Mention has already been made of the celadon-glazed wares made from the Sung period onwards in imitation of green jade, which are perhaps the most widely distributed of all the wares produced in China for export. To this category belong the great rice-dishes and jars for storing grain, often of extraordinary weight in proportion to their size, frequently met with in India and Persia, and everywhere along the shores and islands of the Indian Ocean. This class of porcelain was known to the Arab traders of the Middle Ages as “Martabani,” from the name of the Burmese port which was one of the centres for its distribution. This nomenclature finds its parallel in the name “Gombroon ware,” by which it was called in England in the seventeenth century; the establishment of the East India Company’s factory at Gombroon on the Straits of Ormuz first opened the way for its importation in any considerable quantity into this country.
Bowl, Italian, dated 1638, probably made at Pisa, the design on the exterior borrowed from Turkish earthenware. Height, 2½ in. Willett Collection.
The mark and the medallion inside are reproduced below the elevation of the bowl.
The long-necked vase of celadon ware from the Jones Collection in Plate 5 may fitly be described here, as it probably dates from the latter part of the Ming dynasty, though the refinement of the form suggests that it may have been made in the earlier years of K’ang Hsi. The surface of the vase is entirely coated with a crackled glaze of bluish-celadon tone, running down in thick waves round the edge of the foot. On this glaze is a design delicately traced in white slip, thick enough to stand out in sensible relief, with details incised by means of a pointed instrument. This decoration, spread over the whole of the vase, is composed of archaic dragons, from the mouths of which issue scrolled stems with leafy terminations having in some cases the outline of the sacred _ling-chih_ fungus. The rich ormolu mounting is characteristic French work of the period of Louis XVI. Below the mouth of the vase hang festoons of drapery, passing through handles which are finished downwards with a bunch of grapes and vine-leaves; the foot is chased with a band of guilloche pattern above a square plinth with incurved corners. This is probably the workmanship of Levasseur, one of the host of artist-craftsmen to whose talent the furniture of eighteenth-century France owes its dignity and refinement. Their taste and judgment was never better displayed than when objects of beauty or rarity were handed to them to be enriched by their skill. The vase before us is a typical case; the porcelain loses nothing of its own loveliness in becoming the medium for displaying the beauty of the metalwork.