414 KEPOKT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888, 



From 1465 to 1487. 



During the Ch'enghua period (1465 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 8u-ni-po blue from abroad was 

 exhausted and x)artly 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 ( Pceonia moutan) and having at the base a hen and 

 chickens full of life and movement.* Hsiang Tzuching thus describes 

 a pair: 



They are of rouuded form, swelling below, so thiu and delicate that one weighs less 

 than a third of an ounce. The cockcombs, narcissus and other flowers, the flying 

 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 impossi- 

 ble to get them.t 



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 ofllicers of the court under the Emperor Wanli is 

 stated 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 

 by Hsiang Tziiching are fully 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-ssii, where rich men thronged to look at 

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

 several 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 fighting 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.t 



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 Oh'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 Dr. Bushell states that ''one may be 

 occasionally seen in a Chinese collection preserved in an ebony box 

 softly lined with padded silk." Four specimens of these cups are con- 

 tained in the collection— Nos. 300 to 303. 



* Julien : Op. cit., p. 94. t Quoted bv Bushell : Op. cit., p. 98, 



t Bushell: O^y. cit., No. 59. 



