November 21, 2007

• Seeing, Memory and Design: Another Pair of Earrings and Echoes of Famille Rose.

  I loved Chinese famille rose porcelain the very first time I saw it and I still do.  I found it first while still in high school brousing, for the only time in my life until I left home at 22 for good, for hours in a junk shop, bringing home a pair of yellow iridescent glass vases, next to me on my Thai cabinet as I write, and a cut glass perfume bottle with a rose glass fan at the top, now on my dresser some fifty years later, and still loved.  There was what I now know was a famille rose rose medallion pattern plate in that dusty old shop.  I can still see it, remember being afraid to pick it up and my utter sorrow when I found it was $2.00 more than I had to spend.  The good stuff has always been a bit out of my price range and the only piece I've ever had was broken in a move years ago, but even now, seeing a piece or even a good picture makes me melt.  I love it.    

   In the Kangxi period (1662-1722), Chinese potters added opaque rose overglazes, pinks and carmine, to their family of colors used in decorating porcelain, its use at first limited to vessels for the imperial family.  Applying the new colors to export ware, they developed new designs and patterns.  The French named this group of porcelain objects famille rose and the term now signifies Chinese porcelain decorated with this color scheme, without regard to motif or date.   

  You can find some more information here and here. And there is a totally wonderful pair of alter pieces here.

  As many of you know, I spent several years in Asia, some in Bangkok with its large Thai  Chinese population, and took frequent trips to Hong Kong, in addition to falling hard for asian art the moment I encountered it in my late teens.  So, my eye sees things a little differently from someone who has lived only in the US, allowing me to appear to push the envelope when I'm only drawing on a different country's arts tradition. 

  When I found the nine porcelain beads, one of which I've used in this pair of earrings, for  a momement I thought "famille rose," and then lost the thought.  It wasn't until I was typing a description for ebay that "famille rose" came back to me and I realized that I had stuck to the pink and jade green color scheme for a reason.  There is teal in the porcelain bead, the oval one at the top on the left, and I could have used that, riffed off that, but didn't even consider it...  My subconscious was working at famille rose; that was my unacknowledged visual reference all along, even though I wasn't consciously aware of it.

  • 3:04 am
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