Forms and Uses--Description of the various Wares.
We have now given a summary sketch of the history and development of the porcelain of China, and have seen something of the processes of manufacture and decoration. Incidentally some account has been given of the principal wares.
We now propose to take up the subject from the side of the paste, the glaze, and the decoration, putting aside the question of age and of historical sequence, and to run through the various classes into which we can divide our material under these heads. We shall follow as far as possible the arrangement adopted in the British Museum, passing from the simpler forms of decoration to the more complex.
First, however, let us say a few words on the forms given to porcelain by the Chinese, and the uses these objects are put to in the country of their origin.[85]
In a first glance at any large collection of Chinese porcelain the bulk of the objects shown appear to fall into four classes: plates and dishes, bowls, vases for flowers, and covered jars.[86] But a closer examination discloses an endless variety of other uses to which porcelain has been applied by the Chinese.
The figures of the gods and the vessels associated with their worship found in the temples and household shrines form by themselves a large division. Here the use of porcelain has from a very early period been encouraged at the expense of bronze and other metals. The ritual vessels used in the imperial worship at Pekin have for ages been made of porcelain. Many of them, as the jars for sacrificial wine, in the form of elephants and rhinoceroses, are copied from the most archaic bronze types; of the same origin is the small libation cup of peculiar shape sometimes seen in our collections. The _Wu-kung_, or five vessels that stand in front of a Buddhist shrine, the incense-burner in the centre, with a candlestick and a vase on either side, are often in China made of porcelain. In Japan these objects are always of metal. A similar set is found in the Taoist temples. The colour of the vessels in ritual use at Pekin varies with the temple in which they are found. Those of the ancestral temple of the emperors are of imperial yellow; those of the altar of heaven of a deep blue (a set of five of this colour, recently brought from Pekin, may be seen at South Kensington). A red glazed ware is connected with the altar of the sun, and white with that of the planet Jupiter.