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- occupy (fig. 97). Fine quality Yongzheng blue and white porcelains are relatively rare due to the brevity of his reign and because other decorative techiques were popular at this time.
In 1736 Qianlong ascended the throne and ruled for sixty years, at the end of which he abdicated in accordance with his vow that he would not outreign his grandfather, Kangxi. Qianlong�s reign was the most impressive period of the Qing dynasty, and has often been treated as the most glorious reign in Chinese history. The Manchu empire achieved its maximum and final political importance under him, to such an extent that it aroused the envy of even the envoys of the most powerful foreign nations who came to visit.
Qianlong was a noted man of letters, a calligrapher and a poet. He was a connoisseur of the arts, and it seems that no artistic undertaking escaped his influence. Like his two predecessors, he was an enthusiastic collector of antiquities, including porcelains, and when he handled his favourite pieces, he was often moved to write poems about them.
In 1736 he appointed Tang Ying to succeed Nian Xiyao as director of the Jingdezhen kilns. There can be little doubt that of the three great directors of the Qing period, Tang Ying was the most accomplished. It was under him that the kilns of Jingdezhen reached new levels of innovation and refinement of skills. He was an able administrator, and had the admiration and confidence of the potters because he had meals with them and shared their sleeping quarters, so as to gain a complete knowledge of even the smallest details of their craft. Tang Ying had profound knowledge of the technical side of ceramics and discovered the secret of many new glazes. He carefully studied the properties of the different clays and glazes and the action of fire upon them, so that his results were highly finished and perfectly translucent. Under him the growing taste for imitations of the famous classical wares of ancient times was accomplished with masterly skill. His genius and ability over the material was never equalled before or afterwards. It seems that he was in such complete command that he succeeded in almost everything he attempted.
The blue and white porcelains of Qianlong�s reign, although carefully painted, lack the vigour and beauty of those painted during Kangxi�s time. Favourite stock motifs such as dragons, phoenixes, figures in gardens, the Eight Immortals, peaches, and bats, etc., were continued. The tendency to look back and emulate the early Ming blue and white wares is particularly strong in his reign period, when a wider range of shapes were copied. Archaism or the copying of shapes and decorative schemes based on early Chinese bronze vessels was a prominent feature of the ceramics of this period. The practice of adapting ancient Chinese art forms to a present day context is usually referred to as fang ku, copying antiquity, which is a recurring subject in Chinese art.
Due to the increasing preference for porcelains with polychrome decoration, there was a steady deterioration in the popularity and quality of blue and white wares. It seems to have gone out of fashion for the domestic market towards the end of Qianlong's reign. However, it continued to be produced on a large scale for export to Western markets. Whole dinner or armorial services of several hundred pieces were ordered more frequently than ever before. They often had a uniform underglaze blue border design with the family coat of arms, both real or imaginary, being added in overglaze enamels, (see no. vii)
It has been estimated that more than 60 million pieces of Chinese porcelain, including a very high percentage of blue and white wares, were sent to Western markets before 1800. The recent discovery of the Geldermalsen ship of the Dutch East India Company in 1985, which sank off the coast of Malaysia in 1752 with a cargo of over one hundred thousand Chinese ceramics, illustrates the large quantities of Chinese porcelain being shipped to Europe in the mid-l8th century (fig. 113). Chinese commercial supremacy in the field of porcelain lasted until the beginning of the 19th century, when the rivalry of European factories, which could respond more quickly to changes in taste, began to replace it in Europe.
By that time the craze for Chinese porcelains had spread to America. Between 1784 and 1839, Yankee clippers began bringing huge amounts of Chinese porcelains to America,
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