Ming-Porcelain For A Globalised Trade

THE ‘MING VASE’ ‘Ming’ has almost always been synonymous with fine Ming porcelain, even for non-specialists.

So why the Ming vase, and not the Tang, Song, Yuan or Qing vase, which might be larger, more fragile or more sumptuously decorated and even more valuable when sold at auction?

First of all, it should be stated that Ming is of course difficult to generalise; neither a period of almost three centuries nor one feature alone can be characteristic of Ming China, for there was reconstruction and expansionism, withdrawal, rigidity and stagnation and, at the same time, new ideas and innovations in many areas of the country, all of which influenced production.

In 1644, the Ming dynasty fell and the last emperor hanged himself. The Manchu, the ethnically non-Chinese, conquered the capital, Beijing, and the new Qing dynasty was subsequently founded. However, Ming culture did not vanish completely and continued on into the new dynasty. A part of the elite, the yimin, the Ming loyalists, hoped for a return of Ming rule and nostalgically upheld their former culture and lifestyle. The fine porcelain produced in Jingdezhen for the Ming court continued to be appreciated by the new rulers, and as early as the early eighteenth century the Qing court was ordering replicas of the famous Ming-style porcelain. Under the new dynasty’s Qianlong emperor (1736–1795), blue-and-white and enamelled porcelain in the ‘classical’ periods and styles of Ming was ordered in large numbers for the imperial court and came to be synonymous with excellence.

When the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911 and the Republic of China was founded, the new elite and intellectuals no longer related to the now defunct Qing dynasty, but rather to the Ming era. The late Ming literati, with their love for individualism and freedom, became the role models for the ‘modern’ intellectuals, taking their lead from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early twentieth-century feminists saw themselves in the tradition of late Ming, when highly educated women, members of the literati class and the nouveau riche as well as courtesans wrote poetry, played music and painted. The Ming dynasty had been founded by a former leader of secret societies who had expelled the Mongols; now the nineteenth century too saw uprisings organised by covert associations, which finally overthrew the Manchu Qing dynasty, leading to the founding of the republic.

As a manifestation of historical parallels, Sun Yatsen (1868–1925), the first president of the new republic, visited the tombs of the Ming emperors in Nanjing and had his own mausoleum built nearby.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, a time when the Chinese were working on a revival of Ming traditions, the West developed a growing interest in China. The establishment of such academic disciplines as sinology and, later, art history, soon followed, and the Ming dynasty played a crucial role in this, for it was during the Ming period that the first large-scale encounters between China and the West were recorded, leaving a deep impact on both sides. Ming consequently became regarded as the ‘real’ China, and collectors and museums in America and Europe started to build up collections of Chinese art. Although there were changes in taste, ‘Ming’ continued to be the representation of authentic Chinese culture, not only in porcelain but also in architecture, furniture, gardens, paintings and silks.

Ref.: Clunas 2007, pp. 209–230.

Further reading: Pope 1971; Clunas 2007; Pierson 2013.

Large vase (detail, no. 8).

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BOWL

Jingdezhen porcelain, decorated with overglaze enamels H 10.0 cm, Dia. 21.3 cm Ming dynasty, Zhengde (1506–1521) reign Six-character Zhengde mark and of the period Inv.-No. NO 1118, on loan from the OKS PROVENANCE: Acquired by Nanne Ottema from C. T. Loo in 1933. Loo Ching Tsai (1880–1957) was the leading dealer for Chinese art in the Western world. He first carried out his business from Paris and later from New York. See Davids and Jellinek 2011, p. 300 Publ.: Harrisson 1985, p. 56, no. 53; Borstlap, Terlouw and Hidding 1993, p. 20; Ströber 2011, pp. 54–55, no. 14

The bowl has an elegant shape, with deep rounded sides and an everted rim. It stands on a rather high, inward tapering foot. On the outside, on a yellow ground, are two green dragons in profile among ruyi clouds, chasing after flaming pearls.

To create this design, a sophisticated technique was involved: First the design of the dragon was incised into the body, which was not yet fired, and then the area of the decoration was covered with wax. The piece was then glazed and fired. During firing the wax burnt off and left the dragon design in biscuit. Green enamel was applied to the biscuit, and the piece was fired again, this time at a lower temperature.

The combination of overglaze yellow and green enamels first occurred in the Yongle period at the imperial kilns in Jingdezhen and became fashionable under the Zhengde emperor.

Ref.: A comparable bowl is in the Koger Collection: Ayers 1985, p. 97, pl. 73; Harrison-Hall 2001, pp. 206–207, no. 8:31. For a similar bowl with a Jiajing mark and of the period: Krahl 1994, vol. 2, pp. 80–81, no. 696.

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DISH

Jingdezhen porcelain, decorated in wucai with underglaze blue and enamels H 4.8 cm, Dia. 28.0 cm Ming dynasty, Wanli (1573–1620) reign Six-character Wanli mark and of the period Inv.-No. NO 21, on loan from the OKS PROVENANCE: Acquired by Nanne Ottema from antique dealer M. Keezer, Amsterdam, in 1928 Publ.: Harrisson 1985, no. 64; Borstlap, Terlouw, Hidding 1993, p. 27, no. 20

The dish is finely and lively decorated in the wucai, five colours, technique, combining cobalt blue and bright enamels.

Within a bracketed lobed panel, a scaly, five-clawed yellow dragon with red detailing supports a basin filled with lingzhi, fungi of immortality, and a disc inscribed with the character yong, eternity, above its head.

Below, two stylised phoenixes confront each other, amid fire and cloud scrolls and crested waves around the mountain, which represents the world. The reserved panel is surrounded by an underglaze blue coinpattern medallion, and the well is decorated with blue and iron-red carps swimming among waterweeds. The outside is painted with overlapping multicoloured ruyi heads.

The dragon is depicted front on and seems to almost have the expression of a wild, human face, its hair streaming on both sides. In Chinese, this type is called zhengmian long, full-faced dragon. This motif became popular in the late Ming and early Qing period, particularly in the wucai designs during the reign of the Wanli emperor.

Ref.: A comparable piece was auctioned at Christie’s, Hong Kong, the Imperial Sale, 29 April 2002, as lot no. 617. For related pieces: Lu 2004, p. 64, pl. 1.92.

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MARTABAN: MAGIC POTS FOR SOUTH EAST ASIA There is a group of large and sturdy stoneware jars called martaban, or martavaan in Dutch. Where does this term come from, and to what does it refer?

One of the first mentions of the term ‘martaban’ is found in the travel records of Ibn Battutha (1304–1368/09), one of the greatest travellers in history. He reports that in 1365 the Indian king Kalikan’s daughter presented him with four jars, ‘martabans or huge jars, filled with pepper, citron and mango, all prepared with salt, as for a sea voyage’ (Gutman 2001).

The jars are named after the port of Martaban on the west coast of Burma (now Myanmar), which was an important link in the China-India ceramic trade. Goods were transported overland from China to Martaban, and from there they were shipped to West Asia, India and Africa during the Song (960–1279) and Ming (1368–1644) eras. With the rise of the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya in the mid-1300 s, the land route also became important, thus Arab, Indian and later European merchants stopping at Martaban would demand large jars in which to store water, alcohol, oil, candied fruit and pickles, opium, holy water from the Ganges and other commodities for the next stage of their journey.

Because of their desired storage function they had to close well, and so wooden, leather or ceramic lids were used, held in place by a cord drawn through the ears on the neck.

These jars could have been produced at kilns in southern China, Thailand, Vietnam, Khmer or the local kilns in Burma – but they were all referred to as martaban. This was not a problem for the people who used these jars, but for the ceramic historians it turned out to be a problem. On some of the martabans’ inventory cards from the Princessehof collection one could sometimes find such information as ‘southern China or Vietnam, 13th– 18th centuries’.

The collection of martabans started with the interest of the founding director of the museum, Nanne Ottema (1874–1955). At the time Ottema acquired his first jars it was quite unusual for collectors of Chinese ceramics to pay attention to these rather coarse wares. Ottema’s interest was not primarily the aesthetic appeal of the pots but rather their function as handelsartikelen, trade wares.

Today the Princessehof Museum in Leeuwarden holds one of the most important collections of martaban jars in the Western world, most of them found at the end of the nineteenth and in the twentieth centuries in the South East Asian archipelago, the Dutch East Indies.

Ref.: Gutman 2001, p. 112.

Further reading: Miedema 1964; Moore 1970; Ceramic Society of Indonesia 1976; Adhyatman and Ridho 1984; Harrisson 1986; Roth 1992; Valdes, Lond and Barbosa 1992.

Martaban (detail, no. 36).

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THE COLOURS OF MING: GREEN In the Chinese language there is no exact equivalent of ‘green’. The character qing could be translated as either green, blue or bluish green, even black; it is also the colour of nature and of landscape in Chinese landscape painting, and qing ci, ‘bluish green porcelain’, is the Chinese name for what in the West is called celadon.

There are several explanations for the term ‘celadon’. It could have originated in seventeenth-century France, where in the pastoral play L’Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé (1567– 1625), first presented in 1627, a shepherd named Celadon wore a pale green jacket. A quite different theory is based on celadon being a corruption of the name Saladin, from Salah ad-Din (1138–1193), the first sultan of Egypt and Syria and founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Another theory connects the term with the Ottoman sultan Suleiman (1520–1566).

None of these charming, albeit not very scientific, theories can be confirmed.

It is the general use of the term ‘celadon’ as referring to a family of transparent ironoxide glazes that shall be used here.

Technique Celadon glazes are transparent glazes containing iron oxide, fired in a reductive atmosphere. The desired colour is produced by chemical changes in the iron oxide when deprived of free oxygen. The results are a variety of colours ranging from whitish grey through pale green to a deep and intense green.

During firing many celadon glazes developed crazing, a glaze defect that happens when the shrinking rates of the body and the glaze are different once the glaze has been fired on the piece. As far back as the Song dynasty (960–1279) crazing or crackle on celadons was being produced intentionally as it was regarded as desirable. It was associated with the veins, the ‘patina’ and the beauty of ancient nephrite, jade, yu, recovered from the tombs of antiquity. In a different cultural context, in Islamic Indonesia and the Middle East, celadon cracks were appreciated as ‘magic’ and were thought to be able to neutralise poison.

Most of the celadon glazed pieces were produced in the kilns of Longquan in the southern China province of Zhejiang. The techniques used to decorate Longquan celadons are varied and include incising, moulding, stamping and slip decoration. Most of the designs are floral.

Further reading: Mino and Tsiang 1986; Wood 1999; Tsai 2009.

Vase (detail, no. 69).

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This kendi has a ribbed, flattened body and a large mammiform spout. It is covered with a honey-coloured yellow lead glaze. The mouth rim is bound in copper.

The green-glazed kendi with a globular body and mammiform spout was moulded in two parts, with the seam running across the base, the sides and the spout. It was also fired twice: the first time to mature the stoneware body, the second time to harden the bright-coloured glaze. The body is decorated with a relief of two dragons. Around the shoulders is a band of embossed lotus petals.

Ref.: Singapore 1984, p. 25, col. pl. III c and p. 67, pl. 31; Adhyatman 1990, pp. 160–161, pl. 147; Khoo 1991, pp. 81–82, pls 100, 101 and 102.

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KENDI

Guangdong stoneware with yellow lead glaze H 15.8 cm Ming dynasty, early 17th cent.

Inv.-No. NO 1842, on loan from the OKS PROVENANCE: Acquired by Nanne Ottema from R. Buisman in 1943

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KENDI

Guangdong stoneware with green lead glaze H 19.5 cm Ming dynasty, 1600–1640 Inv.-No. GRV 1950-137 PROVENANCE: Donated by the heirs of R. Verbeek, found in Indonesia Publ.: Harrisson 1995, p. 54, nos 68 a and b

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DISH

Jingdezhen porcelain, decorated in underglaze blue H 2.8 cm, Dia. 21.3 cm Ming dynasty, Wanli (1573–1620) reign, c. 1595–1605 Inv.-No. NO 25, on loan from the OKS PROVENANCE: Acquired by Nanne Ottema in c. 1910 Publ.: Harrisson 1981, pp. 28–29, no. 11; Rinaldi 1989, p. 199

The dish is painted in the centre with different kinds of fish and aquatic plants in soft, silvery shades of cobalt blue. The wall and rim are divided into ten sections filled with auspicious plants and animals. On the exterior rim are large sections filled with ruyi-shaped fungi, butterflies and peaches; the smaller ones are filled with stylised fungi.

In the middle of the inner base is a mark in the shape of an egret or heron. Only around sixty Kraak wares with an egret mark are known, twenty of which are in the Netherlands. The egret, standing erect, is painted with a lively brush. Pieces with an egret mark can be dated, according to Rinaldi, to around 1595–1605.

Ref.: Rinaldi 1989, pp. 195–208.

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