Hello. I'm Jessica Harrison-Hall
and I'm a specialist in Ming ceramics
and welcome to my corner!
Today I'm going to talk to you about Ming ceramics.
The Ming Dynasty in China runs from 1368-1644
and I have before me a selection of blue and white ceramics
made in Jingdezhen between 1368-1644.
This saucer dish was made at the time of the Hongwu emperor
Now he conquered the Mongols and established the Ming Dynasty in 1368
and he has an extraordinary life story.
At one stage he was so poor he had to beg for land to bury his parents
and yet by the time he was 40 he was 'Son of Heaven' and ruling all of China.
And during his reign supplies of cobalt - to make the under-glazed blue design -
was interrupted.
And so blue and white wares during his reign
have a much weaker tone
because they use the imported cobalt quite sparingly
or mixed it with local cobalt.
So what we're looking at here is a rather beautiful saucer.
Originally it would have had a cup set in the centre here
and it has a very stiff bracketed edge
and this is reminiscent of metal work.
We find these dishes made in silver and gold
with this same bracket-lobed rim.
And then inside
can you see you've got these lotuses that are shown sometimes from above and sometimes in profile?
And what's particularly clever is that you can see there are some areas
where they left white around the petal
and that creates a kind of 3-Dimensionality to the flower.
So each of these flowers have been painted with a very fine brush
and you can pick out all the different details in the flower
it's really quite exquisite.
The second ceramic that we're going to look
was made in the Yongle period
now this is the high point for blue and white Ming porcelain
He ruled between 1403-24
and he was the emperor moved the capital from Nanjing North to Beijing
and he instigated a real change at Jingdezhen
where these porcelains were produced.
So you get porcelains made with a much finer prepared body clay
and more beautiful glaze
and you can see, if you look closely at the flowers here,
which are all peonies
that the actual blue is used to sculpt the flower
so that there are certain areas that are white
certain areas that are pale blue
and certain areas that are dark blue
and if we look very, very closely
you can see some which are black
where the blue has really come all the way through the glaze
So one of the things about Yongle period
early 15th century blue and white porcelain
is that you have these sculpted flowers
each of the leaves makes sense in the pattern
and these particular flowers have these crinkle-edged leaves.
And you may be wondering
'why is it in this shape?'
and that's because again it's copying a metal work form
It's not natural in ceramic to have these little hooks at the top of the handle
and you have to imagine originally it would have had a cover
and that from the knob on the top of the cover
that would have connected a chain to the top of the handle
and this strut here is entirely unnecessary for the ceramic
but would have helped support the spout in the gold original.
And when we turn round the base of the handle
we've got these three tiny almost like nails
these studs
which would have fixed the metal handle to the body.
It's very, very beautifully painted
and you can see it has a much whiter glaze surrounding the blue than the Hongwu piece.
This is probably one of the most precious Ming ceramics that we have on the table today.
Moving on to out third example
this was made in the mid-15th century
and what's interesting about this
is you start to get fabulous designs from woodblock prints.
So if we start off on this example
we begin with this building here
with these typical Chinese roof edges that are upturned at the edge
Inside you can see a scholar waiting with a bottle of wine
and his servant is pointing out to the procession of people who are coming to see him.
The first servant is carrying a sword over his shoulder
and the second has a musical instrument wrapped in silk called a qin
after them come the scholars themselves
mounted on horseback
with these fabulous black hats that have these wings at the side
Each one has a rank badge on his chest
and their horses are bedecked with fabulous bridles and saddles
trimmed with a pom-pom on the nose
Behind the 3 scholars we have 2 more servants
one who is bringing a shoulder pole with 2 picnic baskets attached
each of the layers here would have contained different delicacies
all contained within stacking lacquer boxes
And his friend behind him comes with 2 wine jars
full of delicious wine for their feast.
And they're followed right at the end with another servant carrying a stack of books.
and then the scene comes to an end with these sort of clouds
that's how we know it's the beginning and end of the scene
So how were these made?
They're fashioned from porcelain clay
thrown on a wheel and then painted with cobalt-oxide in solution.
which when you paint it on appears black
after you've let it dry
you cover it with a clear glaze
and then fire it at a high temperature.
These are fired in wood-fueled kilns that snake up the side of mountains in the southern part of China
near the city of Jingdezhen
and so because of this snaking form that undulates up the hillside
they're referred to as dragon kilns.
You might be wondering what the jar is for?
It''s effectively a large container for wine
So originally it would have had a cover
and we see these in paintings
sitting on the floor
and from this wine would have been taken
and then put into smaller vessels like this decanter or bottles.
The next item on the table is this box
which was made for the Longqing Emperor
who really only ruled for 5 or 6 years
between 1567-72.
So this beautiful square box is interesting because it has this pattern of 2 dragons
you can see the heads here
and then the curling bodies that run all the way through
with the 5-clawed feet
and they're chasing this flaming pearl amoungst the clouds.
And then the edges
each edge has got a different dragon around the edge
on the 4 sides.
And then underneath we've got a box with 4 compartments
again each of the compartments is outlined with a blue line
the edges are unglazed
and then inside they're filled with glaze.
And each of the edges has a roundel with a dragon
rather like the robes of a emperor.
These come from textile designs
and there are 12 of them around the outside.
This is the first piece that we've come across in this selection that has a reign mark
and yet we're always talking about mark and period Ming porcelain.
The reign marks themselves are generally made up of 6 characters
sometimes of 4
the first 2 have the name of the dynasty 'Great Ming'
the second 2 have the name of the reign period
and then the last 2 are 'year' and 'made in'
so it's 'Made in the year of...' and then the particular emperor's name.
Blue and white wasn't invented in the Ming Dynasty
Blue and white goes much further back in Chinese history
and the first blue and white porcelains were made during the Yuan era
that's 1280-1368
and when we think of blue and white
we don't think of Yuan blue and white
we think of Ming blue and white
because that's the era in which blue and white porcelain came to Europe.
First of all through the Portuguese
and later the Dutch and the English
and when blue and white arrived in Europe it transformed the way people dined
and it transformed interiors.
If you think of laying out a table with pewter and with wood
it's all very dark and the ceramics at the time generally had lead-glazes
so in Europe they would have been greens and browns and rather dull colours
and then along comes something like this dish
which was made for export and shipped in large quantities to Holland and Portugal and England
and it would have transformed interiors by the light reflecting off the dish
So you can imagine much more multicoloured interior
and the patterns too were much more interesting
So very quickly in Europe people started copying these designs
all sorts of ceramics manufacturers right across Europe.
Here we have a piece which was produced for the export market
right at the end of Ming Dynasty in 1643
This has got a bracket-lobed rim like the first dish that we looked at
but it's much coarser
in the centre you've got the crow with open mouth or bird with open mouth
this giant tree peony
and then in the calvetto this sort of panel design
with alternating flowers and lingzhi fungus
now these are a kind of fungus or mushroom which bestowed immortality on an individual
If we turn it over we can see that it's been rather roughly made
it's been fired on its footring
and has a lot of grit adhering to it
and in the centre you can see these chatter marks
which are like the spokes on the wheel of a bicycle
and it's very typical of this late-material.
This came from a shipwreck discovered in the 1980s
and it's lain at the bottom of the South-China Sea for 300 years
and that's why when you look at it
it has a very matte feel to it
we can't see the same kind of glossy glaze that we see on the earlier Ming pieces
It was discovered in the 1980s and was sold to the Museum in 1985.
It was 1 of 23,000 pieces on board.
Quite an extraordinary thing.
That is a whistle-stop tour of 300 years of Ming porcelain.