CERAMIC ART IN CHINA. 337 



From 1465 to 1487. 



Durincr the Ch'enghua period (1405 to 1487) the production of porce- 

 lain bearing a blue decoration under the glaze continued, but owing 

 chiefly to the fact that the supply of Su-ni-j)o blue from abroad was 

 exhausted and partly from the growing preference for ornamentation 

 in enamel colors, this ware was inferior in color to that of the Hsiiante 

 period; and it is for the decoration in enamel colors that this period is 

 chiefly and justly famous. 



One authority states that among the productions of this period are 

 the most beautiful of wine cups, the upper part of which is adorned 

 with a Chinese peony {Pceotiia moutan) and having at the base a hen and 

 -chickens full of life and movement.^ Hsiang Tzu-ching thus describes 

 a pair: 



They are of rounded form, swelling below, so thin and delicate that one weighs 

 less than a third of an ounce. The eockcombs, narcissus, and other flowers, the fly- 

 ing dragon fly and crawling mantis, painted after life, in green, yellow, and crimson 

 enamel. These are choice specimens of the wine cups of this celebrated reign, and 

 are valued at 100 taels [say |150] the pair, yet now even for this money it is impos- 

 sible to get them.^ 



Another miniature wine cup described by him is said to have been 

 purchased for 60 ounces of silver ($90), while a pair in the possession 

 of one of the high officers of the court under the Emperor Wanli is 

 said by another writer to have been valued at 1,000 ounces, or $1,500. 

 Whatever may be thought of the last statement, the prices mentioned 

 b}' Hsiang Tzii-ching are fulh^ confirmed by contemporary writers. 

 The Treatise on Pottery (the T'ao-shuo) quotes from a work written 

 towards the end of the Ming dynasty as follows: 



On the days of new moon and of full moon I often went, while at the capital, to 

 the fair at the Buddist temple Tz'u-en-ssu, where rich men thronged to look at the 

 old porcelain bowls exhibited there. Plain white cups of Wanli porcelain were sev- 

 eral ounces of silver each, those with the marks of Hsiiante and Ch'enghua were 

 twice as much more, up to the tiny cups decorated with flghting cocks, which could 

 not be bought for less than a hundred ounces of the purest silver, pottery being 

 valued far more highly than precious jade.' 



From the time of the Emperor Wanli it was the endeavor of every 

 man of taste, whose wealth could support such a strain, to set wine cups 

 of Ch'enghua ware before his guests. Considering how many pieces of 

 this choice porcelain must have been thus sacrificed, it is not surprising 

 that it is almost impossible to procure specimens at the present day — 

 nearly three hundred years after they were selling at twelve times 

 their weight in gold — though Doctor Bushell states that "one may be 

 occasionally seen in a Chinese collection preserved in an ebony box 



* S. Julien, L' Histoire et la Fabrication de la Porcelaine Chinoise, p. 94. 

 ^S. W. Bushell, Chinese Porcelain before the Present Dynasty, No. 59. 

 ' Quoted by Bushell, p. 98. 



