Early Ming Porcelain (1368 to 1435): Hongwu, Yongle and Xuande

The founder of the Ming, Zhu Yuanzhang, was born into a poor farming family and rose to power in the rebellions that broke Mongol rule under the Yuan dynasty. He took Nanjing in 1356 and made it his base, defeated his rival rebel leaders in the Yangtze valley, and in January 1368 proclaimed the Ming dynasty at Nanjing, taking the era name Hongwu. Later that year his armies captured the Yuan capital, Dadu (modern Beijing), and the last Yuan emperor fled north to the steppe.

The Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398) rebuilt a countryside ruined by war, resettling farmers on abandoned land, repairing dykes and irrigation works and keeping taxes on the land low. He was also one of the harshest rulers in Chinese history. The purges that followed the case of the chancellor Hu Weiyong in 1380 and of the general Lan Yu in 1393 cost tens of thousands of lives, and after 1380 he abolished the office of chancellor and governed through the ministries himself. In 1371 he banned private overseas trade, a ban that was not relaxed until 1567.

Hongwu's eldest son died in 1392, and on Hongwu's death the throne passed to his grandson, the Jianwen Emperor (r. 1398–1402). His advisers moved against the imperial princes, and in 1399 the most powerful of them, Zhu Di, Prince of Yan, rebelled from his base at Beiping. After three years of civil war Zhu Di took Nanjing in 1402. The palace burned, and what became of Jianwen has never been established.

Zhu Di took the throne as the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–1424). He moved the capital to Beijing, where the Forbidden City was completed in 1420, restored the Grand Canal to feed the new capital, led five campaigns against the Mongols and occupied northern Vietnam. Between 1405 and 1433 the eunuch admiral Zheng He led seven voyages across the Indian Ocean, as far as the Persian Gulf and East Africa, and porcelain was among the goods the fleets carried. Yongle also commissioned the vast compilation known as the Yongle Encyclopedia.

His son, the Hongxi Emperor, reigned for less than a year before his death in 1425. The Xuande Emperor (r. 1425–1435), Hongxi's son, governed a stable and prosperous empire without the costly wars of his grandfather. He ordered a last voyage by Zheng He, and was himself an accomplished painter.

For collectors these five reigns form a single chapter, the formative years of Ming porcelain. The story continues on our page on the middle Ming dynasty, and our overview of Ming dynasty porcelain covers the whole period.

Porcelain for the Ming court was made at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province, as it had been under the Yuan. Early in the dynasty an imperial works was set up in the town to make wares to palace orders. Its founding date is debated, and dates from the Hongwu to the Xuande reign have been proposed. Its site, at Zhushan in the centre of Jingdezhen, has been excavated in recent decades. Pieces that fell short of the court's standards were deliberately broken and buried there, and these fragments are now the most reliable guide to what early Ming imperial porcelain looked like.

Alongside the imperial works, many private kilns went on making porcelain for the home market and, within the limits of the ban on private trade, for export. Our guide to Ming folk kiln porcelain covers those wares.

Hongwu porcelain carries on the forms of the late Yuan: large dishes, deep bowls, jars, ewers and pear-shaped yuhuchunping bottles. What sets it apart is underglaze red. Copper red was used on a scale never seen before or since, on the same shapes and with the same designs as blue and white. It usually fired greyish or brownish, and even colour across a large surface is exceptional.

Hongwu blue is often greyish or blurred, which is generally explained by irregular supplies of imported cobalt after the fall of the Yuan. Decoration is still arranged in bands, but it is more formal and more symmetrical than Yuan work, and scrolls of chrysanthemum, peony and lotus dominate the court wares. Large dishes typically have a broad cavetto filled with a flower scroll and a border of waves or scrolls at the rim. Hongwu court porcelain is unmarked, so it is attributed by form, painting and body.

Under Yongle, imported cobalt was again plentiful, and the imperial kilns made blue and white of a new refinement. The body is finer and whiter, and the glaze smooth and glossy, often with a faint bluish tinge and a gentle unevenness like orange peel. The blue is deep and intense, with dark iron spots, which collectors call heaped and piled, where the pigment gathered. Our guide to cobalt blue explains how they formed.

The style is lighter than that of the Yuan. Designs are more open, with white space around single flower sprays, fruiting branches and scrolls, and borders are narrower. Some of the most striking shapes, among them flasks, ewers, basins and candlesticks, were taken from the metalwork and glass of the Islamic world, a sign of how closely Jingdezhen still followed the tastes of western Asia.

Yongle is also the reign of tianbai, "sweet white": thin, finely potted white porcelain with a soft, sugary glaze, often decorated so faintly, with designs incised or painted in white slip under the glaze, that the pattern shows only against the light. The Chinese term for this is anhua, "hidden decoration". The court also valued copper-red monochrome glazes of great depth.

Xuande porcelain is widely regarded as the high point of Ming blue and white. The painting is bold and assured, the blue deep and spotted like that of Yongle, and the range of shapes and decoration wider than ever: dishes, bowls, stem cups, jars, flasks, water pots and cricket jars made for the court, some of which have been found at Zhushan. The kilns also made copper-red monochromes, underglaze red such as the stem cups painted with three fish, yellow and blue glazes, and pieces combining underglaze blue with overglaze enamels.

Xuande is also when reign marks became regular. Hongwu court porcelain is unmarked, and no Hongwu reign mark on porcelain is accepted as genuine. Yongle marks are rare: they are four-character seal marks, Yongle nian zhi, "made in the Yongle reign", found mostly on white wares, where they are often incised or hidden in anhua. Under Xuande, marks became the rule on imperial porcelain. The usual form is six characters, Da Ming Xuande nian zhi, "made in the Xuande reign of the Great Ming", in regular script, written on the base or, on some pieces, in a line below the rim or on the inside.

A mark records what was written on a piece, not when it was made. Xuande marks were copied from the later Ming onwards and are among the most often borrowed of all Chinese reign marks. Our chart of Ming reign marks shows each one, and our guide to Chinese porcelain marks explains how to read them.

The line between late Yuan and early Ming is hard to draw. The change of dynasty in 1368 did not change the kilns, the clay or, at first, the painters, and many pieces are best catalogued as late Yuan to early Ming. Several in our collection are described that way. With that caution, a few differences generally hold:

• Layout. Yuan decoration fills the surface with many bands. Early Ming decoration uses fewer, narrower bands and leaves more white space, especially from Yongle onwards.
• Subjects. On court wares, flower scrolls, single sprays and fruiting branches become the main subjects.
• Blue. Yuan blue and the blue of Yongle and Xuande both show dark iron spots; Hongwu blue is often greyer and softer.
• Potting and glaze. Early Ming pieces, especially from Yongle, are generally more finely potted and more carefully finished, with a smoother glaze.
• Bases. Foot rings become neater, and smaller bowls and dishes are more often glazed on the base.

Our guide to Yuan blue and white porcelain sets out the Yuan side of the comparison, and our guide to foot rings and bases explains what to look for underneath.

Many of the Ming pieces in our collection are catalogued as early Ming, or as late Yuan to early Ming. A covered jar catalogued as early Ming is painted with robed figures among clouds and garden rocks. Another early Ming jar shows a scholar at his table with attendants, and a woman seated with children. A blue and white charger, also catalogued as early Ming, has two birds among flowers and vines at its centre. A bowl with a Xuande mark is painted with lotus scrolls outside and a single flower inside.

What decides value is the same across Chinese porcelain: period, the quality of the potting and painting, condition, provenance, rarity and the state of the market. You can see everything currently available in our Ming dynasty porcelain collection. Each piece is offered by private inquiry through the Request price form on its page; shipping is fully insured, and all sales are final.