The Kangxi emperor, in particular, is a…

1722 CE

The Kangxi emperor, in particular, is a patron of the arts on a considerable scale.

With the Qing dynasty had come the beginning of the immense vogue for porcelain in Europe that is to reach its height during the first half of the eighteenth century.

The pottery industry had suffered severely in the chaotic middle decades of the seventeenth century, of which the typical products are “transitional wares,” chiefly blue-and-white.

The Imperial kilns at Ching-te-chen had been destroyed and not fully reestablished until 1682, when the Kangxi Emperor had appointed Ts'ang Ying-hsüan as director.

Under his control, Imperial porcelain has reached a level of excellence it has not seen for well over a century.

The finest pieces include small monochromes, which recapture the perfection of form and glaze of classic Sung wares.

New colors and glaze effects have been introduced, such as eel-skin yellow, snakeskin green, turquoise blue, and an exquisite soft red glaze shading to green (known as “peach-bloom”) that is used for small vessels made for the scholar's desk.

Also perfected is lang-yao (sang-de-boeuf, or oxblood, ware), which is covered with a rich copper-red glaze.

Kangxi period blue-and-white is particularly noted for a new precision in the drawing and the use of cobalt washes of vivid intensity.

Five-color (wu ts'ai) overglaze painted wares of the K'ang-hsi period become known in Europe as famille verte from the predominant green color in their floral decoration.

These wares also include expert imitations of overglaze painting of the Chenghua Emperor's reign (1464 - 1487).

Another variety has floral decoration painted directly on the biscuit (unglazed pottery body) against a rich black background (famille noire).

Toward the end of the Kangxi reign, a rose pink made from gold chloride is introduced from Europe and used with other colors in the decoration of porcelain (famille rose) and in cloisonné and overglaze painting.

Many varieties of Qing ware are common in the West.

Its wares differ, for the most part, from those of the Ming period in a fairly distinctive manner.

Potters have their medium under almost complete control, and their products are much more precisely finished.

Their finesse contrasts sharply with the struggles of potters in Europe, where porcelain manufacture is not to emerge from the purely empirical stage until the ninteenth century.

Letters written in 1712 and 1722 by a Jesuit missionary who has spent some years at Ching-te-chen record that some Qing pieces are handled by as many as seventy men, each contributing a small part to the total effect, and this is one of the reasons why many Qing wares are found to lack the freshness and the spontaneity of Ming decoration.

Sang de boeuf (French“oxblood”), also called flambé glaze, is a glossy, rich, blood-red glaze often slashed with streaks of purple or turquoise used to decorate pottery, particularly porcelain.

The effect is produced by a method of firing that incorporates copper, a method first discovered by the Chinese of the Ming dynasty, probably during the reign of Wanli (1573–1620).

Examples of this older work are now extremely rare.

The process was at first difficult to control, but it had been mastered by the time of Kangxi.