Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/735

* CHINESE AUT. 639 CHINESE ABT. and steatite, and of ivorj", is an art especially identified with China. Jade carvings are of great elaboration, as where a single piece eontaiuing •J.0O cubic inches is wrought into two complete vases, side by side and separated from one an- other, exceptas leaves and twigs, all cut out of the solid mass, connect them. The bronze industry is closely connected with sculpture, for it is the extreme skill of the modeler which has made the Chinese bronzes famous. Vases are preserved which are undoubt- edly two thousand years old; but the production of large and small pieces has never ceased. A httle figure four inches high, as of a priest or a ■worshiper, will be full of movement and energy, and of pathetic or humorous expresgion; and in like manner the basin of a fountjiin six feet across and half as deep will be a single casting, perfectly formed and flawless. Applied Aets. In China the arts of molding and baking clay and of adorning the objects so made by painting is of unknown antiquity, but pieces exist which can with safety be dated several hundred years B.C. The famous and peculiarly Chinese discovery of porcelain (q.v.), which is nothing more than pottery made from a peculiar clay and with a peculiar glaze, although claimed by Chinese authori- ties for an epoch many hundred years B.C., cannot be definitely fixed before a.d. 960, al- though there is no doiibt that it was known be- fore that time. From that time on till the Four- teenth Century it is thought that decoration in color was applied only in the glaze covering the whole surface or large parts of the surface; but. of course, no such assertion can be verified. During the Ming Dynastv". beginning in 1368, the full glory of Chinese painted decoration on ceramic ware, and especially on porcelain, was reached. The method of decoration is briefly this: upon the partly baked or slightly baked body of the piece, painting is done in one of several shades of blue, that being the only color which will bear the heat of the furnace to which it is to be expo.sed. This being fired, the glaze is applied over the blue painting, and the piece may then be finished. It is, however, common to paint the piece again, upon the glaze, with enamel colors, that is to say, colors which will fuse at a much lower heat than that of the original and the later firing already described, and which, moreover, are more or less translucent in their nature. Thus a fine Chinese bowl will have two systems of decoration combined into one polychromatic design, the blue shows through the glaze and aets as the outline or skeleton of the design, and upon this and mingled with it is an elaborate pattern in red, green, yellow, each of several tints. This pattern is graded not only by the difTerence in the color, but also by the amount of heat to which it has been exposed, and again, by the greater or less thickness of the coat or bed of semi-translucent color through which the bluish white svirface of the glaze itself is seen. To persons who have studied other ceramic arts of great importance, and especially the art of Persia, the painted 'overglaze' decora- tion of even the finest Chinese vases and tiles seems hard. The outlines are uncompromising: the flower is rais<'d a little above the smooth sur- face around it, and its edge leaves no doubt as to the place of l>eginning of the colored surface which stands for a petal or leaf. This, in con- trast with the exquisite clouded gradations of the finest Persian wares, seems cold and formal to many European students. The coarser potteries of China are free from this fault, but they have been little studied in Europe. It is in enameling upon metal and in textile fabrics and embroidery that Chinese art as known to Europeans is most attractive. The enameling is done as the same work is done in Europe; the substance, a kind of soft glass, is ground fine, mixed with some viscous material, and applied with the brush to the surface to be covered. This, put into the enameling furnace, which is not of very great lieat, fuses and then hardens completely, producing, as the decorative artist wishes, an opaque or a translucent super- ficial adornment. The custom in China is to use what is known as the cloisonne method (see Enajiel), and in carrying out the designs in this material the Chinese use strong and vivid colors to an extent much exceeding the practice of the Japanese or other Eastern nations. In fact, the Chinese are the greatest masters of chromatic effect iu pure strong color — dark and light blue, dark and bright red, green of two or three tints, dark yellow, light yellow, and the golden eflect given by the metallic edge, which maybe of brass or may be gilded — all these go to make up a color harmony which the workmen of no other nation succeed in so well as do the Chinese. Somewhat the same merit is seen in their textile fabrics, especially in their silk-weaving. Many processes are used and the weaves are sometimes extremely elaborate, as in the case of velvet with pile upon pile (see Vemt:!), and in those curious figured and flowered silks in which there is a decided break or opening between the threads which form one part of the pattern and those of another part or of the background. Embroidery in the liands of the Chinese is as it were an enlargement of the field of textile fabric, for it is used continually to help out and make still more decorative a piece which, as it leaves the weaver's hands, is already very rich. During the recent centuries of decay and col- lapse the arts of China have suffered a great eclipse, and it has seemed at times as if no more fine porcelain or enamel was, or would be, pro- duced. But even in our own time there has been a marked increase in the number of exports of such fine wares, and although thest> are apt to be copies of ancient work, there is nothing except European commercial influence to prevent a re- birth of native art. BimiOGRAPiiY. The most important work by a European on the arts of Cliina is Bushell. Ori- ental Cernmic Art: f'nllectinii of TT". T. Walters (New York, 18S0), an expensive folio which con- tains many excellent chromolithographs, ilonk- house, A Historii and Description of Chinese Porcelain (New York, 1901), to which Dr. Bushcll has also contributed, is vahiable. both for its text and its illustrations, although it lacks unity. .After that of Dr. Bushell. the most important work on Chinese pottery and porcelain is Orandidier. //« rtrautifjue chinoise (Paris, 1804). Oulland. Chinese Porcelain (London, 1S98), gives interesting descriptions, hut shows an inadequate comprehension of the significance of Cliinese art. It is illustrated from photo- graphs. More truthful than photographs in some ways are the admirabh> etchinirs by Jules .Jacque- niart, in Jacqucmart and l.e HIant, Histoire de la