PORCELAIN DECORATED
enamels are strictly subordinated to the general design, which feature must be taken as essentially characteristic of all the Ming masterpieces. In the Tao-lu it is stated:—"During the Hsuan-tê era there were among the manufactures white tea-cups, brilliant as jade. On the inside were painted flowers, in subdued colours" (blue sous couverte), "and above these a tiny dragon and a phœnix were traced in enamels with extreme delicacy. Beneath the flowers the year-mark was engraved, Ta-Ming Hsuan-tê nien chi. The surface of these cups was granulated like the flesh of a fowl or the skin of an orange. . . . There was no article of Hsuan-tê porcelain that was not charming. The small specimens were the most remarkable from an artistic point of view. The Ming porcelains shone with greater éclat at this epoch." The reader will observe that the term "porcelain" is here properly used—not soft-paste porcelain, but hard, fine ware, with white biscuit and clear timbre.
It will easily be conceived that among the enamelled porcelains of the early Ming potters, many pieces of a common, coarse type were included. Evidence of an indirect nature is furnished with regard to these by the Tao-lu, which says that white porcelain was manufactured in the Hsuan-tê kilns for the purpose of subsequently receiving decoration in colours over the glaze, but that such ware was not classed among choice products. From the few examples now surviving, this "common" porcelain seems to have had brilliant, but comparatively sparse and formal decoration in red, green, and gold, with occasional addition of blue under the glaze.
M. du Sartel, in his work "La Porcelaine de Chine," maintains that the process of enamel decoration over
185
