Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/132

 always been held by the Chinese, and considering the labour bestowed on the decoration of these bowls as well as the care with which the paste and glaze are manipulated, it seems reasonable to class them among representative specimens of blue-and-white of their period. If this conclusion be correct, the qualities of the ware did not yet entitle it to high rank among keramic productions. The year-mark of the period is Yung-lo mien-chi, i.e. manufactured in the Yung-lo period; but the ideographs are usually written in a more archaic form.

The Hsuan-tê era (1426-1436) is in many respects the most remarkable period of the Ming dynasty. The blue-and-white porcelain of this date was the first ware of the kind that really deserved to rank among beautiful and artistic productions. In the quality of the porcelain itself a special change is observable. Now for the first time blue decoration was successfully applied to soft-paste porcelain. The Yung-lo potters were little, if at all, less skilled than those of the next reign in the manipulation of their materials. But the idea does not appear to have occurred to them that blue decoration sous couverte might be applied to ware of the Ting-yao type; that is to say, ware having a soft pâte. By the term "soft pâte" the reader must not understand an artificial porcelain mass like that originally used by the potters of Sèvres. The soft pâte of the Chinese keramist was distinguished from hard porcelain biscuit simply in having a much greater admixture of argillaceous matter. It was, in fact, semi-porcelain, made, however, so thin and of such thoroughly refined materials as to be often translucid. As to the composition of the soft pâte of the Sung Ting