Tianqi Blue And White Ko-Sometsuke Plate [SOLD]

[SOLD]

A late Ming dynasty Tianqi blue and white plate, drawn in the center field with “three friends of winter” in a rough and compelling calligraphic style. The underglaze cobalt is a deep blue, while the glaze is brilliant and shiny.

In 1605, the Tianqi emperor assumed the throne as a boy of 15. Amongst other shortcomings he was illiterate and wholly under the influence of palace eunuchs. The Ming regime by this time was doomed to fail, and Jingdezhen kilns could no longer rely on imperial orders to finance its operations.
Counterpoint to the political unrest was a spirit of artistic and intellectual rebellion that had overtaken the Ming literati by the closing decades of the 16th century. At Jingdezhen, Tianqi period potters created porcelain that seemed more unbalanced than balanced (the ‘qi’ over the ‘zheng’, as Xie Zhen would call it), with decorations rendered in careless brushstrokes and porcelain bodies with kiln grit still stuck to them. Japanese collectors fondly describe this formal nonchalance as ranzeheu, or “things made at haphazard.”

Far from the aggressive vigor of early Ming wares, Tianqi porcelain has a certain quality of lightness and detachment. Potters created this affect through an extensive use of white space, against which designs are sparsely drawn and often asymmetrically placed. This aesthetic can be seen as an embodiment of late Ming literati society’s obsession with spiritual isolation, eremitism, and escapism. “Up in the mountains there is nothing to do,” scholar-artist Li Rihua once wrote, “sitting on a rock I watch the autumn water. The water is still; clouds cast shadows. My heart is exactly like this.”
Tianqi porcelain made for domestic consumption were also exported to Japan, where they were received with such fervor that Jingdezhen potters soon developed Tianqi style porcelains designed especially for the Japanese market. For this reason, Tianqi blue and whites are generally catalogued as ko-sometsuke (‘old blue and white’) due to this trade association. Among Japanese collectors there is an unrivaled love for Tianqi aesthetics. Soame Jenyns, in an article for the Oriental Ceramics Society, relayed the words of a Japanese connoisseur: “Tianqi ko-sometsuke was made in the declining years of the Ming, when the life of the people was uncertain and they reflect the feeling of danger, self-denial and eternal loneliness.”
For a similar Tianqi blue and white plate illustrating the “three friends of winter”, see Chinese Ceramics: Selected Articles from Orientations 1982-1998 (Hong Kong, 1999) page 7 figure 3.