The small winecup is of deep “U” form, with extremely thin walls. The cup is decorated in soft underglaze-blue drawing with four feilong, “flying dragons,” skimming over cresting waves below trefoil-form clouds. Each tiny motif is enameled in varying combinations of lemon yellow, iron red and clear mint green painted over the clear colorless glaze. The interior is undecorated aside from a blue line border below the inside of the lip. The underglaze-blue six-character mark, Da Ming Chenghua nianzhi, is written on the base within a double-line square.
The ultimate in innovation in techniques for porcelain decoration during the MIng period was doucai, “joined colors” or “contending colors,” characterized by outlines and limited details drawn in cobalt pigment, and after glazing and firing the addition of enamels over the glaze, within the blue-colored outlines and firing a second time to set the colors. The Chenghua reign was the first period of great florescence of doucai and the highest quality products were of eggshell thinness and the enamels added with great precision.1 This cup is among the smallest produced with just enough room for its well-written reign mark on its tiny base. Such cups were produced for imperial and noble use and evidence of their production at Jingdezhen’s imperial kilns is to be expected. (figs. 1-2) as well as their presence in the imperial collection as preserved today in Taipei and Beijing. And despite their minuscule size, there was still room enough to include four fully formed winged or flying dragons, a creature of some rarity before the early Ming, and symbolizing a great or a holy person.
∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙
1. The origin of the doucai style of the Chenghua period is sometimes attributed to the infamous concubine Lady Wan or to the Chenghua emperor himself, both of who were notoriously materialistic. See A Legacy of Chenghua: Imperial Porcelain of the Chenghua Reign Excavated from Zhushan, Jingdezhen, The Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1993, pp. 79-81.
∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙
Fig. 1: Doucai porcelain wine cup, d. 5.7 cm., Chenghua mark and period (1465 -1487), excavated from the imperial kilns at Zhushan, Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, after Legacy of Chenghua: Imperial Porcelain of the Chenghua Reign Excavated from Zhushan, Jingdezhen, The Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1993, no. C86, p. 161.
Fig. 2: Doucai porcelain wine cup, d. 5 cm., Chenghua mark and period (1465 -1487), excavated from the imperial kilns at Zhushan, Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, after Legacy of Chenghua: Imperial Porcelain of the Chenghua Reign Excavated from Zhushan, Jingdezhen, The Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1993, no. C87, p. 162.