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This month's Arts of Asia magazine (May-June 2010) includes an interesting article on late Ming porcelain, entitled Hovering between orthodoxy and secularity: Ming Imperial ceramic wares of the Jiajing and Wanli periods, by Joan Y.H. Ho. The article is in connection with an exhibition at the University Museum in Hong Kong, curated by Ms Ho, which runs until May 23rd.

I will miss the exhibition unfortunately, not having any trips planned to Hong Kong before the 23rd, but this well-illustrated article makes up for this.

In her article Ms Ho discusses blue and white porcelain from the period in question, and also Wucai and monochrome ceramics from the same period. Wucai ("five color") enameled porcelain from this period is quite well-known to collectors, monochrome pieces perhaps less so. Ms Ho traces the evolution of late Ming designs and links the painted designs on blue and white ceramics to woodblock prints from the same period. Her juxtapositions of prints and painted ceramic designs are striking and convincing. Textile designs are also (correctly) cited as a source for blue and white porcelain patterns of this period.

Despite the outstanding items on display in the article (and in the exhibition), Ms Ho is strangely unenthusiastic about the decorated pieces that she is curating. She compares Jiajing and Wanli porcelain unfavorably with early Ming blue and white, which she regards as the high point for blue and white assigning to it "supremacy in artistic and technical achievement". On the achievements of the Jiajing and Wanli reigns she is rather unkind, describing the influence of the newly wealthy Chinese merchant class in the following terms :
Facing the impact of mercantilism in the late Ming period, the search for lofty objects of the spirit degenerated into the pursuit for mere material enjoyment. She goes on to accuse the late-Ming Chinese of extravagance,  greed, pretension, the tendency to flaunt and wordly inclination. Strong stuff indeed. I had to check twice to confirm that she was talking about the late Ming and not Wall Street pre-2008, or Shanghai circa 2010. For the porcelain itself she has some equally tough words: arbitrary and stiff lines drawn in an exorbitant and complex manner on the wucai porcelain wares. Ouch.

Fortunately the ceramics illustrated in the Arts of Asia article tell a quite different story. They are charming. The decoration on these pieces is a cross-section of Chinese life and lore from the late Ming, including domestic scenes, boys at play, gardens, rocks, sages and scholars. All beautifully drawn in a lively and informal manner. I have reproduced two of my favorite pieces from the article here: the first picture is of a Jiajing period plate with a wonderfully restrained design of birds and a persimmon tree. The second is a detail from a large Wanli jar with the auspicous theme of 100 boys at play.

Ms Ho's views on the development of art and design during the Ming period are not uncommon, in fact they are conventional amongst many scholars. The central dogma can be summarized as follows:

1. the peak of Ming blue and white porcelain, and much other art besides, occurred during the Yongle (1403-1424) and Xuande (1426-1435) reigns
2. the best items were made for the Emperor and his court
3. during the late Ming lots of commoners were able to buy luxury goods like porcelain too. They had money and questionable taste and so artistic production increased in volume but went down in quality.

Incidentally, If you substitute "Qing" for Ming in the above and "Kangxi" for Yongle/Xuande you will obtain a similar conventional view for the artistic production of the Qing dynasty.

These views on late Ming porcelain and art in general are not shared by all. I hope from the couple of pieces I have shown here that it will be apparent that the decoration on this porcelain is anything but stiff. It is true that the late Ming saw a large increase in blue and white porcelain production, much of it for non-Imperial clients, and with this increase came a wider range of quality and painting skills, including cheaper items for the aspiring merchant classes. But the best late Ming pieces hold a candle to any from earlier times. Painting skills were actually improved (in my view) by pieces being produced in greater numbers, since porcelain artists became increasingly fluent with repetition, something that is particularly important with Chinese brushwork skills.

Japanese collectors in particular "got it" many centuries ago, avidly collecting the blue and white from the late Ming and early Qing which they termed "ko sometsuke". They valued this porcelain precisely for its informality and liveliness. Wucai from the same period was collected in Japan for the same reason, and inspired potters in Kyoto to produce ware they called akai-e ("red ware"). Both types of ceramic were used extensively in the Japanese tea ceremony and are still produced and collected today, something that can come as a surprise to Westerners who are more familiar with the wabi-sabi tea ceremony aesthetic. These styles are a direct legacy of the late Ming, which was far more influential on Japanese ceramic designs than anything produced in the Yongle or Xuande reigns.

Returning to Ms Ho's article, she praises the simple and unpretentious style of the floral scroll pattern and Arabic patterns found on porcelain before the Jiajing and Wanli periods. In my view "pretentious" is not a word that I would apply to much porcelain, but if we are going to use it we would be more justified in labeling early Ming pieces as "pretentious", since these designs self-consciously imitate a non-Chinese (Arabic) style. Some of the strangest designs from this period even attempt to imitate Arabic calligraphy (badly). The Jiajing and Wanli decorative styles in contrast are the products of native Chinese artistic imagination, freed from the constraints of foreign forms and designs. They depict Chinese life and legend, and they are made by and for the people, albeit the newly wealthy merchant classes of the day. This is arguably more worthy of celebration than the adaptation of Middle Eastern designs.

Don't let any of my criticism put you off though ... both the article in Arts of Asia magazine and the exhibition are worthy of the attention of anyone with interest in Chinese ceramics, art or history.

Details of the exhibition are on The University of Hong Kong Museum website

My contribution to a very, very old discussion.

Amongst the more unusual kilns from the illustrious history of Chinese ceramics is the Jian kiln from Fujian province. The Jian kilns operated during the Song and Yuan dynasties (roughly from the mid tenth to the mid fourteenth centuries) and made black teabowls and very little else. What their production lacked in variety it made up for in virtuoso technique in the making of black glaze and the various effects that could be obtained from it. Scholars and modern day potters are still arguing about how some of the effects were created, and some variations (notably some rare bowls with iridescent oil spots) have still not been copied satisfactorily. Despite their humble origins the bowls were admired by Chinese emperors and humble Buddhist monks alike, and were influential in the development of tea culture in China and Japan.

The photos in this post are of three bowls in a group of 15 that I bought from the same source in 1996 or 97. They were all excavated from the Jian kiln site at the same time and were probably part of the regular production of one of the kilns, perhaps during the 10th or 11th century. All of the bowls are around 9.5cm wide: this size was quite common in Jian production, but is less favored by collectors today. As a result I was able to buy a large group, and they have been a useful reference for Jian designs and effects ever since.

Looking at this set of bowls again today the thing that strikes me is the range of surface decoration. No two bowls are alike. This begs the question of to what extent  Song dynasty potters were able to control the effects they produced. Some control was certainly exercised: in many bowls it is possible to see how carefully the glaze and surface decoration were applied, but the kilns in use in those days lacked the precise controls of temperature and air flow that modern potters take for granted. My impression from looking at this group is that the pattern on the finished bowl was still to some extent in the hands of the kiln god, despite the evident skill of the potters.

The coloring on Jian ware bowls is iron. This is one of the commonest coloring materials on pottery and porcelain, and probably the first one that was ever used on a pot. In small amounts it makes pale blue and green glazes, in larger amounts it makes dark green and brown colors, and in large amounts it makes colors that are close to black.

With a black glaze that is saturated with iron further effects can be produced by adding still more iron, that is allowed to sit on the surface of the glaze in solid form. Jian ware potters coated their bowls in glaze (leaving the foot-rim bare) and then added more iron at the rim of the bowl. During firing the iron at the rim ran down towards the center of the bowl. This produced various patterns, the most common of which was fine lines like fur, extending from the rim to the center of the bowl. This pattern was called "hare's fur" by Song dynasty tea aficionados. Though we can't check with Song dynasty authors as to which pattern they meant by "hare's fur" there is little doubt about which design they were talking about. The first bowl of the three photographs in this post is evidently of this type.

The second well-known design is called "Oil Spot", though this term is probably of more recent origin and is not found in Song dynasty descriptions. This type of glaze has round spots distributed over it. These seem to have crystallized on the surface from excess iron in the glaze, probably during cooling.

A complicating factor is that Jian ware was fired with varying amounts of oxygen in the kiln. A slight excess of oxygen gave brownish-black bowls with chocolate colored surface decoration (fired in an "oxidizing" atmosphere). Bowls fired with less oxygen gave blue-black glazes with metallic-looking surface effects (fired in a "reducing" atmosphere). The best Oil Spot effects seem to be on bowls that were fired in a reducing atmosphere, producing silvery spots against a jet-black background. The second bowl in the set of three photographs is of this type.

Song dynasty black glazed ware has been written about in numerous books and articles, but the two most important in the English-language in recent years are probably an article by Marshall PS Wu in Orientations Magazine ("Black Glazed Jian Ware and Tea Drinking in the Song Dynasty", Orientations April 1998), and the catalogue of a major exhibition by the Harvard University Art Museum entitled "Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers" (Robert Mowry et al, 1995). The Harvard catalogue is an outstanding reference, perhaps the definitive guide to Chinese black glazed wares.

Despite a wealth of scholarship some mysteries remain. One such is the decorative effect termed "Partridge Feathers", referred to by Song connoisseurs. This seems to have been at least as revered in Song times as the Hare's Fur effect, but what exactly was being referred to? There is some discussion of this issue in both the Wu and Mowry articles. Wu concludes that what the Song dynasty authors actually meant was oil spot glazes (as they later become known). Mowry et al disagree and conclude that "Partridge Feathers" referred to a type of glaze with large brown splodges on a black background. They go on to identify and label several bowls with this pattern, most of which are Cizhou wares from northern China.

The problem with Wu's solution to the Partridge-Feather mystery is that oil spots are unconvincing in this role. True, some partridges have spots on their wings, but so do many animals, and there is nothing feathery about the silvery metallic spots on bowls of this type. Mowry et al's solution is somewhat more attractive; the brown spots they identify are somewhat more feather-like. The problem with their identification is that Song authors were talking about Jian ware bowls, but none of the bowls that Mowry et al label as "Partridge Feather" were from the Jian kilns, and in fact most of the examples they show were probably from a different (later) era. More recently, a third type of bowl with prominent white spots has been proposed for the title of "Partridge Feather". This type is exceedingly rare and I have yet to see one myself.

Which brings me to the third bowl from my group of 15. This is a Jian ware bowl, with markings that are neither Oil Spot nor Hare's Fur, though they are clearly related to the latter type. Instead of the streaks of "fur" we have a feathery effect from iron-rich material running down the inside of the bowl. The effect seems to be related to a difference in surface tension of the iron-rich material on the glaze surface, as compared with the more typical Hare's Fur effect, but whether this was planned or was accidental is not clear.

Is this the type of effect that Song dynasty writers meant when they talked about "Partridge Feather" Jian ware bowls? One thing is clear from looking at a large number of these things is that effects of this type are much less common than Hare's Fur streaks. This might have contributed to the mystique surrounding this pattern. Rarity invariably attracts the interest of the cognoscenti (they are a predictable lot).

That's my contribution to the debate. Personally I find bowls with this feathery brown effect somewhat more convincing candidates for "Partridge Feather" glaze than the ones put forward in the Orientations and Harvard Museums works. But since we are not able to revive the old Song authors and check exactly what they meant I am under no illusions that mine will be the last word on the topic!

Earlier this year I posted an entry in this blog about my visit to the old city of Kashgar, and remarked that the ancient mud-brick town was still in remarkably good shape.

It seems my optimism was premature. The local government in Kashgar has formulated a plan to replace all the existing mud-brick dwellings with modern brick structures. This will eliminate at a stroke what is possibly the only surviving, virtually complete medieval Muslim walled settlement left within China's borders.

The issues of destruction of cultural heritage and loss of history, memory and place that this raises are highlighted in an article by Jim Stent and He Shuzhong of the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, that appears in this month's edition of Orientations Magazine (October 2009), and also on the CHP's own website.

The pictures at left show a medieval doorway in Kashgar that I photographed during my trip earlier this year. Whilst this particular entry way might not seem very significant, it does contain clues to the great age of the old town. In particular the degree to which the kerbstone of the doorway lies below the current street level (it is "sunken" around 30cm) suggests that it is several centuries old. Over time the ground level of traditional towns rises slowly, as footpaths are re-made with new material. Sunken doorways are a common feature of traditional settlements across the world, and have even been used by urban archaeologists to make a rough estimate the ages of dwellings within such towns.

The other striking feature of this doorway is the carved lintel above it, with its carved vine motif. This is a classical Silk Road design, present on carved wood excavated from even earlier times than the old town at Kashgar. The lintel was probably painted at one time, but the paint is now entirely gone. The lintel might have been carved at the time the doorway was made, or it might be an even older piece that has been re-used from another structure.

Aside from the loss of a unique architectural gem, the re-building of the town is a potential economic loss to Kashgar. It is unlikely that foreign tourists will journey to Kashgar to see a Disney-fied version of the town. I urge those involved with this to re-consider before much is lost that will never be replaced.

On Sunday 8th April 2009 Sotheby's will sell the "Bei Gu Cang" collection of Chinese furniture in Hong Kong. They have put an excellent downloadable catalogue (in pdf form) of the furniture on their website (link at the bottom of this page): it is perhaps the best free book on Chinese furniture that we are likely to be offered this year, with superb illustrations. It also provides an interesting alternative perspective on Chinese classical furniture, re-focusing attention on lacquered furniture and counterbalancing a bias in most published works that feature mainly hardwood pieces.

The collection consists of classically styled furniture finished in red and black lacquer, both plain and inlaid with stone and mother of pearl or finished with flecks of mother of pearl. Some of the shapes will be familiar to furniture collectors, but many of the finishes and decoration will be a revelation. The catalogue includes informative essays by Jerry JI Chen on lacquered furniture, highlighting a Ming Imperial preference for red lacquer, later replaced by Qing taste that seems to have preferred black pieces, by Hajni Elias on the refurbishment of the Forbidden City after a major fire in 1597, and Imperial lacquered pieces by Palace Museum specialist Hu Desheng.

It may come as a surprise to those who associate "Ming" furniture with huanghuali and other hardwoods to find that these types are not mentioned in the early and mid-Ming descriptions of interior furnishings mentioned in these essays: instead lacquer reigns supreme in these periods, and still appears to have been the finish of choice in the late Ming (Wanli) period, from which most of the items in this catalogue appear to date. This is not a new finding: it has been well understood by furniture scholars for some time and referred to in publications by Sarah Handler and Craig Clunas for example, but with a few exceptions most of the pieces illustrated in books by those writers and others have been hardwood, while this catalogue provides solid evidence of a different taste. The items range from simple tables with plain red and black finishes, to sumptuous cabinets with inlaid or painted decoration in gold.

The reason for the bias towards hardwoods in present-day collections and publications is principally because lacquer finishes are not durable, and they are exceedingly tricky to restore. A western taste for polished hardwood may also have directly or indirectly influenced the antique furniture trade in China: why spend time and money restoring a softwood piece with a lacquer finish when it can be stripped, stained and sold much more readily as "faux-hardwood"? The tastes of the foreign clientele who bought restored Chinese furniture from the 1930s onwards may have unwittingly distorted the entire history of Chinese traditional furniture.

In the mid-1990s I lived in South China, in a region where much of the furniture trade maintained warehouses for the collection of old furniture, prior to restoration and shipment to Hong Kong. I recall looking at great piles of unrestored furniture and being struck by the quantities of decayed lacquer, mostly destined to be sanded off and stained brown prior to sale. The only items where lacquered finishes were frequently preserved were large cabinets with genre scenes painted on the front faces. This is perhaps because large flat surfaces held onto their lacquer coats better than other types of furniture, but also because furniture dealers (perhaps) sensed value in the attractive paintings on these items. There are still nice pieces to be had (occasionally) in furniture warehouses, but watch out for repainting and re-gilding.

The fact is that lacquer, particularly the kind applied thickly on top of a base of cloth impregnated with clay, does crack with age. This feature was in fact expected and celebrated by Chinese furniture connoisseurs from the early Ming: the crackle on furniture was admired and compared to the patterns on the backs of turtle shells. After this period tastes changed, and celebration of the ephemeral aspects of life amongst the literati of the Ming was replaced by the aristocratic showiness of the Qing period. The increasing importation of hardwoods from southeast Asia from the 1700s onwards also provided new interests, though lacquered furniture continued to be popular through the 18th and 19th centuries. The true inheritors of the early Ming and pre-Ming tastes (as in so many other aspects) are perhaps the Japanese, where lacquered finishes designed to crackle, wear and decay in interesting ways are still made to this day.

While most of us will not be bidding on these items on the 8th April (estimated prices running from the hundreds of thousands of dollars into the millions), this catalogue is nevertheless worth downloading and studying by anyone with a more than superficial interest in Chinese furniture. The shapes and decoration of such pieces, used by the Chinese court and by noble families, provided the prototypes for the countless thousands of pieces of Chinese furniture, both from town and country, that came after.

To download the sale catalogue follow this link, click on "Ming Imperial Furniture"  and then on "view catalogue" at the bottom of the page. It's 38Mb so will take a little while to download.

There are some general tips on shopping for Chinese antiques, including furniture on my website, where as a bonus you can also gaze enviously at my own Ningbo lacquered cabinet.

If you are thinking of paying a visit to Beijing's 798 Art District (and you should), and if (like me) you have a taste for the bizarre, you should visit the Beijing Happy Sheep Art Area exhibit.

This store displays works by the Jin Chong Wu company (the name means "Golden Pets" in Chinese), consisting of animals "rendered immortal" by the "latest German taxidermy technology".

Not content with merely stuffing deceased pets, the Jin Chong Wu company is staffed by true artists, who transform previously loved animals into dynamic, if rather alarming, exhibits. My favorite example is a small dog (at left) that appears to be getting rather too friendly with a globe. Whether this is an ironic comment on the state of the economy, the environment, or merely a portrayal of what the poor animal liked to do best with its free time before it died of exhaustion, I am not sure.

Taxidermised family pets used to be a familiar sight in Victorian England: visitors to country houses are occasionally startled by glass cases containing moldering cats and dogs. But the business had taken a dip in popularity by the mid- 20th century and acquired sinister overtones. Hitchcock fans will recall that Norman Bates described his hobby as "stuffiing animals".

Jin Chong Wu are doing their best to put the art of taxidermy back in the mainstream where they believe that it belongs. I am not sure that another of their starring exhibits will do the trick however. A rather scrawny cat with a unfortunate patch of black fur under its nose delivers a snarling salute (or perhaps begs for second helpings of tuna).

Aside from the demented dog and cat, Jin Chong Wu seem to have stuffed a great many goats and sheep, these animals presumably being easier to get hold of than cats and dogs. A number of goat heads stare contentedly from wooden plaques and the center of a large porcelain plate.

The company say that they would like to have the chance to stuff as many animals as possible, so if your pet expires don't fling or flush it away, bring it to the Happy Sheep Art Area and have it turned into a conversation piece. Expect to pay more for unusual poses.

The Happy Sheep Art Area is at Zone D, 798 Art District, Jiu Xian Qiao Road, ChaoYang District in north Beijing. It's amongst some narrow alleys so you might have to search for it for a while.

The Jin Chong Wu website is at www.jinchongwu.com

No excuse for posting this, other than these are some of the loveliest ceramic tiles I have ever seen.

They are on the walls at the edge of a courtyard in the Forbidden City, one of a group on the west side that has been recently renovated and re-opened to visitors. This particular wall is the Imperial Telephone Exchange (no, I didn't know that existed before today, either). The grouping of courtyards mostly consists of residential quarters of the former empress CiXi and her entourage.

The design is a Wanzi lattice, a familiar Chinese lattice design that can also be seen on wood carvings, carpets and other decorative objects. "Wanzi" means "ten thousand" and the design (like most things Chinese) has an auspicious meaning, in this case for the birth of many sons.

I have used a similar lattice (though without the slight compression seen here) in a traditional-contemporary carpet design:  Chinese lattice design carpet.

This just arrived in our Beijing Kempinski hotel Torana store. The rug measures 6ft by 8.5ft.

It's called Great Wall. No prizes for guessing why.

I'm hoping that some Beijing residents might like it as a souvenir of their stay here. This is the first one ... whether we weave any more of these depends on the reaction to this one.

Greetings from Lhasa (I arrived yesterday on a trip to visit our workshop here).

The atmosphere is very different here compared with my last trip in July. Tourists are returning, both local and from overseas. The restaurants are back open (huzzah! more than one place to eat!) and the traders are looking marginally happier. The weather is still decent, though cooling off a bit, and Lhasa residents are out proving the truth of the saying "whereever you find a patch of green, you fill find a Tibetan sitting on it". This includes traffic islands.

Pictured here is one of the new designs that has just come off the loom, that I am pleased with, photographed after washing but before the final trim. Well done Norbu and team. The design is based on one of the imperial seals used by the Kangxi Emperor (1661-1722), one of the two longest serving and most successful emperors of the Qing dynasty. Hope he won't mind me stealing his seal design.

The rug measures about 6ftx6ft (Imperial measures - what else?).

At our Torana An Fu Lu store in Shanghai we have a show ongoing of Chinese silk textile fragments. These range from small pieces like the red silk brocade fragment shown here at far left, up to a complete silk tapestry robe panel from around 1800.

Most of these pieces I've collected in Tibet over the last decade during my regular trips to our workshop in Lhasa. The association between Tibet and Chinese silk textiles might not seem an obvious one at first sight, but in fact it's one of the best places to find old silk, particularly earlier pieces from the Ming dynasty (1353-1644) that interest me most. Chinese silk was used in Tibetan ceremonial robes, altar cloths and other items, and the state of preservation in Tibetan temples is usually better than that found in other parts of China.

As a rug designer, I'm particularly interested in the Ming fragments since they show some of the best characteristics of Ming design: bold designs, a fondness for flowing curves and generous shapes, a nice balance of "figure" and "ground" and a certain freedom and experimentation that is often lacking in designs from later periods.

Cloud designs from this period are a particular favorite of mine, and something I've used in carpet designs for Torana. As an example, I've included a fragment of a red silk cloud brocade that originally formed part of a Tibetan lama's robe, with a Torana rug design (below) that is based on similar cloud shapes. The colors in the carpet design are not characteristically Chinese though, the blue tones on a red ground were inspired by Indonesian batiks (another story entirely).

Textile designs from the Ming period remained fashionable in the early part of the Qing dynasty (17th century), but were replaced at the Chinese court in Beijing by new decorative styles from the 18th century onwards.

The An Fu Lu store show will run during September and October 2008. A map and contact details for our store are at this link.

"Metersbonwe" is not a name that trips off the tongue for most non-Chinese, but you will know it as a famous clothing brand if you are 20-something and from the PRC. The owner of this Chinese clothing chain, Zhou ChengJian, has recently created what has become China's foremost costume museum, encompassing court robes, Qipao from the 1920s and (above all) the costumes of China's ethnic minority groups.

This is a field that until recently was of interest mainly to foreigners and overseas Chinese. Mr Zhou's revelation came during a visit to the United Kingdom in 2003, when he found that many of the relics exhibited in country houses and museums "were from China, and among them were rare ancient Chinese costumes and ornaments" ... thus inspiring "a sense of duty to protect Chinese costumes of all ethnic groups". He set about building a collection that is now displayed at the Metersbonwe flagship store in Shanghai. I saw the collection a couple of days ago, and it is superb. It's strength lies in some fine and early examples of ethnic costume, particularly in the complete outfits collected by Mr Zhou. the exhibit is also well set out with explanations in both English and Chinese.




Metersbonwe Costume Museum, 387 Nanjing Dong Lu, Shanghai (the museum is housed on the top floor of the 5 storey shop in the pedestrianised part of Nanjing Road)
Open 7 days a week, 10am-8pm
admission free
www.mbmuseum.org