In connection with these painted glazes--for it undoubtedly belongs to this class--it may be well to say something of a very decorative ware of which the origin is probably to be placed in early Ming times. The colours are distinctly those of the _demi grand feu_, and in this ware we have the earliest instance of the use of these colours. This porcelain occurs most frequently in the shape of vases of baluster outline with contracted necks and small mouths, or sometimes of the more ordinary oil-jar shape, with wide mouths. We may distinguish two types of this ware. In the first the decoration is given by means of a low relief of beads and of ribs surrounding countersunk _cloisons_. The field between these _cloisons_ is of a deep blue passing into a blue-black, and the _cloisons_ themselves are filled with a wash of turquoise or straw-yellow. Chains of pearls in festoon surround the neck, and from these hang _pendeloques_ of various Buddhist emblems. On the body of these vases the decoration often consists of lotus-plants arising from conventional waves.[40] In the second type the turquoise blue predominates, an impure pale manganese is added, and the jars are often built up of an open-work trellis of bars. Both the turquoise and aubergine purple porcelain of the Kang-he period, as well as the Japanese Kishiu ware, may possibly be traced back to a Ming porcelain of this class. There are specimens of all these wares in the British Museum and at South Kensington. In the Salting collection is a jar of the _cloisonné_ type, the blue-black ground covered with a skin of thin glaze of a dull surface. This jar was formerly the property of a Japanese collector (PL. II.).[41]
The colours applied _under the glaze_ are confined to cobalt blue and copper red. The latter when fine in tint was greatly prized by the Chinese, and we are informed that in the most brilliant specimens the colour was given by ‘powdered rubies from the West.’ It was, however, a treacherous colour to use, and after the period of Hsuan-te (1425-1435), which was famous for its ruby-red,
it fell into comparative disuse and was displaced in a measure at a later date by a more manageable iron red. The use of the copper sub-oxide to obtain a red, _sous couverte_, was, however, revived in the time of Kang-he. On examples in European collections this red, when used alone or in connection with blue, is generally of a rather poor maroon colour, and it has not found much favour with us. The colour was often thus applied to the painting of fish, floating, it may be, among blue water-weeds. We see it at its best as a monochrome on some little bowls, enlivened with a floral design in gold, in the British Museum. These cups and some similar ones at Dresden undoubtedly date from Ming times; the ruby tint seen through a brilliant glaze has never been equalled in later days. With these we may compare certain little apple-green bowls similarly decorated with gold. One of these in a silver-gilt mounting of the early sixteenth century is in the Gold Room at the British Museum (PL. V.).