Imre Jakabffy (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 6. (Budapest, 1979)

KÁRPÁTI, Andrea: „Blanc de Chine" porcelain in the collection of the Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts

right. The statuette is meticulously elaborated, its glaze is creamy white. The sculptor brings out the material qualities of the different surfaces: the dress, the hair, and the rock. The drapery is picturesque, divided by deep, impetuous folds. This piece is one of the most beautiful blanc de Chines of our collection, and dates from the first third of the eighteenth century. An old man is sitting under a tree with a boy standing in front of him, the scene of our small figure group must have been derived from a well-known Chinese model (Inv.-Nr: 53.759 and 53.780.) from the first third of the eighteenth century. The animated arrangement of the figures, the sculpture some draperies and the lack of the standard poses and compositional schemes renders the statuette, made in the first part of the 18th century, similar to the T'ang tomb figures. A Dutchman with a monkey is represented by our last blanc de Chine statutte (Inv.-Nr: 51.159, fig. 14). This is an other witty composition of the standard elements of god representations. The merchant is seated not on a lotus throne, but on one of his favourite export goods, an inlaid locker. His animal attribute is a monkey, his characteristic object attribute is a cigar, which he holds ceremonically in his left palm. He assumes the posture of relaxation, „lalitasana", and his facial expression is that of meditation. Though the long coat of the merchant, which was part of the „Eastern fashion", and worn by Charles II. for the first in 1666, would suggests an earlier dating, Donnelly places the merchant as later, not much before 1750, by reason of a bird on a plum blossom of the stand, and the presence of the monkey — a typically later conceit. Our figure bears the traces of enamel paint. In the Victoria and Albert Museum of London the same figure is to be found with a Harlequin lozenge pattern, deriving directly from the late K'ang-hsi famille verte. The pattern is adopted disregarding the shapes of the sculpture, filling up the folds of the drapery and completely destroying its plastic effect. Painting the ware was one of the several harms caused by production for the European market. The Dutch were the first to reach Te-hua at about the middle of the 17th century, when Ch'ing te-chen, the main centre of foreign porcelain trade became inaccessible as a result of dynastic wars. The Dutch landed at Amoy, the nearest port to Te-hua. Having been shown the blanc de Chine wares, they found them too thick and coarse. The European market demanded thinwalled vessels, in forms similar to fashionable pottery or silverware. The Dutch furnished the Te-hua masters with models and prints to copy, and covered the beautiful ivory white body of the ware with gay paint before putting them on the market. The result was a tasteless brique-a-brac. Our standing Kuan-yin (Inv.-Nr: 57.2 fig. 1) bears the traces of a primitive flower pattern, executed in red and white all over the body, disregarding sculptural division. The robe of our Kuan-yin at the throne (Inv.-Nr: 51.161 fig. 5) is painted blue and red. The lustreless, thick layer of paint covers the plastic folds of the drapery, and results in an effect like plaster. The old man and the boy groups are „decorated" also with lustreless, thick overpaint in red, yellow and white. The blanc de Chine, however, suffered less from the demands of the European public than the so-called „export porcelains" of Ching-te-chen and Canton, where it took a long time for the potters, forced to copy patterns and colour schemes, 106