WE have now followed the steps by which the dependants and the neighbours of the ‘Middle Kingdom’ to the North, the East and the South, acquired the essentially Chinese art of the manufacture of porcelain. The next stage in our history brings us at one step to Europe. Before making this stride of more than a thousand leagues from Japan to Central Germany, it will be convenient to bring together some of the scattered references to the porcelain of China that have been laboriously disinterred from the works of the Arab and Christian writers of the Middle Ages, and to compare these statements with the scant account of the trade with Western lands to be found in the Chinese books of that time. We shall then trace rapidly the history of the stages by which the European nations became better acquainted with the porcelain of the Far East so as finally to master the secret of the manufacture.

For the earlier period we are dependent almost entirely upon Arab and Chinese sources. The love of the marvellous, the spirit of Sindbad the Sailor, has to be discounted in the first, and we have seen what reservations we have to make in accepting the statements of the latter.

There is no doubt that it is in the extraordinary development of trade that followed the wave of Arab conquest in the seventh century that we must find the first possibilities of direct communication with the Far East. The great advance made by China in the early and palmy days of the Tang dynasty (618-907) no doubt opened the way for this intercourse. At that time China was in possession of a civilisation in many respects as advanced as that to be found either at Constantinople or at Bagdad.

As early as the year 700 of our era we find mention of a foreign settlement at Canton, so that that town can claim a longer record than any other Chinese port. But it was rather at Khanfu, as the Arabs called Hangchow (or rather its port), the Kinsai of Marco Polo, that, in the time of the next dynasty, the Sung (960-1279), the chief trade was carried on. Thus we find that Edrisi, who wrote a work on geography (c. 1153) for Roger, the Norman king of Sicily, is eloquent upon the riches of this port of Khanfu and the neighbouring town Susak (perhaps Suchow), ‘where they make an unequalled kind of porcelain called ghazar by the Chinese.’

At this time, though many Arab merchants were settled at the ports of Canton, Zaitun, and Kinsai, the bulk of the commerce, it would seem, was carried on in the larger and stronger junks of the Chinese, and the best account that we have of the intercourse of China with foreign countries is to be found in the report on external trade, written by Chao Ju-kua, early in the thirteenth century.[127] This Chao was ‘inspector of foreign shipping’ at ChÜan-chou Fu, a town on the coast of Fukien, which may perhaps be identified with the Zaitun of Marco Polo. In any case it was, at that time, the principal starting-point for foreign commerce. We have in his report a curious account of the trade with Bruni, on the north-west coast of Borneo, an island with which the Chinese had already had some intercourse for several centuries, and ‘green porcelain’ is mentioned by him in the list of the merchandise there imported.

We need not dwell here on the well-known passion of the Dyaks of Borneo for celadon porcelain, and the big prices that they are prepared to give for fine old pieces (Cf. Bock, The Head Hunters of Borneo, p. 197 seq.). Of the specimens of celadon and other wares brought from this island we shall speak shortly. Modern travellers tell us that the larger jars, ‘decorated with lizards and serpents’ (probably the early smooth-skinned dragon of the Chinese), are preserved as heirlooms. Besides their medicinal value they are a complete protection from evil spirits for the house in which they are stored. From later Chinese writers (of the sixteenth century) we learn that these large jars were used in Borneo in place of coffins, and it is a significant fact that a similar mode of burial is still in use in Fukien, the district from which these vessels were exported, but not elsewhere in China.

To return to our Sung inspector of trade, as quoted by Dr. Hirth, Chao tells us that at the ports of Cambodja, of Annam, and of Java, the Chinese bartered both green and white porcelain against pepper and other local products. But at that time the great emporium for the Western trade was the port known to the Arabs as Sarbaya, the modern Palembang in the island of Sumatra. Here, or at Lambri, in the same island, the junks laid up for the winter, and in the spring the Chinese goods were carried further west to Quilon, on the Malabar coast of the Deccan, this time probably in Arab bottoms. The porcelain and the other Chinese exports were now distributed to the various lands with which the Arabs traded at that time. Chao Ju-kua, in this connection, mentions Guzerate, and an island that most probably can be identified with Zanzibar. At any rate, at this last spot fragments of celadon porcelain have been discovered in recent days in association with Chinese ‘cash’ of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

There are scattered notices of this Sinico-Arab trade in the works of Arab geographers and travellers, from Edrisi to Ibn Batuta. The last writer, indeed, states that Chinese porcelain has found its way as far west as Morocco. It was a happy idea of the Director of the Ethnographical Museum, in the Zwinger at Dresden, to collect from every available quarter specimens of Chinese porcelain with the object of illustrating the wide distribution of the ware in early days, apart from and mostly previous to that brought about by European agencies. In this collection the heavy celadon or ‘martabani’ occupies, as we might expect, a prominent place, but the later enamelled wares, including even some special types that may be included under the famille rose of the eighteenth century, have been found both in Cairo and in Siam. Here we see large, heavy celadon plates, with thick glaze of pea-soup colour, from the Celebes, from Mindanoa and Luzon in the Philippine group, from Ceram and from other islands of the further Indies. On some of these plates the glaze covers the whole foot, and the unglazed ring, of deep red colour, on the upper surface, points to a primitive method of support in the kiln similar to that formerly in use in Siam. Other celadon plates (there are some huge ones, nearly a yard in diameter, in the collection), differing little from those found in these southern islands, came on the one hand from Cairo, and on the other from Korea and from Japan. From Korea there are also specimens of a curious crackle-ware with brownish glaze and a rough decoration in blue, and from Java a figure of Kwan-yin of a native type, covered with a pale, almost white, celadon glaze. In the same collection we find plates roughly decorated with red and green enamels, a style of decoration which may perhaps be traced back to the earlier enamels of Ming times. Examples of this type of ware—some at least appear to be of porcelain—have been found both in the Philippines and in Ceylon. To come down to more recent times, pieces decorated with large peony-flowers, enamelled with an opaque white tinted by the rouge d’or, on a bright green ground of leaves, come from the Celebes, from Siam, and especially from Cairo.[128]

At Gotha, in the public museum, is a collection of Chinese porcelain brought together by the late Duke of Edinburgh. It is remarkable for the number of fine pieces of early celadon that it contains. As the unique collection of Lung-chuan, of Ko yao and of other Sung wares formed by Dr. Hirth, is now comprised in it, this is probably the most important assemblage of early Chinese porcelain in Europe. These two German collections, in the Zwinger at Dresden and at Gotha, complement and illustrate each other. But we have in England, scattered through our different museums and private collections, the materials for a series of at least equal interest—I mean as a commentary on the history of the spread of Chinese porcelain over the world, a subject to which we must now return.

In the early days of the Ming dynasty the commercial expeditions of the Chinese took on a more aggressive character. In the time of Yung-lo (1402-25) the eunuch ChÊng-ho sailed with a fleet as far as Ceylon, and exacted homage, so the Chinese records say, from the king of that island. In the next reign, that of Hsuan-te (1425-35), the same admiral conducted a more peaceful expedition to Hormus, at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, and in company with merchantmen from India, traded with the ports of the Red Sea, from Aden as far up as Jeddah. Both in Ceylon and at Jeddah (Tien-fong is perhaps rather Mecca itself) we find mention of green porcelain among the goods imported, and at this last port the Indian and Chinese merchants established their factories at the very centre of the Mohammedan world. (I follow the extracts from the Ming Annals given by Dr. Hirth.)

Still more important was the trade with Hormus and other ports of the Persian Gulf. We hear incidentally, at a later time, of a large fleet of Chinese junks at anchor in these waters. To us the Chinese trade with Persia is of special interest, for when, after a brief interval of Portuguese rule, Hormus fell into our hands, it was in a measure through the medium of the Persian ports, and of similar depÔts and factories on the Indian coast (as, for instance, Surat) that we in England obtained our earliest specimens of Chinese porcelain.

And now we must take up another thread of our inquiry and return to the China of the thirteenth century, the China of Kublai Khan, the greatest of the Mongol rulers, as described in the book of the Venetian traveller Marco Polo. Here, in what is for us a classical passage, we find the first known instance of the use of the word porcelain. Marco Polo has been describing the wonders and riches of Zaitun, and he proceeds in his inconsequent way—we will quote first from the old French text, probably the earliest—‘Et sachiez que pres de ceste citÉ de Çayton a une autre citÉ qui a nom Tiunguy, lÀ oÙ l’en fait moult d’escuelles et de pourcelainnes qui sont moult belles. Et en nul autre port on n’en fait, fors que en cestuy; et en y a l’en moult bon marchie’ (Pauthier, Marco Polo, chapter clvi.).

Translating from the later and more expanded Italian text, Colonel Yule renders the corresponding passage as follows: ‘Let me tell you that there is in this province a town called Tyunju, where they make vessels of porcelain of all sizes, the finest that can be imagined. They make it nowhere but in this city, and thence it is exported all over the world. Here it is abundant and very cheap, insomuch that for a Venice groat you can buy three dishes so fine that you could not imagine better.’ In the still later version of Ramusio, printed at Venice in 1579, we find one of the first mentions of the old fable that the porcelain earth was allowed to weather for two generations before being used. (See Yule, Marco Polo, vol. i. p. cxxii. and vol. ii. pp. 186 and 190.)

Confining ourselves to the old French version, the point to bear in mind is the use of the word ‘pourcelainnes’ in this sense as one familiar to the reader and requiring no explanation. And yet in the two other passages of Marco Polo’s book, where the word is found, it is used, and here too without further explanation, for the Cowry shells (CyprÆa) that then, as now, took the place of money in certain markets of the East. There can be little doubt that the ware of which Marco Polo spoke was some kind of celadon, and Dr. Hirth’s identification of Tingui with Lung-chuan is perhaps more plausible than the rival claims of Tekkwa and King-te-chen.

Ibn Batuta, the Arab traveller, who wrote nearly fifty years later, says ‘porcelain is made nowhere in China except in the cities of Zaitun and Sinkalon (Canton).’ In this statement he is of course quite wide of the mark. Like Marco Polo, however, he was struck by the cheapness of the ware, and he mentions that it was exported as far as Maghreb (Morocco).

These ‘moult belles pourcelainnes,’ Marco Polo tells us, were to be found all over the world. He was probably speaking, as we have said, of a celadon ware, though it is possible that he may have seen the pure white translucent porcelain of Tingchou. Our first distinct notice of porcelain out of China is indeed of earlier date. In an Arab manuscript in the BibliothÈque Nationale, treating of the life and exploits of Saladin, we are told that in the year 1171 that great Emir forwarded from Cairo to his feudal lord Nureddin, Sultan of Damascus, a present of forty pieces of Chinese porcelain, doubtless found among the treasures of the recently conquered Fatimite caliphs of Egypt.[129] We have every reason to believe that this store of porcelain, found in the palace of the heretic caliphs of ‘Babylon,’ can have consisted of nothing else but the much prized ‘martabani,’ of which such wonderful stories are told by the Arab and Persian writers.

The high estimation in which this ware was held in Persia at a later date is well brought out in the following quotation from Chardin, who was in Persia in 1672: ‘Everything in the king’s palace is of massive gold or porcelain. There is a kind of green porcelain so precious that one dish alone is worth 500 crowns. They say that this porcelain detects poison by changing colour, but that is a fable.[130] Its price arises from its beauty and the delicacy of its materials, which render it transparent, though above two crowns in thickness.’ Again, in one of the tales of the Arabian Nights, we hear of six old slaves who bring in a salad in a huge basin of ‘martabani’ ware.

Fragments of porcelain, the fine white paste covered with a greyish green glaze, have been found in the rubbish-heaps both of FostÂt or Old Cairo and of Rha (the Rhages of the book of Tobit), near Teheran, and as both these towns were abandoned at least as early as the thirteenth century, a corresponding age has been claimed for the pot-sherds found among the ruins.[131] We now know that a true celadon porcelain was made in Siam, and this ware, there is little doubt, was shipped from the port of Martabani.[132] But in spite of this fact, and of the evidence of the name by which the ware was known, by far the larger part of the porcelain used by the Arabs was probably a true Lung-chuan ware exported from the ports of the Chinese coast, Kinsai, Zaitun, and Canton.

The Memlook Sultans of Egypt encouraged commerce with the East. Makrisi tells us that Kelaun received an embassy from Ceylon. During the fourteenth century and later, the goods transhipped at Aden were carried to the ports on the west coast of the Red Sea and then brought overland to Assuan or to Koos, a town lower down the Nile, near to Koptos. Many of the large dishes now to be seen in the museums of France and Germany may have reached the West by this route, for among the presents that the ‘Soldan’ of Egypt sent to Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1487, on the occasion of an embassy (in addition to some sheep with long ears and tails as big as their bodies), we find mention of ‘vasi grandi porcellana mai piÙ veduti simili ne meglio lavorati’ (Marryat, p. 240, quoting a letter from Bibbiena to Clarice de’ Medici). Before this, in 1447, Charles vii. of France is said to have received from the same source ‘trois escuelles de pourcelaine de Sinant,’ besides ‘platz, tongues verdes’ (whatever they may be), and other vessels of the same material. Again, in 1487 porcelain is mentioned in the maritime laws of Barcelona among the exports from Egypt. In only one of these notices, however, is the Chinese origin of the porcelain expressly stated, so that in the other cases there remains a shadow of a doubt as to what kind of ware is in question. For we must remember that the word porcelain was at that time sometimes applied to Saracenic fayence. Indeed in the old French inventories quoted by the Marquis de Laborde, various kinds of shell-ware, such as frames inlaid with mother-of-pearl, are referred to as porcelain.

It is doubtful whether we can point to a single specimen of porcelain in our European collections whose history can be traced back as far as the year 1500, nor can any exception be made to this statement in favour of anything to be found in the Treasury of St. Mark at Venice. With the exception of one small doubtful piece, I have been unable to discover any specimen of porcelain in that collection. As for the tradition concerning the little plate at Dresden inlaid with garnets cut into facettes—that it was brought back from the East by a crusader—I am afraid that this must go the way of so many similar stories. I have had an opportunity of examining this often-quoted example of early Chinese porcelain, as well as a cup similarly inlaid in the same collection, and I quite agree with Dr. Zimmermann, the Curator of the Museum, that the setting can hardly be earlier than the sixteenth century, and that there is nothing in the ware itself, a plain white Ting porcelain, to point to a great age.

There remains, then, the bowl of pale sea-green celadon, mounted in silver gilt, preserved at New College, Oxford. This is known as the cup of Archbishop Warham (1504-32): it is said to have been presented to the college by that prelate, and the early date is confirmed by the style of the mounting. It is at least a curious coincidence that this celadon cup, the doyen, it would seem, of all the Chinese porcelain in Europe, should prove to be a specimen of the ware first exported from China.[133]

M. de Laborde, in his glossary, quotes from the inventory of the goods of Margaret of Austria, the Regent of the Low Countries during the minority of her nephew, the future Emperor Charles v., the following items among others: Un beau grand pot de pourcelaine bleue À deux agneaux d’argent. Deux autres esguiÈres d’une sorte de porcelayne bleue. Ung beau gobelet de porcelayne blanche, À couvercle, painct À l’entour de personnaiges d’hommes et femmes.’

An additional interest is given to this inventory of the possessions of the Regent Margaret when we remember that it was of her brother that the following story is told:—In the spring of 1506 Philip started from the Netherlands for Spain, along with his wife Joanna, to claim for the latter the crown of Castile, vacant by the death of the great Queen Isabella. Driven by a storm into Weymouth Harbour, the pair were entertained by Sir Thomas Trenchard, the High Sheriff of the county, at his house not far from Dorchester. On leaving, Philip gave to his host some bowls of Oriental porcelain. Two of these bowls of blue and white ware remain in the possession of the representatives of the Trenchard family. One of them is set in a silver gilt mounting of about 1550, with a London hall-mark on the inside. On the outside of the bowl is a bold floral decoration, and inside some quaint archaic fish, similar to those on the Cheng-te bowl in the Salting collection. They have been lately described by Mr. Winthrop in Gulland’s Oriental China, vol. ii.

We have now come to a time when a new channel was opened by which the porcelain and other produce of the Far East could reach Europe. In the year 1517 Fernando Perez D’Andrada sailed from Malacca to the roads of Canton, and the Portuguese not long after established some kind of understanding with the Chinese, which permitted them to trade at that port and at Ningpo. This arrangement, however, lasted but for a short time. Some aggressive proceedings on the part of a new admiral sent out from Portugal aroused the latent hostility of the Ming Government, and the newcomers were before long confined to that ambiguous position at Macao that they occupy to the present day. There does not seem to be any direct evidence that porcelain formed part of the merchandise that they at that time—I mean during the sixteenth century—sent back to Europe; but after the end of the century, when Portugal and her colonies were for a time absorbed in the vast empire ruled by Philip ii. of Spain, a considerable amount of the Oriental ware reached the Peninsula by way of ‘the Indies.’ Specimens of this old porcelain, chiefly of the plain white that the Spanish have always preferred, may still be found, it is said, in some of the royal palaces.

The Portuguese in some measure took the place of the Arabs, whose shipping they had driven out from the Indian seas, and it was now in their ships that the Chinese porcelain was carried to the markets of India and Persia. But by the end of the sixteenth century the Portuguese, now sailing under the Spanish flag, began to feel the rivalry of a new power that was destined before long to monopolise nearly the whole trade of the Far East. In 1604, three ships bearing an ambassador and his suite arrived at Canton. The Chinese were alarmed at the singular aspect of these new people, ‘with blue eyes, red hair, and feet one cubit and two-tenths long.’ The Dutch, however—for such these newcomers were—effected little by this embassy, and it is indeed difficult to understand, when we read of the troubled relations of foreign nations with the fast sinking Ming rulers in those stormy days, in what manner and by what route the porcelain that was now reaching the markets of India, Persia, and somewhat later, of Europe, in such large quantities, found its way out from China. After the establishment of the new Manchu dynasty in 1644, the three southern provinces, including the ports of the Canton river and of the Fukien coast, long remained in the hands of the native Chinese admiral or pirate, so well known to Europeans as Coxinga, and it was not till some years after the accession of Kang-he that the imperial authority was established in these parts, and the trade road re-opened with the newly rebuilt kilns of King-te-chen.[134]

The English at that time had not much direct intercourse with China. What little reached us from that country seems to have been obtained rather by piracy than by trade. In the days of Elizabeth, when a Spanish merchantman or carrack was captured, next to the bullion there was nothing that was more eagerly sought for than porcelain, both that which might form part of the cargo and any pieces in use at the officers’ table. As late as the year 1637, it was through the medium of the Portuguese that the bulk of the English trade with China was carried on. Meantime, however, we had established ourselves in the Persian Gulf, and in the year 1623 we assisted Shah Abbas in driving the Portuguese out of Hormus. We had at that time comparatively close relations with Persia, and there was more than one English adventurer in the service of the great Shah. There is some reason to believe that it was by way of our factories or depÔts on the Persian Gulf (especially the new establishment at Gombroon,[135] on the mainland, opposite the island of Hormus or Ormuz), as well as by those on the coast of India, that the porcelain of China and Japan first reached England in any quantity. In these commercial relations we may no doubt find one of the causes of the confusion that so long existed with us between the wares of Persia, India, and China.

But Chinese porcelain, as well as Persian fayence, must have reached England by another route—by way of Venice—and this at a somewhat earlier date. To this connection of ‘china-ware’ with Venice there is frequent reference in our Elizabethan literature. Florio in his Italian Dictionary (1598) interprets the word ‘china’ as ‘a Venus basin,’ and ‘china metal’ is explained by Minsheu in his Spanish Dialogues (1599) as ‘the fine dishes of earth painted such as are brought from Venice.’ Here the reference probably is to Italian or Persian fayence—in fact the tendency seems rather to have been to use the word ‘china’ for these latter wares and to reserve the term ‘purslane’ or ‘porcelaine’ for the true porcelain of the Far East.

Indeed there is every likelihood that we may find the origin of our term ‘china,’ used vaguely for the better kinds of glazed ceramic wares,[136] in the Persian word chini, which has long been employed for Chinese porcelain and for the finer kinds of fayence, both in Persia and in India. The point to bear in mind is that with our ancestors this word had no direct connection with the Chinese empire, but rather with Venice and with Persia. On the other hand, the special ware known as ‘purslane,’ as we have said, was by them connected especially with that vague country known as ‘the East Indies.’

At the New Year, 1587-88, Elizabeth received from Burleigh a porringer ‘of white porselyn’ garnished with gold, and from Mr. Robert Cecil ‘a cup of grene pursselyne.’ It was not until the beginning of the next century, apparently, that porcelain, decorated with blue under the glaze, was imported in any quantity. To this time we must assign the four pieces of this ‘blue and white’ ware (one bearing the mark of Wan-li) (Pl. xxviii.) long preserved at Burleigh House, the old home of the senior branch of the Cecil family (see page 85).

By the middle of the seventeenth century Oriental porcelain had already become an important article of commerce. At that time by far the larger quantity was imported by the Dutch, and was distributed by them over France and Germany. There is, however, some reason to believe that the Portuguese continued to import certain classes of ware, but it is difficult to

PLATE XXVIII. CHINESE