International studio (54.1914/1915)

• STUDIO

VOL. LIV. No. 215

Copyright, 1914, by John Lane Company

JANUARY, 1915

ANTIQUE CHINESE CLOISONNE
/V ENAMELS ~
Z-A BY JOHN GETZ
IN TWO PARTS—PART I
The Avery Collection, presented in recent
years to the Central Museum of the Brook-
lyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, compris-
ing, as it does, one hundred and forty-odd exam-
ples that date from the great Ming and great
Ch’ing dynasties, merits more than a passing
review or notice, since these objects possess inter-
esting phases of expression in this Far Eastern art,
whose advent in one of our museums affords a
closer acquaintance of the technical perfections
and development made during those periods which
are most prized to-day.
The complexity of details on such objects in
workmanship and colouring aroused wonder here
in America, as they did in Europe years ago, fol-
lowed by a keener appreciation with their study.
As now displayed in the Central Museum of
Brooklyn, we are enabled to see such variety of
forms, as of motifs in design and colouring which
are typical of those early epochs referred to.
Many pieces to be seen were made in the Imperial
ateliers at Peking, some dating back to the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries, while others are of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so that
these varied and particular examples cover a range
of four hundred years. It is noteworthy, also, to
say that modern or nineteenth-century objects
have always been excluded by Mr. Avery when
forming this collection, so we have only to deal
with the older products designed in the past for
ceremonial uses, for old temples or private altars
in the palaces of Chinese emperors and high
mandarins, whilst others were doubtless fashioned
under imperial commands to be used as gifts of

state, or for high attainments during the early
years of this special art in China.
The Chinese do not claim for themselves the
invention of enamelling on copper in any of the
forms to be here set forth; this art appears in
remote times to have penetrated first from West-
ern Asia through Europe, but there is no evidence
of its reaching eastward so far as China until the
close of the Yuan dynasty, that is to say, about the
fourteenth century, when native records first refer
to ta shih yao,“ Arabian enamelled ware,” as resem-
bling the fo-lang Mien, “Byzantine incrusted
work,” which goes to prove that at this mentioned
period examples brought by Arabian ships were
made available for comparison by the Chinese.
The French writer, M. Paleoloque, concludes in
“ L’Art Chinoise” that the Chinese learned the
technique of cloisonne and champ-leve enamelling
from a succession of craftsmen travelling across
Asia, setting up ateliers in all the large towns
visited by them, just as Syrian workmen, who
overran France during the Merovingian epoch
introduced in the same way Byzantine methods of
their crafts, M. Paleoloque adding, “ that a careful
study of the most ancient Chinese cloisonne enam-
els reveals intrinsic proofs of the Western origin; in
fact, the workmanship presenting striking resem-
blances with certain enamels of the Byzantine
school; par example, the mixture of different
coloured enamels inside the wall of the same cell,
etc.”
The conquest of almost the whole of Asia and
part of Eastern Europe by the Mongols, during
the thirteenth century, undoubtedly opened up
new paths for the practice of industrial arts; a
theory that enamellers have followed the courts of
the Khans is in part confirmed by the date marks,
according to Dr. Bushell. Assuming this to be so,
there must have been a revival of this particular

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