Ming Blue and White Porcelain, An Introduction #chineseporcelain

hello this is Peter combs from bit amount calm and pl combs Asian antiques located here in Gloucester Massachusetts in this video we're going to do a section on Chinese blue and white porcelain of the Ming Dynasty the Ming Dynasty was the turning point for the application of cobalt blue in Chinese porcelain it had been originally introduced and the slightly shook before this period during the yarn period it had been an exported out of the Middle East into the end of the Far East by Muslim traders that's how it got its start and while it's not possible in one video in 20 minutes to give you everything you need to know about it I'm hoping here you'll get an idea of the range of colors that were able to be achieved using cobalt blue by Chinese potters and especially as the period the Ming Dynasty proceeded they discovered their own sources for cobalt within China and mix them with the imported cobalt you can see here with some of the sort of dramatic things they could do on the right you have a vase with a dragon that's reversed and white against a bluish background and then the left two dragon on blue against a white background pretty pretty inventive for the time and here's the bottom of it it's always important to look at the basis of these jars okay to get an idea of what they should look like these the the fakes and copies today just don't match up not nearly as good you'll also see that in in air early mid and Ming big Ming pieces you're going to find a lot of repeat patterns such as lappets like this this one has a very elaborate lappet upper and lower border would that elegantly done Lotus lid with a shaped rim fitting into it and stem handle and the bowls they did a lot of bowls in the shapes of the bowls were quite stylistically identifiable here with this averted rim nice high foot well done mall and this cuspidor with the wave pattern around the but main part of the body and the acanthus leaf neck running up to a very wide elegant flared rim they did a lot of work working on fixing shapes and getting shapes just right here's the bottom of this they had a sort of an elaborate stepped bottom to it when they turn these and then they glazed them very carefully notice the bluish tone to the glaze and here's a jean de period Bowl with a Greek border freaky sort of running around it again with those lot Lotus Lapiths running around the bottom and a nice mark on the base during the Ming Dynasty they also did stem cups in a wide variety some are underglaze blue others are underglaze red others are Anwar decorated which is incised porcelain on a white body against against the against the piece and glazed here's the mark the mark on these are often placed on the interiors you also find with Ming pieces they place the marks on odd spots or on the edges of rims and so forth you sometimes have to scour the piece to find it if it has a mark they do fake them though so be careful there's a hundred boys Bowl from the Jean Dee period nice deep blue and here is a bowl with vines and flowers again the paste on this is very nice nice white paste beautifully shaped foot and elegantly decorated outlined and dark blue and then washed in you always want to look at how they outline their their drawing and how they gently wash in to give a very nice three-dimensional very fluid effect to their painting such as in this bowl this is a malleable highly collectible and very rare these sell for tens of millions of dollars if you're lucky enough to be able to come across one you probably won't but they're wonderful to look at and examine if you visit museums and so forth here's another genoise bowl very nicely done so it is sketched in decoration with a nicely neatly done mark on the base very good now we're going to take a look at a agenda period Lotus Bowl there's not a lot of cobalt on this but I wanted to show it because it's interesting there's a four character mark Splenda a customer of ours that we sold a few years ago but beautifully shaped and wonderful white porcelain here is another one of these Chunhua again mallow bowls this is a very famous pattern again extremely rare but notice how well it's painted the decoration beaten in artistry on those are excellent and like all ming pieces it was it was you'll also find out later ming pieces that have earlier marks on them this is a long-standing tradition as you know in China you see tang Shi marks on early 19th century pieces and here are just a few examples of john d marks that appeared on late 16th century bowls they're the pieces the mark is you know 100 or so years out of date but they continue to use it because of the esteem to which these pieces were held and these potters were just kept applying shundi marks because they could sell them frankly and people would buy them as period even back then many keys in many cases here's a dish again you can see if you've seen enough of these you recognize that the decoration is a bit odd for to be john d should to tell you that it's not of the period and here you have this sort of a deep purple blue on this bird feeder that it wasn't done too much in that with this tone this purple color wasn't that big during the john d period but came into common use later especially during this period the GI Jing period J Jing was a wonderful time because a wonderful period because it was a very long reign 40 years which is long for the for China and you ended up with the Potter's at that time experimenting widely and their things are very stylistically identifiable as you can see with this the the spacing and the style of the painting is instantly distinct and also the depth of the blue it's almost purple and that deep purple blue became quite popular during the judging period they also did a lot of experimenting with other color ranges in the judging period more than at other times previously here you see the dark blue outlines light blue and even lighter blue and you had balls like this this is a ball that we had a while ago that very stylized Buddhist symbol interior in the body and inside the bowl rather and then lightly decorated around the outside they also produce these this is a very nice sort of alms Bowl deep cobalt blue again that purple blue underneath the glaze beautifully done and again here's here's a purplish colored bowl with light blue you'll see light blue washes there on the bottom picture but very dark blue around the majority of it again almost purple and then you have this heading towards almost a violet color blue okay as they were mixing colors back then they were trying every shade imaginable to get a pleasing effect because if the Potters didn't know what the blue would looked like half the time until it came out they were really playing it by year and they produce some wonderful shapes here is a very attenuated tall sleek Mae ping vase with a stylized lap at bottom and you had these this is again notice the scale and drawing of this is very elegantly done the spacing on it's wonderful the peacocks Lapid upper and lower borders nicely done and they produced plates with blank cuvette o's sometimes are decorated this one has a blank cavero inside the rim there then the outer rims just above plants and flowers and grasses framing it and again another one of these I want to show I'm just showing you a whole range of these to give you some idea how broad the color spectrum became that was possible using cobalt and in the hands of a good artist so you go from that dark purple color from the previous example luxurious use of blue to this very light piece this is a more of maybe a provincial piece with two foo lines and the Buddhist Wheel on the interior is a good detail the Phoenix stylized Phoenix notice the angulation of the wings in that just a vine for a neck really in sort of a large head with flowing feathers coming off of it and then you had an even more simplified type this has a little bit of a barbed rim to it with it with it with a Chamara or dragon in the center chasing around the interior and a vine border in the judging period they also made a lot of boxes porcelain eight sided and six-sided boxes were very popular and you'll often see on the lids this this type of decoration of rocky outcropping would have a perhaps a fruit or persimmon tree or something and their bird on it sometimes people here is a another one again with this one with little infected corners and edges nicely done a little firing flaws on it you see you do see firing flaws on the glazes of these some time to time not all that unusual and here is a style of dragon that is very very typical of the Ming Dynasty these long stretched out sort of prancing dragons and see it's almost like a 180 you go to this now you have a light blue frame scout lined and dark blue washed in of carp they did lots of jars and things with carps cops and birds and people here you have some flying flying storks around clouds and it's a little double gored vase this is a pretty small vase but five inches tall and again you have another one of these boxes and the right is the mark on the bottom of the box and again you have the the lid with this force with the four sided lid with these cartouche ease of fungi and figures on the top and then you have this this is a very large basin they made some very big basins fish tanks and the Ming Dynasty with dragons this one is in the water going around with the Lotus lotus blossoms they're quite rare hope you can find one out there and here's a sort of simple trigram decorated jar or Buddhist thing with birds on it the cash symbol border at the bottom and you have this this is a a late judging Bowl with a ship on it with banners flying and sailors aboard seems probably symbolizing some sort of trade here you have a nice to notice that the pattern and the sin of that sort of calligraphy sweep that's underneath the pine tree you're going to see these on jars and bowls typical de judging period it's one of the one of the sort of a design that evolved in that time and here you have the outside of a bowl with this sort of almost cartoonish Lee drawn Phoenix the very long tail I think those are great I like it when they do things like that and here's the square bottom gourd top the jar with the figures at the bottom and Dragons at the top Rou head borders all very typical to period now here is that pattern I was just mentioning that we looked at with the the bowl notice it again it's almost like calligraphy coming up out of that rock at the bottom often they are admitting these from rocks like vines growing out of them there's a detail again notice the outlining and the washing end of the colors and the sort of this is a very loosely drawn piece that's very appealing visually because a hairline in it but it's not unusual in these there's a rather provincial large jar with loop handles on it with sort of just really wood the tone the tonal range on this is pretty narrow these are not terribly expensive you could find them this is a more desirable box that has some flaws though notice the glaze gaps around the around around the walls there okay that's when the glaze pulled back was slap constructed and it happened that way and you have a very nicely done violet blue very elegant with these car - she's in the bottom each bearing a dragon below a gourd with birds flying and again here you have that stylized sort of calligraphy vine coming up out of the rocks and this with this one there they tip the ends with bamboo leaves slab constructed cups made in the judging period where they were produced fairly widely they're very collectible the leg is not a lot of uh survived this one of the musicians is rather nice and again you have again this one is another of those sort of elongated dragons they had elongated Phoenix's this one's a dragon notice how he sort of prancing proudly around the outside of the jar nicely stylized upper border and here you have a brown washed dish so they're late judging particularly elegant particularly pretty nicely done inner border around the rim and again you have one of these these so you have one of these fish fish bowls with carp and aquatic plants lotuses and so forth and on the interior there's a dragon swimming in all of it we're going to tota toward the end I wanted to include some pieces that were very provincial Ming pieces and wanly late one Lee pieces as we head into the transitional period there are a few transitional pieces here as well this is a brush washer an inkstone for the wanly this is in the British Museum and has the nice color graphic base on the bottom and we have a marking period one Lee brush washer it's a small one this is about three inches long nicely done in the notice that the rain mark on these is things done within squares now here's an unmarked large jar that we had its Ming it was about 16 or 17 inches tall and notice how the neck of the upper part is curved a little bit it's not a straight neck these are curved okay here's another one around the same time slightly different color with a lid okay you'll notice on Ming pieces the lids always don't fit very well because they were made actually in a different factory and sort of matched up later with pieces once they were done was a common practice and here you have a big jar with a with a sort of an inward Lee sweeping foot and then again that neck would that curve in it very typical and here you have a Wan Li fruit jar melon jar persimmon jar now notice on the bottom of this the lappets are still there but they're very sketchy they're not very very detailed anymore here's a little scholars stand glazed very thick blue glaze on this notice how blue that is and a very sort of rusticated base there's a nice sort of late sixteenth early seventeenth century I think Charlotte about six seven inches tall with lotus flowers Andrew heads at the top filled in and again that very simple lap at base here is a mid 16th century maybe first half of the 16th century large Quan large jar 18 or 20 inches to 18 inches tall very nicely detailed good painting on it and here you have a Wan Li incense stick holder with calligraphy on each each side at the top running around it with these nicely decorated and washed in floral devices and you have an early 17th it could be mid 17th century this is a later little provincial jar the brown wash trim very thick glaze loaded with bubbles notice it on the bottom picture and here you have a 1 li jar with a feu lion this type of jar was exported in large quantities to Europe during this time and afterwards for a while so you can find these actually in the market usually not terribly expensive and they also did these and kind of they had different motifs they had foo lines they had spotted deer we're very popular and so I love how the one on the right looks sort of phat standing in the grasses and here is a very typical very provincial Ming blue and white bowl not terribly rare you can buy these sometimes you can buy them in lots of three or four at an auction or maybe 150 or 200 dollars if you're lucky and here's another dish its provincial but sort of well done a nice nicely detailed and filled in the artist did his best and here is a another one of these 16th century John's with carp on it on the outside and the flowers this probably is judging period nicely done nice neat foot on the bottom of it alright there are lots of kilns running in China during the Ming Dynasty and the Ching dynasty there were thousands most of them were family affairs they took several months women to build up enough of a load to put in the kiln the kilns were huge these dragon kilns that they fired things like this and and they filled them they packed them tight and every few months they they did a firing and hopefully the 10 or 15,000 or 8000 or 5,000 pieces in there came out okay here is a big very big charger that we had notice how small the King of Diamonds is in that picture give you an idea how big that plate was so it's a late 16th or mid 16th century sort of Swatow type jar there are a few transitional period things 1630 16 40s 50s in there particularly nice use of cobalt on this big jar and here you have another one this is a very typical shallow bowl from this time or food pot I think this was a food I think it has holes on the ends for wire handles um these are normally not terribly big maybe 10 inches across and here's an alms Bowl and notice on the bottom left picture of the sort of wavy swirls running around the outside pretty typical of these very nicely done and you see them on big transitional vases as well and here is a mid 17th century and so forth the diaper patterned inkstone a very nice one with that wok brown wash they put over it alright and that still pretty much cover it for today here are some pictures I just threw these in at the end of share a little bit these are Hong Kong photographs that were taken in the 1870s and 80s early early photography for China wonderfully done and there's another coming of with the harbor coming up and I want to thank you for very much for taking the time to listen to this and take a look and if you're not getting it already sign up for our weekly newsletter it's a free you can get it on our website bit amount com it goes out every Saturday night I think you might find it very helpful if you buy things on eBay we featuring it each week items that we've found from sellers that we know and are know are reputable nice authentic things you can sign up for it and I hope you find it to very beneficial and if you have any questions about something you own or you need an appraisal or thinking of selling something and want help with it or whatever give us a call we're right here in Gloucester Massachusetts and we have other videos that we put up and I hope you take the time to look at them I think we've got quite a few at this point and have a great day and good luck out there trying to find things bye-bye

Channel: Peter Combs

Views: 94,812

Rating: 4.847909 out of 5

Keywords: fine art, fine chinese art, auction, chinese art, chinese art auction, japanese art auction, japanese art, art news, auction news, asian art, auction results, chinese porcelain, chinese paintings, chinese bronze, jade, asian art auction news, asian art values, chinese art values, auction houses, online auctions, internet auctions, authenticating chinese porcelain, art

Id: VTJFXvUon_Q

Length: 20min 52sec (1252 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 28 2015