From a private collection, a mysterious and very unusual Republic-era Chinese cloisonne jar featuring an entire background of unwired transparent enamel in an amber or tea color.
While there are works from the Republic era (1912-1949) that
do not utilize a background diaper of small motifs such as clouds, spirals, and
the wan fret to hold the enamel to the metal base, generally the composition of
the main design is such that there aren’t too-large gaps between the
wiring. See, for example, my blog post
on the “Old Man” workshop [last slide below].
https://www.beadiste.com/2015/11/puzzling-evidence-hedda-morrison-and.html
The enamel seems to be a light amber or tea color rather
than colorless, but is highly transparent, as one can in some places see the
underlying seams and discolored spots in the copper base (observe the tail of
the squirrel in the small jar in the slides following). It’s difficult to
discern how much of the color is in the enamel and how much is due to the
copper base showing through.
When did this amber enamel come into use in Chinese
cloisonne? Sometime around the 1920s
seems likely, as exemplified by the lobed dish and vase set in the pictures
below. It was definitely in use in the
1940s, often applied over white and colored millefleur designs.
The floral design on the amber jar is striking – a
mysterious orchid-like plant. I’ve only
seen one other example like it, a little 6.5-inch vase that I purchased ten
years ago because it had such an unusual floral design. This vase also has no
background diaper, and the black enamel upon close inspection shows a cloud of
light blue speckles, giving it a perpetual dusty look despite its smooth glossy
polish. The vase seems to have been given a black base coat, and the colored
and amber enamels applied over that. Odd.
Can anyone identify the plant? I wonder if it was decorating a window in the
workshop, or if it’s the artist’s imagination of something seen in a garden
once upon a time. Observe that both the jar and the vase feature two variants of the flower - one solid red, the other multi-colored.
The transparent enamel over bare copper shows up again, this
time combined with a diaper-less opaque green background enamel in a squirrel-and-grapes
jar in my collection.
Unwired lime green enamel makes another appearance in a pair
of large bowls with a distinctive floral border (both have enamel bases stamped
“CHINA”), as well as in a small box likely from the “Old Man” workshop. In
contrast to their wired exteriors and rims, the interiors of the bowls seem unpolished,
the enamel displaying a somewhat uneven glossy texture usually seen in
unpolished base enamels.
The question that comes to mind is, “How much Japanese
influence was there in the use of these unwired enamels?” Japanese cloisonne after 1870 developed
entirely different enamels and design compositions from the Chinese, tapping
German expertise in glass chemistry, often eliminating altogether the use of a
wired background diaper. If there was even slight Japanese influence in the
chemistry, manufacture, and use of these Chinese amber and opaque green enamels,
when did it begin?
The large exhibitions in Europe and the United States during
the early 20th century, it is now obvious in retrospect, considered
Japanese cloisonne modern and fashionable, while Chinese works were regarded as
quaint. It seems unlikely that the Chinese workshops did not become aware of
this prejudice. Were the amber enamel pieces efforts to look more “modern”? The
extensive unwired area of the amber jar is definitely not a common Chinese
design; even if a background diaper is not used, the wired design elements are
typically spaced to form a relatively dense pattern compared to this jar.
Were there German and Japanese foreign commercial
investments in glass industry from circa 1900 in partnership with Chinese
businesses in Shandong, home of the historic Boshan glass industry? Did the Chinese
enamel manufacturers tap this new expertise and provide the Beijing workshops
with smoother enamel recipes that could be used with fewer wires? German
colonial territories in Shandong were transferred to the Japanese in 1919 in
the aftermath of World War I, but Chinese protest successfully ousted the
Japanese in 1922. Per Wikipedia: “In
a victory for China, the Japanese leasehold on Shandong was returned to China
in June, 1922. Japan, however, maintained its economic dominance of the railway
and the province as a whole.”
The 1930s-40s were difficult economic times in China, thanks
to worldwide economic depression and constant warfare between warlords,
Nationalists, Communists, and Japanese. World
War II began early in China with the Japanese occupation of Beijing in
1937. Many cloisonne workshops closed as
workers fled the city, but some did manage to resolutely survive with much
smaller workforces into the 1950s despite the hard times. There is an attitude
that these surviving workshops produced stereotyped and boring designs, but
that doesn’t seem to be the case to me; it seems more accurate to say they
streamlined their meager resources to create modern abstract versions of
traditional floral designs.
In what decades do you think these pieces were likely
produced? 1920s? 1930s? 1940s? 1950s?
Puzzling evidence.
[Tip o’ the hat to J.A. for granting permission to use
photos of the amber jar.]
