Posts Tagged ‘floral scrolls’

Later export porcelain
The loss of imperial patronage at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province in 1608 prior to the death of Emperor Wanli (d.1619) encouraged the Chinese potters to seek new markets for their wares. They made dishes to European specifications, introducing new shapes and decorative motifs. They also had an unrivalled artistic freedom, which unleashed a great creativity, while the technical quality of the body and glaze improved noticeably.
TRANSITIONAL WARES
Blue-and-white porcelains of the Transitional period (1620-83) are characterized by the purplish tone of the blue, and by the easy naturalism of the brushwork. Narrative scenes were common, while landscape painting was given unprecedented importance. Colophons were very rarely added, but when they are found they often give details of where the object was produced, which clearly aids the dating of such items. Enamelled Transitional wares are the forerunners of the group of wares known as fanzine verte, and the colours are noticeably bright and clean. The Transitional period also marks the appearance of the first truly European shapes, including table salts, mustard-pots, square flasks, and candlesticks.
EXPORT PORCELAINS FROM JINGDEZHEN
The porcelains produced at Jingdezhen after Emperor Kangxi reorganized the kilns in 1683 are markedly more refined than earlier wares. The potting is economical and neatly trimmed, while the glaze is very thin and glassy. The foot-rims often have a faint amber blush due to oxidization. The blue varies from a silvery hue to an almost purple tone. After c.1730 export wares began to decline considerably; this is evident in the poorly trim med foot-rims and in the presence of sugary kiln grit, as well as in deeper oxidization, and an irregular and bluish glaze.
The range of decorative themes is varied and includes flowers and plants growing among rocks, sometimes enclosed within a fence, especially from the Yongzheng period (1723-35). The landscape designs used during the Kangxi period (1662-1722) have a sense of craggy remoteness, which later gives way to a more comfortable, idealized structure, with pavilioned isles, drifting sampans, and bending trees.
In the early 18th century northern-European clients
began to order dinner services decorated with their own
coats of arms, although the Spanish and Portuguese had ordered individual pieces with arms more than a century earlier. These armorial services were executed in underglaze blue or in the famine-verte palette (green, iron-red, blue, yellow, and a manganese purple). However, the later famillerose armorial services, often embellished with gold, are more numerous; hundreds of thousands of pieces were dispatched each year as wealthy British families ordered vast dinner services.
Europeans commissioned a variety of designs to be copied, sending paper patterns and wooden models to the Chinese. Early during the reign of Qianlong (1736-95), plain, blank porcelains from Jingdezhen were probably sent to be decorated in Guangzhou (later Canton) in Guangdong Province; blue-and-white ware was already fully decorated, as the decoration was underglaze. Their close proximity to the decorators’ workshops enabled East India Company employees to complete their private trade orders quickly and effectively. By comparison with general-trade porcelains, these private orders form a much more interesting and collectable group. In addition to the armorial wares, which are by and large formulaic, there are pieces with designs meticulously copied from European engravings.
By the second quarter of the 19th century tailor-made wares were the exception, and production concentrated on heavily enamelled decorative wares and dinner services. Pink, green, and gold with touches of yellow and turquoise were the usual palette of these later porcelains, decorated in Canton and known as “Canton” wares. The material and glaze are generally of secondary quality, with deposits of sugary kiln grit.
SHIPWRECK CARGOES
Among the many ships carrying tea, porcelain, spices, and silk from China to India and Europe, a number inevitably sank before they completed their journeys. In recent years some of these shipwrecks have been salvaged and their precious cargoes auctioned. They include the Dutch ship Geldermalsen, carrying the so-called Nanking cargo, which sank in 1752 with 25,000 pieces of porcelain intended for sale in Amsterdam and was found in 1986. The Diana, which sank in 1817 in the Strait of Malacca en route to Madras, was salvaged in 1994; just under 24,000 pieces of intact blue-and-white porcelain were recovered from the ship, indicating the popularity of this type of export ware.
SWATOW WARES
Named after the port of Shantou (Swatow), Swatow wares are roughly decorated porcelains made around Chaozhou in Guangdong Province from the mid-16th century for export principally to India, South-East Asia, and Japan. Although wares include blue-and-white and slip-painted pieces, it is the polychromes that are best known. The decoration is executed with great flourish in overglaze red, green, and turquoise, with a sparing use Of black. Forms include plates and dishes, and kendi ritual vessels), while characteristic motifs include the ..split pagoda”. Often red character seals are alternated with cartouches around the edges of these wares.
DEHUA PORCELAIN
White porcelain from Dehua in Fujian Province was produced from the Song period. Ming wares from Dehua have a warm ivory tone, while the Qing wares are usually more bluish, or dead white. The most typical forms of Dehua porcelain (known in Europe as blanc-de-Chine) are hollow figures of Buddhist deities – most notably of Guanyin, goddess of mercy – although in the Ming period figures of the Madonna and Child were also produced for the Portuguese. Small cups decorated with reliefs of blossoming prunus were also exported. Dehua wares are usually signed with a small seal impressed into the back of the sculpture.
YIXING WARES
Yixing wares are red stonewares, made in Jiangsu Province, which were exported to Europe from the mid-17th century until the end of the 18th century. The most commonly exported wares were small teapots and cups, either left plain or decorated with ,garden scenes in relief, or with sprigged decoration such as prunus branches. In the 1670s potters in Delft began to produce a low-fired redware in imitation of Yixing, and from the late 17th century potters in Staffordshire produced a similar ware. A number of small Yixing figures were exported to Europe.
Transitional wares
• BODY greyish-white porcelain
• BLUE rich and purplish, applied in washes
• DECORATION taken from printed sources: narrative scenes and flower studies applied as outlines filled in with a wash, a technique known as “line and wash”
• THEMES narrative scenes taken from literary classics
Kangxi blue-and-white porcelain
• POTTING generally very economical and neatly trimmed around the base
• GLAZE very thin and glassy
• FOOT-RIMS faint amber blush due to oxidization
• BLUE varies from a silvery to an almost purple tone
• THEMES flowers and plants growing among rocks; landscapes
Jingdezhen enamelled export porcelain
• SHAPES many European shapes drawn from silverware or European pottery and porcelain prototypes
• DECORATION translucent overglaze enamels with dominant green in densely meshed patterns; gilding
Dehua wares
• BODY white porcelain
• GLAZE warm ivory (Ming); bluish white (Qing)
• SHAPES tall, hollow sculptures of Buddhist deities, figures of the Madonna and Child, and small cups
• DECORATION reliefs of plum blossoms on cups
• MARKS seal signature on the back of sculptures
Yixing wares
• BODY red stoneware
• GLAZE some figures are covered with a pale-grey glaze
• SHAPES small teapots and cups
• DECORATION relief or sprigged decorations
• COPIES made in Europe in the late 17th century by the Elers brothers in Staffordshire and Arij Milde in Delft

Song Dynasty
The Song Dynasty (960-1279) is regarded as the classic period of Chinese ceramics, when simple, elegant wares decorated with attractive monochrome glazes were produced. The five “classic wares” – Ding, Jun, Ru, Guano, and Ge – were produced for imperial use, while other wares, notably Cizhou and some of the northern celadons, were made for a much wider market.
CELADONS
The most characteristic Song ceramics are the celadons, with their iron-derived, semi-translucent, usually greenish glaze. When the Song court was situated in northern China (960-1126), such centres of production as Yaozhou in Shaanxi Province became important for celadons; the most distinctive northern celadons are those with incised or moulded decoration of floral scrolls covered with an olive-green glaze. The later Longquan or southern celadon usually has a pale-grey body that shows the thick, opaque, bluish-green, slightly bubbly glaze to advantage. The best Longquan wares include archaic forms and items for the scholar’s desk, bowls, and vases. Jun wares made in Yu xian and Linru in Henan Province are thickly potted stonewares with a lavender-blue glaze often splashed with purple derived from copper oxide and, very rarely, green. Typical forms include chunky globular jars. Ru wares, the rarest and most coveted of all Song ceramics, are simple, elegant stonewares with a crackled blue-green glaze. Guan wares have light buff or dark stoneware bodies with a very thick, pale-greyish glaze that is usually strongly crackled and may be black, brown, or clear. The bodies show dark brown or black on the unglazed rims and feet.
OTHER WARES
Ding wares, made in Ding xian in Hebei Province, are fine porcellaneous stonewares with a warm ivory glaze, made in delicate shapes, including ewers and vases as well as small plates and bowls. Most flatware was fired upside down – the rims were left unglazed, and were bound with gold-coloured metal (now
patinated). Moulded decoration was introduced in the 11th cenrury; in this a reusable stoneware mould was impressed onto the hard clay, creating closely meshed designs; the earlier, more fluid, hand-carved ornament was also used. Qingbai (bluish white) wares from
Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province have a fine white porcelain body and a glassy blue glaze that tends to pool. These items are very delicate and elegant, and include thinly potted conical bowls and beautifully proportioned vases.
Fine black-glazed stonewares were produced during the Song period in Henan Province and at Jian in Jiangxi Province. Blackwares were sometimes decorated with red-brown floral designs. Cizhou wares, named after the kilns in Cizhou in Hebei Province, are sturdy stonewares with robust designs in black-and-white slip; often part of the black slip was scraped away to create a textured pattern (sgraffito), while on other wares the designs were sometimes painted on. Common shapes include “pillows” and meiping (an inverted-pear-shaped vase).
Marks
Song wares are generally unmarked, although a few stoneware moulds have survived with 12th- or 13th-century dates incised on the surface

• BODY most Song wares are stonewares, although Ding and Qinghai wares are porcellaneousSTYLE
• subtle and scholarly, in contrast to the flamboyance of the preceding Tang period and the subsequent Yuan period; from the 12th century there is a strong archaizing tendency, with a fashion for classic jade and bronze shapes
• DECORATION many Song wares are without ornament, relying for effect on the harmony between glaze and form; early Ding and northern celadons are decorated with restrained carved designs – some later wares have busier moulded floral and foliate decoration; Cizhou wares show the greatest variety of decorative techniques