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- MING BLUE AND WHITE
Some Personal Observations and Comments as to Dating BRIAN S. McELNEY
I have been a collector of Chinese blue and white porcelain since the late 1950�s but have never been able to afford the early 15th century pieces which have in the past thirty years, cost so much money and, apart from a few general observations devoted to the imperial pieces, I intend to concentrate in this essay on the non-imperial pieces.
First of all, the designation �blue and white porcelain� is meant to cover porcelain decorated with underglaze blue, derived from cobalt oxide. Such porcelain generally has the underglaze blue as the pattern and the white as the background colour, but occasionally reverse decoration is employed with white as the pattern and blue as the background colour. Such reverse decoration was popular for a short period in the late Yuan dynasty but was relatively unpopular until the late Ming. It is, however, occasionally found in the third quarter of the 16th century and it also seems to have been popular for subsidiary decoration such as borders in the reign of Tianqi (1621-1627) and a few years before that reign in the early 17th century.
Blue and white porcelain developed from the yingqing wares of the Song dynasty and the shufu wares of the Yuan dynasty and I think it is important to note that the white is never really white in the Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty and the white always has a slightly bluish green tinge caused by small traces of iron oxide in the transparent glaze or body material. In the 19th century, however, true white was being achieved and seems to result in the rather harsh effect given by the late Qing blue and white pieces.
Blue and white decoration seems to have been unpopular at the start of the Ming dynasty, the preferred ware at the time being the white shufu wares and it was apparently not until late in the reign of Yongle (1403-1424) that blue and white became popular and continued to increase in popularity thereafter throughout the rest of the Ming period. The first period in which blue and white imperially marked pieces occur, is the Yongle period and only a few examples are known from this period, all being of small lotus pod-shaped bowls. Imperially marked pieces of the Xuande (1426-1435) and later periods are relatively common but are always expensive in comparison to the unmarked pieces. The rarest and by far the most expensive blue and white wares are those of Chenghua (1465-1487). The fine marked pieces of this reign are normally in the form of palace bowls which can, in good condition, retail up to two million Canadian dollars each.
The early 15th century pieces normally have some natural heaped and piled effect where the cobalt blue underglaze particles gather together during the firing and, in some places, break through the surface of the glaze in rather dense blackish blue suffusions. The Qing potters try to imitate this effect but the blackish blue painting is somewhat contrived and lacks the vitality of the earlier pieces. The finer earlier pieces also seem to have a pretty thick pitted glaze surface comparable to an orange skin, which is surprisingly cool to the touch.
At the start of the 15th century, the designs of the blue and white pieces being produced at the Jingdezhen kilns seem to have been very carefully controlled. The designs and shapes used also appear to have been limited in number and were drawn so carefully that small changes or combinations of borders not normally associated with the main design can be indicative of later manufacture.
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