 7. ;^, Keng j Corresponding to the element ;^ 8. ^, Hsin j <^%^>^, Metal. 9. i, Jen j Corresponding to the element 7jC 10. ^, Knei j ^^'^^'^^', Water. The " Twelve Branches " which compose the Duo- denary Cycle mark the divisions of the Chinese zodiac, the horary periods of the day, and are equivalent to the animal cycle adopted from the Tartars. They are : 1. ^, Tzii ^, >S7/^/, theKat. 2. 5, Ch'ou 4^, iV"/?/, the Ox. 3. g, Yin ^, Bu, the Tiger. 4. ^P, Mao %, Tu, the Hare. 5. J^, Ch'eu f I, Lung, the Dragon, 6. Ei, Ssii i'S, She, the Serpent. 7. ^, Wu i^, Ma, the Horse. 8. ^, Wei ^, Yamj, the Goat. CLASSIFICATION OF CHINESE PORCELAIN. 53 9. f^, Shell |g, Ilou^ tlie Monkey. K). S, Yii H, 67^/, the Cock. 11. ^, Hsii ;^, 67/'//^///, the Dog. 12. ^, Hai 3^, 67//, tlie Pig. By joiniug the first of the twelve to the first of the ten signs the combination ^ -J*, chl(i-tzn,\^ formed, and so on in succession until the tenth sign is reached, when a fresh commencement is made, the eleventli of the series of twelve " branches " being next appended to the sign ^, chia. The sixty combinations thus formed are called the Cldatzu series, commonly known as the cycle of sixty. This has been employed from a period of remote antiquity for the puipose of designating successive days. It was not till the Han dynasty, in the century preced- ing the Christian era, that it was a})plied to the number- ing of years. The official chronology starts with the year b. c. 2637, so that the beginning of our era cori'e- sponds with the fifty-eighth year of the forty-fourth cycle. The following table shows the cycles posterior to the Christian era, and will be found useful for the calculation of any given cyclical date : 54 OKIKNTAL CERAMIC ART. TABLE I. CHINESE CYCLES 45 TO 76, OR A. D. 4 TO 1923. CYCI.E COMMENCING CYCLE COMMENCING CO A. D. A. D. A. D. A. D. A. D. A. D. A. D. A. D. A.D. A. D. 2 4 64 02 4 64 !/5 304 364 124 184 244 y^ 304 364 124 184 244 <1 604 664 424 484 544 < 604 664 424 484 544 904 964 724 784 844 904 964 724 784 844 1204 1264 1024 1084 1144 O 1204 1264 1024 1084 1144 o 1504 1564 1324 1384 1444 o 1504 15641324 1384 1444 1804 1864 1624 1684 1744 1804 18641624 1684 1744 ^^ 04 64 24 84 44 ¥^ 34 94 54 14 74 r, fl: 05 65 25 85 45 r.* 35 95 55 15 75 rt ^ 06 66 26 86 46 1^ * 36 96 56 16 76 T^|] 07 67 27 87 47 J m 37 97 57 17 77 jsm 08 68 28 88 48 )X J^ 38 98 58 18 78 SE 09 69 29 89 49 B^ 39 99 59 19 79 ^4^ 10 70 30 90 50 m^ 40 00 60 20 80 ^* 11 71 31 91 51 ^a 41 01 61 21 81 i* 12 72 32 92 52 i *S 42 02 62 22 82 ^a 13 73 33 93 53 ^M 43 03 63 23 83 ^)^ 14 74 34 94 54 ¥ M 44 04 64 24 84 r,^: 15 75 35 95 55 ^E 45 05 65 25 85 rti^ 16 76 36 96 56 rt^ 46 06 66 26 86 Tfl- 17 77 37 97 57 J * 47 07 67 27 87 ;x^ 18 78 38 98 58 jX * 48 08 68 28 88 ^m 19 79 39 99 59 S S 49 09 69 29 89 jtM 20 80 40 00 60 ^JX 50 10 70 30 90 4-E 21 81 41 01 61 ^x 51 11 71 31 91 s^ 22 82 42 02 62 ii^ 52 12 72 32 92 ^* 23 83 43 03 63 ^S: 53 13 73 33 93 ¥ #> 24 84 44 04 64 ^ SJ 54 14 74 34 94 r, ffl 25 85 45 05 65 2.^] 55 15 75 35 95 rt !^ 26 86 46 06 m rt M 56 16 76 36 96 T-M 27 87 47 07 67 T E 57 17 77 37 97 )X=f 28 88 48 08 68 ;X^ 58 18 78 38 98 efl: 29 89 49 09 69 e* 59 19 79 39 99 ^s 30 90 50 10 70 m ffi 60 20 80 40 00 ^# 31 91- 51 11 71 ^m 61 21 81 41 01 SM 32 92 52 12 72 ii* 62 22 82 42 02 5^E 33 93 53 13 73 63 23 83 43 03 CLASSIFICATION OF CHINESE POKCELAIX. 55 It will be observed that this table has been cut in two, and the parts placed side by side in order to bring it within the limits of the page. The second column of Chinese cliaracters is l)ut a continuation of the Urst col- umn of Chinese characters, and each column of figures in the second part of the table is but a continuation of the corresponding column in the first part. The short col- umns at the top show the date of the beginning of each cycle in regular order, a. d. 4, 64, 124, 184, 244, ;i04, etc., followed by the years corresponding to the sucr cessiv^e years of the cycle. For example, ^ -f-, Cliia Tzu, is the cyclical sign of each of the years mentioned above, ^vhile ^ 3r» Yl Cli^ou^ the second cyclical sign, corresponds to the years 5, 65, 125, 185, 245, 305, 365, etc. ^ ^, Cilia Wu, the thirty-first sign, corresponds to the years 34, 94, 154, 214, etc. Now, if it be wished to ascertain the cyclical year ^ )%, Keng Hsii, of the period Tao-hua)ig of the ChUmj dynasty, an inspection of Table III shows that the first yeai" of Tao-lfiang Avas 1821, and that the period closed with 1850. Turning to Table I, it \vill be found that a cyclical period began with 1804, and as it would end 'with 1868, the period Tao-kiiang naturally falls within that cycle. Fixing ^ £, H>tei-. One of them is illustrated in the pamphlet which is quoted there, and the illustration is bettei- than Mr. Weston's grotesque translation of the inscription. These are the most prized of teacups among Chinese virtuosos of the present day, and the curio dealers of Peking ask a hundred taels for a perfect pair — the same price that used to be asked by the dealers of the last dynasty for their prototypes, the tiny eggshell chl hang winecups of the famous reign of ClCmg-liua. The seal (see No. 7), is to be read Ta ClCiiig Cli^ien-lung fang hu — i. e., " Copy of antique of Chien-lung (1736-1795) of the great ChHng [dynasty]." The cups are decorated in colors, like the little snuft"- bottle with the same inscription in the AValters Collec- tion, with a picture of a rockery with peonies growing upon it, and a boy feeding a hen and chickens from a basket. See Fig. 64. This seems to be the place for a seal mark of one character of not infrequent occurrence in collections, which has not been hitherto deciphered (see No. 8). It is said to signify Cliih, "By Imperial Order," and is found on K^ang-lisi porcelain of the most artistic deco- ration, the mark varying considerably, ho^vever, in the shape and arrangement of the strokes in dilferent cases. The first form is taken from a magnificent round dish, twenty-eight inches in diameter, decorated in l)rilliant enamel colors of the K\(ng-lisi period, with a party of ladies in boats, gathering lotus flowers in a lake, while other gayly\lressed damsels are looking on from a pavilion, the borders of the dish being filled with richly brocaded diapers interrupted by medallions of flowers. The sec- ond form (see No. 1 ), which is apparently a variation of the same mark, is taken from a square beaker of the same period, decorated on the four sides with flowers relieved by a black ground in the style of Plate IX, and 78 ORIENTAL (^ERAMIO ART. is u rare instance of an inscription in tliis peculiar class of decoration, \\ liicli is almost always unmarked,* The third form (see No. 2) is taken from a large blue and white dish belonging also to the ICmuf-ltsi period. This ap[)ears to me to be intended for anotlier character called chill, in^ynonym of cJriJi, " to make," which, however, also means " by order." They are examples of a large and vai'ied category of marks introduced at a time when the use of the ]>r<)])er ///\'ii liao was forbidden by the authorities. 2. Hall-Marks. The term " hall " is used here in its most comprehensive sense, reaching from the palace or pavilion of the emperor down to the shed of the potter, so as to include the recep- tion hall of a noble, the library of a scholar, the studio of an artist, and the shop of a dealer. The Em[)eror of China stamps his ode with the seal of the pavilion in which he has just composed it, the official in charge of the imperial manufactory attaches his hall mark to the porcelain produced there, the artist or writer uses the name of his studio as anomde phime,i\\e dealer has his trading hall-mark inscribed on the porcelain made for sale at his shop, and the potter occasionally authenticates his productions with his o^^ n mark. The hall-mark on porcelain may belong to any one of these different classes, and it may mean made for the particular hall, as well as at the hall, the name of which is insci-ibed on the piece, the clew being sometimes suggested by the meaning of the name. For example, of two new hall-marks supplied by this collection, the one Yi yil faiu/ chili must be " Made at the Ductile Jade Hall," while the other, in wliich the * Another form of this mark, in which the first part of the character is more correctly penciled, is given in tlie Franks Catalogue, Plate XIII, Fig. 130. It is deciphered there as " Fan, the maker's name," but the Chinese experts that I have consulted refuse to pass this reading. MARKS ON CHINESE PORCELAIN. 79 name Ssii hui tshto fangim taken from a ]ine in one of the Ancient Odes of Cliinese classical times, would in all probability be " [Made/'orJ tlie Straw [i. e., thatched] Pavilion on the Kiver Bank." The usual w^ord employed for " hall " is ^, t^ang, but we find also other terms of similar meaning nsed occa- sionally" in its stead in inscriptions on porcelain, such as ^, Iv, a " palace pavilion," ^, fing, a " summer-house," ^, cJiai, a " studio," p, Ihsiian, a " balcony or railed terrace," or a porch projecting beyond the eaves, |1| ^, shan-fang,a " mountain retreat, " and other synonyms. The mark (see No. 8) Jen ho huan, " Hotel of Benev- olence and Harmony," is often cited as the earliest instance on record of a hall-mark, and it would appear to denote the establishment for which the vase was made. It is quoted from the Ni lea In, a little book on anti- quarian subjects, published early in the sixteenth century, in which the author describes a bottle-shaped vase of white Tingchou porcelain of the Sung dynasty in his own collection, as "having upon it this inscription, fired in the glaze, in the handwriting apparently of one of the Ni family, father or son," referring io two famous calligra- phists of the eleventh century. The fashion of inscribing upon j)orcelain made foi- the imperial palace the name of the pai'ticular j)avilion for A\diicli it was intended seems to have begun in the reign of Yung-clieng. Of the two examples which I give, the first (see No. X), Lang yi/n ho, " Pavilion for Moonlight Recitation," occurs on a flower-})ot decorated in colors of the reign of Yung-clieng (1723-1 735), the second (see No. 2), Tzu 8lm ho, " Pavilion for Presentation of Books," is inscribed upon the covers of a pair of circular boxes of the kind used for holding incense or chi})s of fragi-ant wood. They are eight inches in diameter, and are painted in red and blue with bats flying among clouds, and 80 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. inurked on tlie foot with the oi'diiiary seal of the Chia- ch'lng period (1796-1820). There are two other hall-marks \vhicli are generally referred by Chinese authorities to the palace, viz. (see No. 3), Ching wet fang cJiiJi, " Made at the Hall of Reverent Awe," which is attributed to the ChMen-lmig period (1736-1795), and (see No. 4) Slien te fang cliih " Made at the Hall for the Cultivation of Virtue," which is said to have been the name of a paviliou founded by the Eaiperor Tao-knang (1821-1850), and by him given a name chosen from the classics (^Tlie Great Learning^ chap. X. p. 6). " Hence the sovereign will first take pains about his own virtue." This mark is much sought after by Chinese collectors. There is an example of it here in the bowl (Fig. 74), which is decorated in delicate enamel colors with butteriiies relieved l^y a monochrome ground of soft coral-red tint. It has been conjectured that it might be the hall name of the official in charge of the imperial factory, but this could liardly be, as in China it would be contrary to etiquette for a subject to select one from such a text. There is a saucei' dish in the Franks Collection (No. 387 in the catalogue) marked (see No. 5) Slien te fangjxj hu cliiJi, " Antique {po hf) made for the Sheu te Pavilion," and the learned author tliinks that " from peculiarities of make it is probable that this dish is of the early part of the reign of Jiang- 7(^6"," so that the " antique " nuist be well executed if our account of the origin of this mark be correct. The form of tlie ordinary seal of the reign Avith^^o ku is common enough on Jade carvings from the inq^erial workshops, which are usually fashioned after ancient models, and are marked in this way to indicate the fact. A hall-mark quoted in Hooper's M((niial (Joe cit., p. 205) as taken from a bowl, one of a [)air, the other being marked as above, is (see No. 6) (li((ii diing cliai ('lu]i, MAKKS ON CHINESE J'OKCELAIN. 81 "Made for the Reti-eat of Quiet Stillness," so that this mark would pi'obaljly belong to the same period as that of Shell te t'ang. The last palace marks which \\e will give here are taken from a pair of beautiful bowls, examples of the finest work of the pi'esent day : inferior, however, it must be confessed, both in technical details and in tone of coloring, to the poi'celain of the reign of CliJien-limgj which is said to have furnished the models. These bowls are in the possession of Sir Nicholas O'Conor, K. C. B., her Britannic Majesty's late envoy plenipotenti- ary at Peking, who has kindly permitted me to copy the marks. They are decorated in enamel colors inside and out, with floral sprays of roses and wistaria, the stems of the latter winding over the rim, so as to cover the interior of the boNvl with gracefully trailing blossoms ; a single magpie is perched on one of the bi'anches ; and the whole is I'elieved by a monochi'ome ground of soft gray- green tint. On the outer surface near the rim is the hall-mark (see No. 7) Ta Ya Chai, "Abode of Grand Culture," and near it, in a small oval panel framed by dragons, the motto (see No. 8) T'ieit ti yi cliia cli'iin^ " Spring throughout heaven and earth as one family ! " Underneath there is another mark penciled in red (see No. 9), YiiiKj clCing ch'ang r/t'u//, '' Eternal Prosperity and Enduring Spring ! " These bowls are interesting from the fact that they are part of a dinner service made specially at the imperial factory at Ching-te-chen for the empress dowager, who has ruled China for so many years, and who is noted as being herself a clever artist and calligraphist. She is said to have sent down some bowls and saucer dishes of the Cli'kii-hi mj period from the palace at Peking as patterns to be copied at Ching-te- chen. Ta ya Clial is the name of one of the new pavil- ions in Civ mm CKun Kuiuf, "The Palace of Enduring 82 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. Spring," on the westeru side of the "Prohibited City/' at Peking, where this empress, the " AYestern Buddha," as she is colloquially called by tlie Pekingese, resided until she reniov^ed to the new palace which was prepared for her at the termination of the emperor's long minority. The propitious mark underneath the world-embracing motto in the dragon label, and the decoration, all point to spring, of which season the Wistaria Sinensis is one of the floral emblems. The ordinary liall-marks are so numerous that it would be quite useless to attempt to give a complete list. They are found on porcehiin of the })resent dynasty from the reign of K\ing-hsi downward. It \Aould be useful to arrange them in chronological se(|uence liad we sufficient material at our conunand. At present it is only possible to make a short selection for illusti-ation hei'e, beginning with the two unedited marks in the Walters Collection, that have been already quoted. The first, one of the earliest of the class that we have met with, is inscribed on the bottom of the square teapot (Fig. 75), which is decorated with dramatic and domestic scenes in blue and white of the K\t))g-lisi])^Yio([, and has rims and borders of canary or '' Nankin yellow." The upright rim is surrounded by small panels of floral sprays of the four seasons ; the knob of the cover is carved in open work, with the character la ("rank") encircled by a four-clawed dragon penciled in blue ; and the handle is tinted black on a pale-yellow ground to imitate basket work. The mark is (see No. 1) Yi yii fang cliih^ " Made at the Ductile Jade Hall," and is such as would be likely to be chosen by a potter, using white jade as a well-worn simile for fine porcelain. The other is a Cli'ien-limg vase ^vitll the rim and foot incased in metal mounts (Fig. 76), which is enameled with a minutely crackled turquoise glaze of soft, charm- MARKS ON CHINESE PORCELAIN. SH iiig tone. The decoi'ation, delicately etched in the paste under the glaze, consists of a pair of five-clawed dragons pursuing the effulgent disk of omnipotence in the midst of cloud scrolls and lightning flames. The foot, colored brown underneath, has the mark engraved in the paste (see No. 2), 6hl hut ts\io fang, " The Stra^v (i. e., thatched) Pavilion on the River Bank." The name is taken from a text in the ancient Minor Odes of the King- dom., Book xiv, Ode 5, the first line of which is, " By these banks (^Ssd han^ has the palace risen." The above mark is curious for the omission of the ^\ ord chih, "made," in which it agrees with the tMo hall-mai'ks^ that follow (see No. 3) : Lu yi fang, " The Pavilion with the Waving Bamboos," and (see No. 4) Feng Itsien fang, " The Hall for the Worship of Ancestors." The former occurs on K\(ng-]isl pieces decorated in colors, with either a white or a mazarine blue ground ; the latter on more modern porcelain, is that which is usually inscribed on ritual vessels, perhaps as an indication of their being intended for use in the ancestral temple. Another unpublished mark occurs more than once in the Walters Collection, which must be included in this class, although the \vord " hall " happens to be omitted in its composition. The first piece (Fig. 67) is a rice-bowl of lotus-flower design, \vith an eightfold foliated wavy rim, and eight petals molded in relief round the foot, dec- orated with dragons and tiny sprays of flowers relieved by a coral-red ground. The second, ilhistrated in Fig. 77, is one of a pair of four-lobed winecups, with indented rims, painted in delicate enamel colors, with the eight Taoist genii crossing the sea. Chung-li Ch'iian and Lii Tung-pin are seen on the left of the picture mounted upon a dragon, which is guided by a damsel swimming in front, holding up a flaming jewel. Lan Ts'ai-ho and Ho Hsien-ku are still upon the shore ; the former is scat- 84 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. tering flowers from his basket, as if to propitiate the waves ; the latter, the virgin member of the sacred group, carries a lotus cup upon a stick and a small branch of twin peaches upon her shoulder, A few white jasmine flowers and buds, painted in soft tints, are sprinkled over the interior of the cup, as if to imbue its contents with their fragrance. The mark in all three cases is in the seal character, penciled in red (see No. 1), Hsieli chii tmo, "Made for [or at] the Hsieh Bamboo | Hall ]." Compare the mark figured in the Franks Ckitalogue (Plate VI, Fig. 72), which is read (see No. 2), Hsieh dm elm jen tsao^ "Made for [or by] the lord [Chu jen | of the Hsieh Bamboos." Hsieh is the name of the valley in the Kun-lun Mountains where Ling Lun, minister of the fabulous Emperor Huang Ti, is said to have cut bamboo tubes of different lengths when he is supposed to have invented the musical scale and fashioned the first musi- cal instruments. The style and coloring of these bowls indicate the reign oi Tao-huang (1821-50), or perhaps Chia-cJi'ing (1796-1820). The next mark, which is taken from a brush cylinder (pi t'ung), carved in open work to simulate a clump of baml^oos ofrowino" from rocks, and tinted in delicate enamel colors of the CKien-l/img })eriod, is to be read (see No. 3) Lit chu slum fang dim ts'ang, "Precious Treasure of the Green Baml)oo Mountain Lodge." Another six-character hall-mark of the same time is (see No. 4) Chi tig lien t\ing fang hu diih, "Made as a copy of an antique at the Ching-lien Hall." This woidd be tlie mark of an official or scholar posing as an admirer of Sung Ching-lien, a supporter of the founder of the Ming dynasty in the fourteenth century, and a distin- guished commentator on the classics. A hall-mark indicative of a lover of flowers, which wa8 first publislied by Jacquemart and Le Blant Qoc. eit., p. MARKS ON CHINESE PORCELAIN. 85 188), is Tza t£a faiuj chili, " .Mude at the Hall of Purple Thorn " (see No. 5), taken by them from a cliarm- ing vase, decorated witli figure subjects, in the possession of M. Holtrop, librai-ian to tJie King of Holland. There is another hall-mark (see No. 6) published on the follow- ing page of the same book, taken from a bowl enameled green outside, yellow inside, ^vith iish and water plants, with the reading, T'ieu mao famj cliih, ^'- Fahi'ique dans la salle dii ciel voiUr The second charactei-, howevei', is ch\in(/ ("prosperity"), not mao, which has an extra horizontal stroke at the bottom, so that we must read instead, "Hall of Heaven-sent Prosperity," which is a common trading-hall name in China. I have been permitted to select four ^^■inecups from my own collection to illustrate the subject of hall-marks. Fig. 78 is a cu[) of the thinnest eggshell textuiv and most translucent glaze, decorated in colors, with }>ale- green bamboo and red dianthus ilo^vers ; a ])at, emblem of happiness, is flying across with rlii cli''iiu/, the jade symbol of good fortune, in his mouth ; there is a short inscription penciled in black behind, "A })ropitious prayer for a thousandfold harvest" ; and a couple of fra- grant jasmine blossoms are painted inside. The mark penciled in red on the bottom of the cup is Chili hsiu ts'ao fauf/, "The Straw (i. e., thatched) Pavilion adorned with Variegated Fungus." It is a specimen of the reign of ICamj-hsi (1662-1722). The next. Fig. 38 (a), del- icately painted in gold with sprays of chrysanthemum flowers, is attributed to the reign of Yhikj-cIu'ikj (1723- 35) ; it is marked nnderneath in red, Ching ssu fang chih, ''Made for the Pavilion of Classical Bookcases."* The third is a tiny cup. Fig. 79, of the reign of Ch'ien-Iung * There is a pair of teacups with this mark iu the Ilippisley Collection (0/^/- logtie, Nos. 120 and 121), " Teacups (a pair) with covers, of thin white Yung Ch§ng porcelain, decorated with two imperial tive-clawed dragons pursuing 86 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. (1736-95), decorated in delicate enamel colors with a combination of the three propitious plants, symbols of longevity — the fir, bamboo, and blossoming pruniis (^Sun(/, c7tu, mei). The mark penciled underneath in red is Pao shen cliai chih, ''Made for the Retreat where Virtue is Precious." The fourth. Fig. 80, one of a pair of winecu})s referred to the reign of Chia-e]i'ing {17^^- 1820), which are covered inside and out with flying bats painted in red, fifty on each cup, and have the circular foi'm of the character slioa ("longevity") emblazoned on the bottom of each in red and gold. The decoration conveys the felicitous phrase, SJtua/it/ sJiou pofu, " Two- fold longevity and the hundred happinesses." The mark penciled underneath in red is Fu cliing fang chi\ " Made at the Hall of Happiness and Good Fortune." The Chinese potter lavishes some of his choicest work on the decoration of these little winecups, and many more might be selected with other marks, but space is limited, and these few must suflice for the present. Toward the end of the i-eign of K''ang-lisi, glass works were founded at Peking under the direct patronage of the emperor, with the assistance of the Roman Catholic missionaries. The production was known as Kuan liao^ or " imperial glass " ; it included pieces colored in mass, pieces made of layers of different color su^^erimposed and subsequently carved, and pieces either of clear or of opaque \vhite material, painted with translucent enamels of different colors. These last are commonly known in the present day as Kti Ytieh Hallan^ because the hall- mark, Kii Y'lieli Hsilaii cMh, "Made at the Ancient Moon Terrace," is often inscribed underneath. Tradition says that one of the directors of the factory named Ku, sun amid clouds, all iu deep red, the clouds, the dragons, and the scales of the latter being outlined in bright gold ; covers bear similar decoration. Mark, Chiiuj sail fang, an imperial or princely hall-mark as yet unidentified." MARKS UN CHINESE PORCELAIN. 87 whose patronymic was a character composed of Ku, " ancient," and yuth., " moon," broke it up into two com- ponent parts to form his studio name. The accomj^any- ing mark is engraved underneath a bowl of this kind, which is fabricated of white glass and is colored brown, the outside of the bowl being etched with a landscape of hill scenery touched with the same brown enamel. The Emperor Yimg-cheng is said to have been enamored of the new art and to have sent down to Ching-te-chen some of the finest specimens, to be reproduced in porcelain under the auspices of the celebrated T'ang Ying. The objects >vhich Avere produced in this and the succeeding I'eign of Oh^ieii-lung are among the most precious of treasures ; they have a paste of peculiarly vitreous aspect, white, and fine-grained, and are decorated in translucent enamels, often with European subjects. The variety is known as Fang JCu Yueli Hsikm, " Imitations of the Ancient JNIoon Terrace | Work]." The teapot figured in the last chapter is a notable example of this beautiful style of decoration. The Chinese exquisite will pay in the present day over a hundred taels for a little ClPien lung snuff-bottle of clear glass, lightly touched \vith a design in colors, authenticated by this mark ; and much more for a small porcelain vase of the variety, decorated with a pastoral scene of European style in enamels of the famille 7'ose. Another unedited liall-mark with the anoihI hsi'mn, found on decorated porcelain of the Cliiea-hing period, is (see No. 1) Clien ting h.silati cliih^ literally, " Made in [or for] the Dust-tixed Terrace." " Dust " {cli'en') is the " world " in Buddhist metaphor, and ting (" inunovable") is the word used by Buddhists to convey the idea of mental abstraction, so that we should render this hall- name, " Terrace of abstraction from Mundane Affairs.'' Some of the earliest hall-marks have names referring 88 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. to the quality of the porcelain, distinguishiug either the fineuess of the paste or the brilliancy of the coloring. One of those already given, " Hall of Ductile Jade," refers to the fine fabric, while the accompanying mark (see No. 2) of the same early ]_)eriod, which is penciled in blue under a small vase with celadon-glazed body, with a ring of chocolate-brown tint round the shoulder, and having the neck decorated with peaches in under- glaze blue touched with peach-color, refers to the color- ing, being Pi yiln fatuj cJiili^ " Made at the Hall of Moss- Green-Jade Clouds." To the former class, also, belong the following marks: (see No. 3) Chi yil fang cltUi, " Made at the Hall of Rare Jade"; (No. 4) Lin yil fang rhih, "Made at the Hall of Forest Jade " ; and (No. 5) Yil fang rhia r-AV, " Beautiful Vessel of the Hall of Jade," Avhich occurs both in the ordinary script and in "seals" of varied style, of which one with the third character imperfect is given here in No. <>. Of the latter class. No. 7, which reads, Tsai gun fang ell ill ^ "Made at the Hall of Brilliant Colors," a frequent mai'k on porcehiin decorated in enamel colors, is another example. Among other marks of commei'cial character, which may be either those of potters or of dealers in the ware, are: (No. 8) Yi yii fang chili, "Made at the Hall of Profit and Advance"; (No. 9) Yang lio fang cliih, "Made at the Hall for the Cultivation of Harmon} "; (No. 10) Ta shn fang rhih, "Made at the Great Tree Hall"; and (No. 11) C/fif shun Mei yil fang chih, "Made at the Beautiful Jade Hall of Riches and Suc- cess." The last of these is a conq^ound name, of which the first part, 67/'/7 shun, must be that of the shop or trading fii-m, who eulogize their ware under the title of beautiful jade, a conq>arison often met with. MARKS ON CHINESE PORCELAIN. 89 The above hall-names represent generally the marks of the factory. The indi vicinal name of the potter is rarely found attached to his work in China, whicli dift'ers in this respect from Japan. In the ivorv-white porcelain of the province of Fuchien it is sometimes found, etched in the paste under the glaze. In the colored stoneware of the province of Kuang-tung the name of the potter occurs more frequently, being stamped in the paste under the foot of the i)iece, so that the insci-iption appears either in intaglio or in relief. The mark (No. 12) Ko Ming hsUuig cltih, "Made by Ko Ming-hsiang," for instance, is not unconnnou on vases of reddish paste from these potteries, of such archaic aspect that they have been mistaken for ancient specimens of the Sung dynasty. One curious seal, shown in No. 13, taken from an antique crackle vase of porcelain of gray tone, decorated with propitious inscriptions worked in reserve and filled in with colored glazes of the Ming period, gives the name of an individual potter. Read in inverse fashion, from left to right, it is Wv Chen hsien yao — i. e., "Pottery [from the Kiln] of Wii Chen-hsieu." Another mark which must not be omitted from the list is that of Hao Shih-chiu, the celebrated and scholarly potter who flourished at Ching-te-chen in the reign of Wcni-U (1573-1619) — a poet, too, whose merits were often sung in contemporary verse. He chose as his sobriquet Hu gin Taojen, "The Taoist hidden in a pot" (No. 1), a sympathetic device for a ceramic artist, which was adopted from an old legend of a Taoist recluse who, according to an ancient book on the Taoist Immortals, possessed the magic faculty of concealing himself within the pilgrim's gourd which he carried on his girdle. This mark was inscribed by him underneath his delicate egg- shell winecups of pure white and dawn-red tints, eacli of 90 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. wliicli was said to Lave weighed less than the forty- eighth part of a Chinese ounce. A verse may be quoted here wliich a fellow-poet wrote to him : " In your searcli after the ])liilosoplier's stone, you strive in tJie market place. Far from tlie rustling furs and changing clouds, 3^our heaven is a teapot. I know you, sir, only as the maker of those dawn-red winecups, Fit to be launched from the orchid arbor to float down the nine- bend river." The last stanza refers to the Lan T''iiu/ or " Orchid Pavilion," where, in the fourth century of our ei'a, a party of celebrated, scholars used to meet to drink wine and compose verses. The scene with the cups floating doAvn the river has been a favorite subject foi' Chinese pictoi'ial art ever since. This section may be closed by two unusually elaborate hall-marks, both of which hap])en to be written in cii'cu- lar form. The tirst (see No. 2) comes from the foot of a large rice-bowl, decorated with flowers, fruit, and ])irds, in enamel colors of the Ch''ien-luii(j pei-iod. Our Chinese wood engraver, who was instructed to mark the top of each block for the benefit of the printei', was nonplussed by this one, and Avhen asked why he had omitted the usual mark, he exclaimed, " How could I tell Avhere to begin to read ? " To obviate this difficulty, we have put it with the first character at the top, and, [)i'oceeding in the ordinary way to the left, we find the cjuaiut inscrip- tion, Yuan iven wti kuo chili rhai^ '^ The Reti'eat \cliai\ where I wish to hear of my transgj-essions." The second (see No. 3), which is penciled in red round the circumference of the hollow foot of a tazza- shaped bowl, exhil)its, in combination, the nien hao, the cyclical date, and the hall-mark of the maker. It is read, Ta/) humig yi sm nien Kuamj yn t\(tig cliili — i. e., MARKS ON CHINESE PORCELAIN. 91 " Made at the Hall of Brilliance and Kiclies, in the cyclical year yi-ssn of the reign of Tao-huaiigy This year will be found, on referring to the Tables in the last chapter, to cori'espond to a. d. 1845. The bowl, which is mounted upon a tall, holloAv stem, spreading at the foot, is decorated in blue, with the eight Taoist i^enii crossing the sea, the intervals being occupied by Ava\ iiig fillets, and the stem covered with sea-waves ; the interior of the bowl is painted with a large circular shau (" lon- gevity ") symbol, encircled by a ring of five bats, em- blems of the wu fy, or five happinesses or blessings, namel}", longevity, riches, peacefulness and serenity, the love of virtue, and an end crowning the life.* 3. Marks of Dedication and Felicitation. This heading is selected to comprise all the marks, not included in the last class of " Hall-Marks," that imply dedication to some particular institution, individual, or purpose, as well as those expressive of wishes of happy augury for the future possessor of the piece. The next heading, " Marks of Commendation," will take the re- mainder of the written marks — viz., those eulogizing the material or referring to the decoration of the porcelain. Some of the hall-marks might have come under these headings, as the official in charge of the imperial manu- factory will sometimes have a set of sacrificial vases, or a dinner service, inscribed with the hall-mark of the friend or patron for presentation to whom it was specially made; or the potter, as we have seen, will choose a hall name descriptive of the jadelike texture of his })oi-celain or the brilliancy of its color. It was more convenient, how^ever, to treat the hall-marks separately. One of the earliest marks of dedication is that of (No. * See Mayer's Chinese Reader's Manual, p. 312. 92 ORIENTAL CERAMIC AliT. 1) /Shufu, " Iiii})eri{il palace," wliicL was inscribed on some of the porcelain made for the use of the emperor during the Yuan or Mongol dynasty (1280-1367). We shall find a specimen described in our maiuiscript album of tlie sixteenth century, in Avhich this mark is incised on the foot of a little vase underneath the ivory-white glaze. The decoration of this vase consists of dragons and cloud-scrolls lightly etched in the paste ; and the author, in his description of the piece, gives us the inter- esting information that the porcelain of this period waa fashioned on the lines of that of the Ting-chou manufac- ture of the early Sinn/ dynasty, and that it in turn sup- plied models for the pure white porcelain which distin- guished the reigns of Yung-lo and Hsuaii-te of his own {Ming) dynasty, which was also ornamented with designs^ incised at the point underneath the glaze. The sacrificial vessels intended for use in religious worship often used to have the object for which they were designed marked upon them, like the white altar cups of the reign of Hsikm-te (1426-35), which wei'e inscribed J^, Van, " altar," according to the author of the Po wn yao Ian. The same book describes sets of white altar cups made at the imperial factor}^ in the reign of Ohiorchhu/ (1522-66), which were marked inside -with the characters ^, r// V^, " tea " ; }g, cliin, ''wine"; ^ ^, tsao t'^ang, "decoction of jujubes"; and ^ f^, cJnang t\()ig, '■'■ (XecoQiiow of ginger"; indicating the dif- ferent offerings presented in the cups when the emperor officiated at the Taoist altar. Inscriptions of dedication to particular temples are not uncommon, and are often lengthy. Jacquemart quotes one (Joe. cit., page 166) inscribed on a trumpet-shaped vase, which is composed of twelve characters, indicating that it was a ritual vase " made for the temple of Fou lou tsiang in [1636] the ninth year of T'<''ung-cheng, in sum- MARK8 ON (CHINESE l^ORCELAIN. 93 mer, on a propitious day." Marks of tLis reign, tlie last of the MiiKj dynasty, are very rai-e, and tliere is no little reason for regarding them as, foi- the most part, apoc- ryphal. The longest I have met with is that re[)r()duced above in No. 2. It is inscribed on the base of a pricket candle- stick of elaborate design, painted in blue with conven- tional scrolls and formal foliations, one of a pair twenty- eight inches high, now in my own possession. They were made in the year 1741 (the sixth of (Jh''ieii-lung)^ by T'ang Ying, the famous directoi' of the imperial j)or- celain manufactory, the successor of the still more illus- trious scholars and artists Lang and Nien, and dedicated by him to a Taoist temple at Tungpa, a town situated on the northern bank of the canal which connects T'ungchou with Peking.'^ "■ Reverently made by T'ang Ying of Slieu-yang, a Junior Secretary of the Imperial Household, anrc'elain Manufactory, and Commissioner of Customs at Kiukiang, in the province of Kiangsi ; and presented by him to the Temple of the Holy Mother of the God of Heaven at Tungpa, to remain there throu2:h time everlastintj; for offerino- sacrifices before the altar ; on a fortunate day in the spring of the sixth year of the Empei'or Cli'leii-hnu/.'" Among marks of dedication to institutions I \\\\\ * This temple, like so many of those in the vicinity of Peking, is now in ruins. The candlesticks formed part of the sacrilicial set of five vessels ( Wii kung)ma.de for the principal altar of the temple. I saw the two flower vases with tnimpet-shaped mouths belonging to the set, but their inscriptions had been purposely erased. The tripod incense burner which once figured as the center-piece of the altar set had long before been broken and lost. 94 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART, ([uotetwo. One is a seal mark sliowii in No. 1 {^Burling- ton Fine Arts Club Catalogue of Blue and White, loc. Ht., Plate II, Fig. 17), from a j)late with flanged brim decorated with eight horses i-eserved in white on a - 25. MARKS ON CHINESE PORCELAIN. 95 The only Mongol mark that I liave ever seen inscril^ed on porcelain may be classed as a mark of dedication. It occurs penciled in surface red on the bottom of bowls and saucer-shaped dishes of three different sizes, forming a dinner service, decorated with bright enamel colors and gold in the style of the impei'ial ware of the Tao-hnang period. The interior contains Buddhist symbols of happy augury alternating with longevity characters ; the exterior is occupied by the seven precious emblems of a chaJcror vartin, or universal sovei'eign, posed upon lotus thalami on a floor of sea waves, and delineated in the traditional manner of the Lama sect. The inscription written within a panel (see No. 2) is Baragon Tamed, in Mon- golian script. This is the name of the Right or A¥estern Wing of the Tumed Banners, a principality of southern Mongolia. A daughter of the Emperor Tdo-huang was given in marriage to the hereditary j)rince of these Mongols, who was granted a palace in Peking, and the service with this mark was no doubt made at the imperial manufactory at the time as part of the wedding outfit. Marks of felicitation are very common, and occur on porcelain of all periods, more especially on articles intended for presents. One of the most common is the Shitang Jisi, or "twofold joy" symbol (No. 8), the special emblem of wedded bliss, a combination of two hsi (" joy") characters placed side by side. This symbol is j)asted on the lintels of the door on the happy occa- sion, and is also inscribed on porcelain articles intended for wedding presents either as a niai'k or as part of the decoration. Two forms of it are published in Hooper's Mani(((l Qoc. cif., page 198), but wrongly deciphered, " (?) I{^e, a vessel, vase, ability, capacity." A curious combination of a date-mark with a felicitous formula (see No. 4) has been taken from the bottom of a 96 OKIENTAL CERAMIC ART. set of saucer-sbaped dishes, decorated in blue and white of the MiiKj period, where it ^vas found penciled in l)lue in anti(|ue scri}>t. The s(|uai'e panel in the middle inclosini^ the motto Teli na cliang clijoi, " Virtue, Culture, and Enduring Spring," is surrounded by a circle inclos- ing the inscription Wan li iiien ts(to, " Made in the reign of Wan-ir' (1573-1619). A mark of the same period occurs in the Franks Collection {Catah(jue, he. c/'L, Plate VI, Fig. 74) with the inscrii)tion, written as a legend of a medal pierced with a square hole, in the form of an ordinary Chinese "cash " (see No. 5), which reads, (Jlihing ming fu hueiy " Long Life, Riches, and Honor." It is taken fi'om a shallow l)owl, five and a quarter inches in diameter, which is desci'ibed in the following w^ords : "In the inside is a circular medallion with a stork amid clouds, painted in a dark blue ; round this a broad band of pale green, over which is a running pattern in gold consisting of flowers and scrolls ; outside, two branches of flowers with a bird on each, ^^ainted in dark blue. The same mai'k occurs on a bowl of similar decoration in a Gei'man mounting of silver gilt of the sixteenth century." AVe find the mark in the Walters Collection upon the tall ewer of graceful form (Fig. 81) decorated in the style and coloring of the W((n-h period, with blue phcenixes and storks flying among clouds. It is studded all over with uncut turquoises and garnets arranged alternately, mounted in crilded settin2:s of Persian or Indian work- manship, shows traces of gilded rings, and is fitted at the upper and lower rims and at the end of the spout with engraved metal mounts. The mark is ^vritten under- neatli in imderglaze blue encircled by a double ring. Among other marks of similar meaning are (No. 1), Fit hitei cKang clihin, " Riches, Honor, and Enduring Spring " ; and (No. 2) Fu luel cliia cIl'!, " A Perfect Ves- MAIJKS ON ( IIIXKSE I'OltCKLAI \. '.> < sel of Wealtli mikI Honor/' which is found on old speci- mens of blue and white, inscribed both in the ordinary character and in the seal script. The most fre([uent vows of the Chinese are oifei-ed for the threefold blessings of hap[)iness, rank, and longevity, and the deities who confer these gifts are tlie most ardently worshi[)ed of an}^ We shall find the three gods constantly I'epreseuted upon porcelain, with their respective characters, perhaps, in the background. See^ for example, the vase illustrated in Plate XVllI, which is blazoned with the two large characters, Fu^ "Ilajtpi- ness," and Slioii, '' Longevit}^" interrupted by round medallions containing pictures of the corresponding divinities. Sometimes a piece of porcelain is actually molded in the foi'm of the last two characters, like the \vine-pots of the i-eign of K\ing-hsi decorated xur hiscuit, of which Fig. 82 offers a conspicuous example. It is fashioned in the shape of the character Fii, " Happiness," has a cover formed of the first "dot '' of the hieroglyph, and is inscribed on the handle and spout with archaic forms of the sJiok ( '* longevity ") charactei*. These forms are almost infinite, and a not uncommon decoi'ation of a pair of vases or bowls consists of a hundi-ed different forms of the character /V. balanced by a hundred of the sJtou hieroglyphs. A favorite decoration of blue and Avhite in the Ming dynasty consisted of a pair of dragons holding u}) in their claws sjioii charactei's instead of the traditional jewels. The three characters, /"'//, hi, slioii, occui' constantly also as marks, either conjointly or singly. The compound marks in one of the seal foims (see No. 8), and in the ordinary script (see No. 4), are appended. The single- character marks are found on porcelain of all ages. The little ivory-"\vhite plate of ancient hlauc de Cliine, which is inlaid with Oriental irold work set with uiu-ut rubies 98 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. and emeralds, and which figures as the oldest piece in the Dresden Museum, having been originally brought to Europe by a crusader from Palestine, we are told by the late curator. Dr. Graesse, is inscribed underneath with the character fu. One of the forms of the mark lu^ " rank," is shown here (see No. 5), taken from a saucer- dish of brilliant blue and white attributed to the K^ang- hsi epoch. But of them all, the character s/fof/ ("longev- ity ") is the most frequent and variable, and it is found in an endless variety of shapes, in circular, oval, and diamond-shaped medallions, in addition to the ordinary oblona: forms. One of the oblono; forms is inscribed on the snuff -bottle shown in Fig. 102. An oval form is seen in the right-hand panel upon the blue and white vase (Fig. 83), the other panel in front displaying the seal character cNie?i, " heaven." Thi'ee of the circular medallions are displayed upon each of the two basket- work bands encircling the crackled vase (Fig. 84). One of the oblong forms of the character shou, often found on good blue and white porcelain of the kind that used to be highly appreciated in Holland, is commonly known there as the "spider mark" (see No. 1). The ff/Ifot or svaMika symbol, the peculiar variety of the cross with the four arms bent at rio-ht ano;les in the same direction, which dates from prehistoric times and is found in all parts of the world,* occui's in China as a mark on porcelain, either plain or inclosed in a lozenge with looped angles, or enveloped in a waving fillet. This symbol is clearly shown in Plate LXII, in a small panel u[)on the swelling neck of the vase, where it alternates with the "jevvel" symbols. It is a synonym of Wmi^ " 10,000," in Chinese, and two or four of these symbols are often intervowen symmetrically with the circular * La Migration des Symbolen, pur le Comle Goblet d'Alviella, Paris, 1891, v, chap ii, De la (^roix Gaminee. MAEKS ON CHINESE PORCELAIN. 99 form of the Hhou character so as to form an ornamental monogram, to be read Wan sliou, " For myriads of ages." This is the special birthday vow of his subjects for the Emperor of China, and it corresponds to the Persian " O King, live forever ! " The monogram with two svas- tika symbols, one on either side, is displayed prominently in the center of the pilgrim bottle illustrated in Fig. 50, developed, as it were, in the bosom of a sacred lotus blossom. Fig. 85, the gourd-shaped vase enameled in K\ing-ksl colors with rich designs of floral })rocade pattern, also exhibits on the neck a combination of red svastiln and yellow shou symbols. Many of the marks ^vhich are passed by as undecipher- able are curious forms of these " happiness " and " lon- gevity " symbols. The mark (No. 2) which is found in the Burlington Fine Arts Ckiialo(j\ie {loc. cit.^ Plate II, Fig. 15), taken from a Chinese basin decorated in blue witli alternate asters and lotuses, is strangely deciphered there as " To-da-kichi-hei, probably name of maker." It is highly improbable that any one with this cuiious name, which is Japanese, if anything, had to do with the making of it. I should venture to read the scrawl as simply a variation of Fu shou, " Happiness and Longevity." Another vow of similar meaning is often found in- scribed in large antique characters upon bowls as part of their external decoration, or put underneath as a mark, written either in the seal character or in conunon script. It is read (see No. 3), Wan shou lvu chkiiuj, | " May you live for] myriads of ages, never ending!" A second mark of this kind is Fu shou shnamj ch'ikin, " Happiness and long life both complete.'^ A longer Tiiaik (No. 4) is the oft-repeated formula, SJiou pi iiait shan, Fu Ju tung A«/, "The longevity of the southern hills, the happiness of the eastern seas." We shall find a still moi'e extended 100 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. version of this propitious formula directed to be penciled upou blue and white bowls in the imperial factory during the Ming dynasty in the reign of Clila-clmiij (1522-66), viz., Sliov pi no)) slum, cliiv, Fu ju lung Tun shen — i. e., ^' May your life be longer than that of the southern hills, your happiness as deep as the eastern seas ! " The " isles of the blessed " are placed by the Taoist legend-mongers somewhere in the Eastern seas, and theii* " star of lon- gevity shines down from the southern heavens upon immemorial hills," The last felicitous mark of this kind that we will give is (No. 5), T'''ien h}ian tz'n fa., ^' May the rulers of heaven confer hap]iiness!" The single propitious characters, ^, r/*/, "good for- tune," ■^,/i/, " pros[)erity," and ^, ch^ing, "congratula- tions," occur as mai'ks ; also the propitious combinations (No. 6), Ta (Id, "Great good fortune," and (No. 7) Chi hsimig jv /, " Good fortunes and wishes fulfilled," the last mark })eing written usually in the seal character, as in that given here. A mark often found on the cylindrical vessels, which are used by the Chinese Avriter or artist as brushpots {^lyi-f img)^ is M^en ('IxiDg slum ton, " Scholarshij) eipial to the Hills and the Great Bear" (see No. 1), implying the wish that the happy possessor, when he wields his brush- pencil, may attain the exalted heights of the Tai Shan, the ancestral mount of China, and of the pei ton, the polar consteUation, the celestial abode of his s})ecial deity, the god of literature, whose image ap[)ears in Fig, 86. The mark of (No. 2) CJinang i/naii dii //, " May you obtain the degree of chuang-yuan ! " occurs also on cylin- ■der vases of this kind. Tiiis descree is the hisfhest attainable in the state examinations, and the chief object of ambition for every candidate as a first step upon tho ladder leadinof to hio-li ofKcial rank. MAltKS ON CHINKSK POKCELAIN. 101 4. Mauks of Commendation. This lieMdiiig is intended to comprise the rest of the written marks on porcelain, those that refer to the quality of the material, comparing it to fine jade and other rare stones and jewels, or to the charactei* of the decoration with which the piece is painted. They go back as far as the Ming dynasty, and are frequently found jienciled in seal characters, as well as in common script, on specimens dating from the Wan-li period (1573-1619). A few of these eulogistic marks selected from the many are : (No. 3) Ohi shili j)ao tincj cliili dien, " A gem among precious vessels of rare stone " ; (No. 4) Chi yil IKio ting cliili clien, " A gem among precious vessels of rare jade,'' in which the character ^^^'W, "precious," is written in a contracted form; (No. 5) Chi eh en ju yi'i., "A gem rare as jade"; (No. 6) Chi wan jit ///^, " A trinket rare as jade"; (No. 7) Po l-u chen tvan, ^'- A jeweled trinket of antique art " ; (No. 8) Wen yil pao ting, " A precious vessel of worked jade " ; (No. 9) Nan cli^Kan cli^in i/ii, "Brocaded jade of Nan-ciruan," an ancient name of Ching-te-chen, which it derived from its situation on the "southern" bank of the Chang " i-iver." A mark of conuuendation in the seal script, which is found upon blue and white pieces, is (No. 10) rJo xheu chen fs\ing, " To be treasured like a gem from the deep " ; it occurs also in the conunon charactei". Among two-character marks of similar signification are: (No. 11) Hsi i/ii, "Western jade"; (No. 12) Chen yil, "Precious jade"; (No. 13) Wan yi'i, "Trinket jade"; (No. 14) Chen yi), "Genuine jade"; (No. 15) Yil chen, "Jade jewel"; (No. IG) Chen ivan, "Precious trinket"; (No. 17) 17mw;/, '' Artistic trinket" ; (No. 18) Fao sheng, " Of unique value " ; and (No. 19) Kii chen, "Antique gem." A quaint mark, found underneath a 102 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. blue and white cii)), is (No. 20) Yuiuj .sJieng, which means " Ever full," if it refer to the cup, " Ever prosper- ous," if it be the hall-name of the potter. Any of the above characters may occur singly as marks, and we very ofteu find Yii., " Jade," Clien, " gem," Pao^ "precious," etc. The mark Cli''imn^ shown in No. 21, signifies "perfect," and is one of the most frequent. Some services of porcelain are inscribed underneath with different single characters, which are intended to be read consecutively to form sentences Avhen the plates or dishes are arranged in proper oi'der. The copper " cash" of the first half of the seventeenth century were also cast with single characters on the reverse, which could be read, con- secutively when a series of the coins happened to be available, so that this curious practice is not peculiar to porcelain. Marks referring to the decoration are not so common as those praising the make. Two have already been given, Shan hao shui ('li\inij^ "The hills are lofty, the rivers long," found on pieces painted wdth landscapes, and the mark Ymig ch''ing clVang chhin, "Ever-flourishing, enduring spring," which applies to the floral decoration of the bowl as Avell as to the name of the palace of the empress dowagei- for which the dinner service on which it occurs was made. A mark (see No. 1), Tsai cJi'uan cliili lo, " [-'-l know that they rejoice in the water," found upon porcelain dec- orated with fishes and water-plants, and evidently refer- ring to the subject, requires a word of explanation. It is taken from the works of Chuang Tzti, the celebrated philosopher of the fourth century b. c, who is related to have had the following discussion with Hui Tzti, a rival philosopher : OJimmig Tzii. — How the fish are enjoying themselves in the water! MARKS ON CHINESE PORCELAIN. 103 Hui Tzu. — You are not a fisli. How can you know ? Cliuang Tzu. — You are not 1. How can you know that I do not know that the fish are rejoicing ? Another mark referring to the subject of decoration occurs upon saucer-slmped dislies painted in colors with lotus flowers and reeds (see No. 2), Ai lien clieii shang, " Precious gift for the lover of the lotus." The mark (No. 3) Tan kuei, " Red olea fragrans," a floral metaphor for literary honors in China, is found inscribed underneath bowls decorated inside with a scholar holding a branch of this symbolical flower. The private seal of the artist-decorator, which is usually attached to the painting or appended to the scraps of verse which accompany the picture, like the seal on the beautiful ICang-hsl vase illustrated in Plate VI, ^\•hich is the studio name or 7iols found upon poivelain the most frequent are the eight symbols of good fortime, kuoAvn by the name of Fa CJii-hsiang, pa meaning " eight," cJu'-Jisia/fg, " hai)[)y omens." They were among the auspicious .signs figured on tlie sole of the foot of Buddha; they are constantly used in the aichitectural decoration of temples, and are displayed in ])orcelain, stone, or gilded wood upon the altar of every Buddhist shrine. They are usually drawn round with fillets, and are: 1. The " Wheel " (Chinese Ltnt, Sanskrit Chahv), the sacred wheel of the hi-w, whicli appears whirling in the air enveloped in fiames, as the sign of the advent of a Chakravarff} Baja, a "Wheel King," or universal mon- 112 ORIENTAL CERAMICS ART. arch (No. 1). This is sometimes replaced by the large hanging Bell (Cliinese Chung^ Sanskrit Ghantci), which is struck with a mallet on its outer rim dui-ing Bud- dhist worship. 2. The " Sliell " (( Jhinese Zo, Sanskrit SahMa), the conch-shell trumpet of victory, which is also blown dur- ing certain religious ceremonies (No. 2). 3. The '' Uml)rella " (Chinese San, Sanskrit CJtaftra), the state umbrella (No. 3) held over the head of person- ages of rank throughout the East, a Avell-known symbol of sovereignty (" Lord of the White Umbrella "). 4. The " Canop}^ " (Chinese ICai, Sanskrit T)hvaja)y hung with streamers and jeweled tassels (No. 4). 5. The "Flower'' (Chinese Ilaa, Sanskrit Pcuhnci), properly the sacred lotus, a rose-colored variety of the Nehmihium speciosum, but often represented in China by a peony or some other flower (No. 5). 6. The "Vase" (Chinese P '///(/, Sanskrit Kalasci), which may have a flower and miniature ju-i scepter placed inside, or perhaps a ti'io of peacock's feathers (No. 6). 1. The "Fish" (Chinese Yil, Sanskrit M<(ts>ja), the golden fish, represented in paii's (No. 7), an emblem of fertility. 8. The" Entrails" (Chinese Chang, Sanskrit /9rk'«^.s«). The "lucky diagi'am," an angular knot (No. 8) formed of a line without beginning or end, an emblem of longevity. It was customary in ancient times to cut open the abdo- men of the sacrificial victim and to augur fi'om the posi- tion of its entrails. These Pa Ohi-hsiang form the principal motive of dec- oration of the blue and white ritual wine-pot in Fig. 90, the swelling body of which is decorated with the set of eight, encircled by waving fillets, and supported by con- ventional flowers of Indian lotus. The conch-shell, um- MARKS ON CHINESE PORCELAIN. 113 brella, and canopy are seen in tlie pir-ture. The same symbols are molded in relief so as to project upon the scrolled background of tlie accompanying snuft'-bottle (Fig. 91), and one can distinguish on the side illustrated the umbrella and the Hame-eiicircled wheel, flanked by the flower upon the right and the vase on the left. The large pilgrim bottle shown in Fig. 50 has its circumfer- ence filled with the same Buddhist emblems of good fortune, while the large round medallions display at the front and back of the vase the eight attributes of the Taoist genii, with other symbols of longevity and happi- ness. This vase forms altogether a perfect mine of reli- gious symbolism, with the emblems of diiferent religicms reposing upon it side by side, in a w^ay that does not strike a Chinese mind as unnatural or inconsistent. The " Seven Gems " (in Chinese 67/'/ Pao, in Sanskrit Sapta Hatiui) are taken fi'om the porcelain service which was made foi- the daughter of the Emperor Tao-laiKDig^ who was ffiven in marriaixe to the Tumed Pi'ince, and which has been already described in the illustration of its Mongol mark of Baragon Turned. They are the attributes of the universal monarch, such as Pi'ince Sid- dharta would have been had he not become a Buddha, and they are often figured in Buddhist temples upon the base of his throne. They comprise : 1. The "Golden Wheel" (No. 1), Chin Luh, the victorious jeweled wheel of a thousand spokes which heralds the advent of a ClidhraiHirtfi Raja^ or " Wheel King." 2. The " Jadelike Girl " (No. 2), Yii Sil the beau- teous consort, who fans her lord to sleep, and attends liim with the constancy of a slave. 3. The " Horse " (No. 3), Ma, which appears to sym- bolize the horse-chariot of the sun, implying a realm where the sun never sets, as well as the celestial steed 114 ORIENTAL CERAMIC ART. which spriugs Pegasus-like from the clouds to deliver the sovereign from any (hmgei-. It carries on its back the saci'ed ahns-bow 1. 4. The " Elephant " (No. 4), Hsiang, the white ele- phant which was borrowed from Indian Buddhism by the Buddhist kings of Burmah and Siam, and which seems to ])e Indra's elephant Airavata. He carries the sacred jewel of the law. 5. "Divine Guardian of the Treasury" (No. 5), CJiu Ts'ang Shen, the minister who regulates the affairs of the empire. 6. "General in Command of the Army" (No. i shoU' means, " May your longevity equal that of the tortoise [^'?/6/] and stork \]io I ! " As a mark, however, it is rare in China, although more commonly used in Japan in the form of a tortoise with a hairy tail composed of strings of confervoid growth. 4. The Hundred Antiques {Po Kii). The expression Po Ku, which is constantly used in the description of Chinese art, refers to the almost infinite variety of ancient symbols and emblems, derived from all kinds of sources, sacred and profane, which form a common motive in the decoration of porcelain and other art objects. Although the word "hundred" is used vaguely as a noun of multitude, it is not a mere figure of speech, as it would not be a difficult matter to enumerate more than that number of antique symbols appertaining to this category. These antiques sometimes form the sole decoration of vases ; sometimes they are grouped in panels of diverse form, as in the blue and white "haw- thorn " jars in which the floral groiuid is interrupted by medallions ; in other cases they are ari'anged singly within the l)ands of floral brocade or diaper which en- circle the borders of a round dish or other piece. The tall two-handled blue and white cup illustrated in Plate XIV is decorated, for instance, with groups of these symbols, the intervals of the conventional borders of foliated design being filled with paraphernalia of the scholar and artist — books on tables, brushes in vases, water receptacles, and scroll pictures, enveloped with MARKS ON CHINESE POKOP:LAIN. 119 waving fillets aud mixed with tasseled wands and double diamonds, symbols of literary success. The large and beautiful plate (Fig. 94) painted in brilliant enamel coloi's of the K^imj-hxl period, with a broad band of peony sci-olls peneti-ated by archaic dragons around the I'im, succeeded by narrower rings of fret, displays in the intei'ioi" a typical example of the Po Ku style of decoration, artistically carried out. The centei' })iece is a tall, graceful vase with rings hanging upon o[)en scrolled handles, decorated with sprays of lotus, standing upon a tripod pedestal, filled with a bouquet of peonies, floral emblems of literary success leading to wealtli and honor. A low vase "vvitli wide, bulging body, decorated with dragons at the side, holds peacocks' feathers, emblems of high rank. On the other side, a lion-shaped censer upon a four-legged stand is v emitting a cloud of incense shaping above into the foi-ms of a pair of storks, symbols of long life and of conjugal felicity. A second set of incense-burning apparatus, a bundle of scroll pictures tied up in a brocaded wrapper, 'AJii-i ("wish-fulfilling") scepter or wand, a musical stone, and other felicitous symbols, and a sword witli a paper-weight in the foreground, fill in the picture. The background is a scroll picture partially unrolled to show a pine-clad mountain with pavilions and temples, a represen- tation of theTaoist paradise, the immemorial hills {Slioii SJia/i) where their immortal hermits are wont to wander. The Po Ku symbols, like those of the Buddhist and Taoist cults, are also often arranged in numerical cate- gories. The sets most frequently met ^vith ai-e the Pa Pao or "Eight Precious Things," and the "Four Accom- plishments of the Scholar." These occasionally occur in the ornamental borders of plates and vases, generally bound with fillets, and they are also found singly as marks. The usual set of the Pa Pao comprises : 120 ORIENTAL OEHAMIC ART. 1. A sphere (No. 1), representing a jewel or pearl (^chif), often draw n with effulgent rays issuing from its surface. The dragon is generally depicted in pursuit of such a jewel. It answei's to the Buddhist jewel of the law, the special symbol, also, of a universal monarch. 2. A circle inclosing a square (No. 2). This repre- sents a "cash" (cA'/V/^), the ordinary money of the Chinese, wliich is a round copper coin pierced with a square hole in the center for convenience of stringing. A couple of them may be united by a fillet, or a long line form an ornamental border to a plate. Sometimes the god of riches will be seen emerging from the clouds at night, with a string of such " cash " whirling round his shoulders, in the act of tilling a treasure chest, while the guards are sleeping beside it. 3. An open lozenge (faitf/shenr/) with ribbons en- twined round it (No. 1). This is a symbol of victory or success. A pair of such objects interlaced make a common symbol, a pattern for jewelry, or worn in the front of the caps of boys, conveying the idea T\mg hshi fang sheng, or " Union gives success." 4. A solid lozenge (No. 2), another form of the same symbol (fcmg sheruf). A musical stone of jade or a plaque of bronze may be fashioned in this shape. 5. A cJCiiig^ or musical stone of jade (No. 3). Also cast in sonorous metal. Struck with a hammer, it is a very ancient musical instrument, and minute directions for its manufacture are found in old books. A set of sixteen, of different size and thickness, form the pien ch^iiig^ or " stone chime." It is also a Buddhist musical instrument. On account of the similarity of the sound of its name ^vith that of the word cJiHng, which means "happiness" and "good luck," it is often seen in sym- bolical decorations on the rafters of a house, the side of a winecup, etc. I i MARKS ON C1IINP:SE PORCELAIN. 121 6. A pair of l)ooks (j