The Parry Imperial Beijing Painted Enamel Melon-Shaped Teapot: An Important Re-Discovery

Painted enamel wares were a new and developing art in the Qing dynasty. They can be categorised and divided according to the different bodies on which the enamels are painted on, including painted enamels on copper, painted enamels on porcelain, painted enamels on Yixing clay, painted enamel on glass, and painted enamels on gold and silver. Painted enamels on copper body wares were successfully created during the late Kangxi reign in the Qing Imperial Workshops in the Forbidden City, and afterwards there were some created on other materials. The Zaobanchu or Imperial Workshops was one of the Imperial Ateliers under the supervision of the Neiwufu or Imperial Household Department, whose responsibilities included manufacturing, repairing, and stockpiling items made for the Imperial Household. The Zaobanchu gezuo chengzuo huaji qingdang (‘Archives of the Workshop of the Qing Imperial Household Department’, hereafter referred to as the ‘Qing Archives’) preserved in the First Historical Archives of China, is a diary of the daily undertakings and various tasks conducted by the Imperial Household Department and the Imperial Workshops, beginning from the first year of the Yongzheng reign in 1723, to the third year of the Xuantong reign in 1911.

The Qing Archives record in great detail the various Imperial decrees and work assignments including gold and jade work, boxes, painted enamels etc., as well as other things such as repair and maintenance. It also lists the year, month, and day, as well as the title and name of the commissioner, the Imperial decree itself, and the process of who will take it away or submit it after the finished item is completed. In addition to ‘Beijing enamels’ made in the Imperial Workshops in Beijing, painted enamel wares were also made in Guangzhou and are more commonly known as ‘Canton enamels’. The painted enamel wares made in the Imperial Workshops in Beijing were only made during the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns, and most are kept in the Palace Museums on both sides of the strait. The Qianlong reign represents the height of the Empire’s power, and significant funds, materials and manpower were invested into the production of various items. Thus, the production of porcelain, enamels, jade, gold and silverware, lacquerware, and glassware during the Qianlong reign reached an unprecedented peak, leaving many treasures to us today.

This essay introduces an eight-lobed melon-shaped, copper body, painted enamel teapot and cover. It is 8.7cm high and 15cm long. Until now the teapot was only known to us from a small black and white photograph illustrated in the catalogue of the Royal Academy of Arts, International Exhibition of Chinese Art, London, 1935-36. However, we can now examine it in great detail. The spout flows out from a dragon’s head attached to the body, the upper and lower handle is also decorated with two dragon heads. The interior is applied with a light blue enamel. The cover is an eight-lobed petal shape, with an Imperial yellow ground and red ochre landscapes, figures and flowers. The mouth and foot are decorated with a band of key-fret and floral scrolls respectively. The shoulders and lower part of the body are painted with a band of eight ruyi clouds filled in with a herringbone armour pattern. The body is decorated with roses and butterflies, plum blossom and orchids, camellias, hibiscus, and landscapes with figures. All together, they represent the four seasons of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. The base of the teapot is painted with a coiled archaistic dragon on a white ground, within which is a four-character Qianlong reign mark in regular script. In what year was this teapot of melon-shape, with bright enamels and exquisite paintings made in the Qianlong reign, and what was the background to its production?

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The author has combed through the Qing Archives and was thrilled to find a record from the Fifth year of the Qianlong reign (corresponding to 1740):

In the Fifth year of the Qianlong reign, Qianqing Palace, on the Second day of the Fifth month, Chief commissioner Samuha of the seventh rank said that the eunuch Gao Yu and others presented two painted enamel melon-lobed teapots. The Decree was passed, and the matching case was placed in the Qianqing Palace with the enamel vessels. By order of the Emperor. ¹

So, the question is, how can these concise lines prove that it is the same painted enamel teapot introduced in this essay? The analysis is as follows:

Firstly, the Palace Museum, Beijing, has two eight-lobed painted enamel teapots, Qianlong mark and of the period, made in the Fourth year of the Qianlong reign (1739), with handles, painted on the body with landscapes and flowers (see Fig.1). The handle is encased with ‘gold star’ glass (also known as aventurine ‘stone’). The body of the teapot has four alternating landscapes and four flower paintings. The base is white, similarly to the Parry teapot, with a four-character Qianlong mark surrounded by bamboo leaves and lingzhi. Underneath the teapot is a small octagonal stand with a heating bowl. The shape of the piece has a strong Western style while the decoration is Chinese, making it a vessel combining elements of eastern and western cultures. The Qing Archives record that:

In the Fourth year of the Qianlong reign, Enamel Workshop. On the Thirteenth day of the Fifth month, leader Wu Shu said that eunuch Mao Tuan presented a Western silver hot water pot. The Decree was passed to make a pair of painted enamel teapots in this form. On the Twenty-first day of the Seventh month, eunuch Mao Tuan sent a Decree that the copper painted enamel teapots should be made and presented. On the same day, leader Wu Shu brought the pair of copper enamel Western style teapots for eunuch Mao Tuan to inspect, who put aventurine stone on the handles and decorated the base. On the Twenty-ninth day of the Seventh month, chiefs Li Jiuming, Bai Shixiu took from the storerooms a piece of aventurine stone (weight 20 catties) and handed it over to eunuch Hu Shijie and Gao Yu. The material was considered too big, and not necessary for a teapot handle. A plan was drawn for the Qixiang Palace and submitted on time. The handle was made of fragment pieces of aventurine stone. On the Twentieth day of the Eighth month, Wu Shu and Deng Bage presented both the pair of painted enamel teapots with aventurine stone and the original silver models to eunuch Mao Tuan, and Hu Shijie for presentation. ²

On the Twenty-first day of the Eighth month Commissioner Wu Shu said that eunuch Mao Tuan presented the painted enamel teapots with aventurine stone. A Decree was passed that another pair of painted enamel teapots should be made according to this style, with a belly of four cun diameter [one cun equals 3.333 cm], and aventurine stone, with gilt-copper body and frame, and aventurine stone inlay on the foot. A plan was drawn up and presented. On the Fifth year of the Qianlong reign of the Fifteenth day of the Second month, chief commissioner Wu Shu and Deng Bage presented the aventurine stone inlay teapots as well as the original models to eunuch Gao Yu for inspection. ³

These two records from the Qing Archives provide us with important information. That the eight-faceted painted enamel teapots with handles were made based on Western models in accordance with the Qianlong Emperor’s Decree in the Fourth year of his reign, and that a pair was made. The Palace Museum, Beijing, currently has one pair. The other evidence shows that another pair of teapots were made in accordance with this mixed Chinese and Western style, but to date they have not been seen.

Secondly, the design of the Parry teapot, presented in this essay, is almost exactly the same as the designs of the teapots created in the Fourth year of the Qianlong reign (see Figs.2-4), except for some alterations in the flowers. The painting style of these vessels is almost the same and were probably made by the same craftsman.

Thirdly, the mark on the base. The painted enamel teapot with handles made in the Fourth year of the Qianlong reign has a blue Qianlong four-character mark in regular kaishu calligraphy, around which is a pattern of bamboo leaves and lingzhi. (Fig.5) This is very similar to the treatment of the mark on the Parry painted enamel teapot, except with a chilong design (Fig.6). The style of these two inscriptions is actually a continuation of the style of marks on painted enamel wares from the Yongzheng reign (Figs.7-9). The painted enamel wares of the early Qianlong reign still retained the style of Yongzheng reign marks. Later Qianlong painted enamel wares only had a basic Qianlong four-character reign mark or six-character reign mark in either regular script or seal script. They no longer had the ornamentation surrounding it.

Fourth, why was ‘the matching case placed in the Qianqing Palace with the enamel vessels. By order of the Emperor’? In checking the Archives, it is known that the Qianlong Emperor in the Third year of his reign (1738) ordered porcelain to be placed with their boxes in the Qianqing Palace in the Forbidden City. The Qing Archives record that on the ‘Third year of the reign of the Qianlong Emperor: the Qianqing Palace was equipped with boxes for porcelain. On the Third day of the Second month, stock controller Liu Shanjiu came and said that eunuch Hu Shijie handed over:

Five black lacquered mother-of-pearl inlaid of various sizes
Three zitan boxes of various sizes
Five huali boxes of various size
Twenty-seven nanmu boxes of various sizes
Decree: these boxes should be put in order and tidied, and then the existing porcelain of the Qianqing Palace should be matched with the relevant size boxes. Once the porcelain is placed in the box, a label should be applied describing the colour, name, grade, year etc. of the piece. If there are not sufficient enough boxes, use the lacquered nanmu boxes. By order of the Emperor.
In the same month, the Twelfth day, commissioner Pan Feng, and Li Jin reported that eunuch Hu Shijie presented:
One-hundred zitan boxes of various sizes
Two-hundred and forty nanmu boxes of various sizes
Forty black lacquered boxes of various sizes
Decree: use these boxes for porcelain. By order of
the Emperor.
On the Fourth day of the Fifth month, Chief Eunuch Gao Jinzhong reported that eunuch Hu Shijie had presented:
Eight huali boxes of various sizes
Ten zitan boxes of various sizes
Two black lacquered boxes of various sizes
Eighteen nanmu boxes of various sizes
Thirteen firwood boxes
Decree: match the boxes with the porcelain. By order of
the Emperor.
On the Fifth day of the Fifth month commissioner Bai Shixiu selected several pieces of porcelain and assigned a box to it and presented it to eunuch Hu Shijie for inspection. The remaining unpaired pieces will be presented separately when the assembly is completed. Then all the porcelains in the Chonghua Palace and the Yangxin Hall will also be selected and placed in the matching box according to the order. On the cover of the box list the name and colour of the porcelain. ⁴

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Fig. 10 (Palace Museum, Taipei)

The Qianlong Emperor’s orders contain important information which can be summarised as follows: Firstly, already in the Third year of his reign, the Qianlong Emperor began to organise and collect the precious porcelains in the Forbidden City. From the Archives we can tell that the boxed porcelains included those from the Song dynasty and up to his own reign. Secondly, he kept his porcelain in the Qianqing Palace and the Duanning Hall on the eastern side of the Forbidden City. Thirdly, the boxes had labels or were carved with the name, age, colour and grade of the piece. Fourth, objects were packed in pairs with boxes. From these records we can infer that it was not just porcelain that was packed in boxes and stored, but also painted enamel wares, Yixing enamelled wares, glass enamel etc. Therefore, it is not difficult for us to grasp the meaning of ‘the matching case was placed in the Qianqing Palace with the enamel vessels.’ The Qianlong Emperor determined that the pair of painted enamel melon-shaped teapots met the standards for the enamelware in the Qianqing Palace.

Fifth, the Archives of the Fifth year of the Qianlong reign clearly stated ‘two melon-shaped teapots with painted enamel on copper body’. Where is the pair to the Parry teapot?

The answer to this question remains unclear as two other similar teapots are known in museum collections: the first, is now in the Palace Museum in Taipei ⁵; and the second is in the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri (acc.no.50-24.1,2). The shape (Fig.10), size, form and mark (Fig.11), and decorative style of the Palace Museum, Taipei teapot, as well as that of the Nelson-Atkins Museum teapot (Fig.12) are the same, except that compared to the Parry teapot, the flowers painted on the body are different and there is a slight variation in the form of the dragons on the handle and spout. The Parry teapot is painted with plum blossoms, peonies, hollyhock, and lotus, while the landscape paintings are similar but not identical to the other two teapots. The Taipei Palace Museum teapot is marked with the reference number Lü 4 8 8 24-1. What does this tell us? At the beginning of the establishment of the Palace Museum on 10th October 1925, they began to stock check the collections in the Forbidden City. At the time, they numbered the various palaces and halls in the order of the ‘Thousand Character Essay’ ⁶. So the Qianqing Palace was assigned the character ‘tian’ (heaven) and the Shoukang Palace was assigned the character ‘que’ (watch tower). The Yangxin Hall or ‘Hall of Mental Cultivation’ was assigned the character ‘lü’ (pitch). The Yangxin Hall is located in the west of the Forbidden City. From the time of the Yongzheng Emperor to the Xuantong Emperor, this was the place where the Emperor handled government affairs, met with ministers and rested, and was essentially the political centre of the Qing dynasty. The painted enamel melon-shaped teapot with the lu character in the Taipei Palace Museum was in the Yangxin Hall at the time of compiling the list in 1925. However, it is unknown as to when prior to 1925, the Palace Museum, Taipei teapot, which was originally stored in the Qianqing Palace in the Fifth year of Qianlong’s reign, was moved to the Yangxin Hall. With regard to the Nelson-Atkins Museum teapot, we only know that it was acquired for the museum in 1950 from the well-known dealer C.T. Loo & Co., New York.

Finally, the most difficult problem to solve is when exactly the painted enamel melon-shaped teapot was made in the Qianlong reign? The author has combed through the Qing Archives from the First year of the Qianlong reign (1736) to the Fifth year. Importantly, only one record comes close to giving us the answer:

The Third year of Qianlong, Enamel Workshop. On the Eighteenth day of the Third month, chief Wu Shu said that the eunuch Mao Tuan presented a small painted enamel copper body teapot. The Decree was passed that another pair should be made according to this. By order of the Emperor.

On the Twenty-seventh of the of the Twelfth month of this year, chief Wu Shu presented the pair of small painted enamel teapots and the model to eunuch Mao Tuan for inspection. ⁷

The record, however, does not describe the shape of the pots, nor the style or decoration. The information is rather scant; just that three painted enamel copper-body teapots were made. This type of vague record is common in the Qing Archives and so far, no experts or scholars have clarified this shorthand style of recording. Nevertheless, the fact remains that based on the evidence, a pair of painted enamel melon-shaped teapots were placed in the Qianqing Palace. We therefore know that three painted enamel teapots were made in the Third year of the Qianlong reign, corresponding to 1738, which could possibly refer to the teapots in the Parry Collection, the Palace Museum, Taipei and The Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City. The exceptional similarities between the three teapots, yet with some variation in the design between the Parry and the other two, suggest that the Parry teapot may be the first teapot made, with the other two made subsequently as decreed by the Qianlong Emperor.

Fig. 11

Fig. 12 (The Nelson-Aktins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri)

Fig. 13 (The Parry teapot as photographed in 1935)

This painted enamel melon-shaped teapot was collected by the Parry family, important collectors of Chinese art in England. Mrs Parry purchased the teapot from the London antique dealers Spink & Son Ltd., on 30th September 1925 when it was illustrated in their catalogue, and it has since been kept in the family. The teapot was then exhibited in the Royal Academy of Arts, International Chinese Art Exhibition, held at Burlington House, London from 1935 to 1936. This was the largest and most influential exhibition of Chinese art in the 20th century. Moreover, it was the first large-scale exhibition of ancient Chinese cultural treasures overseas. The number of exhibits was unprecedented, with a total of 3,080 pieces of Chinese cultural relics from public and private collections from 15 countries including China, Great Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Japan, and the United States. At that time, 1022 treasures from the Palace Museum, Academia Sinica, Peking Library, Henan Museum, Anhui Library and other collections were selected to be exhibited in the UK. Among them, the collections of the Palace Museum and the Institute of Antiquities in Beijing were the most exquisite. ⁸ King George V and Queen Mary of England, the King of Romania, and the Crown Prince of Sweden, etc. visited the Exhibition. The total number of visitors was 422,000. There were as many as 25 lectures on Chinese art held during the Exhibition. Six pieces from the Parry family’s Collection were included in this Exhibition. In the exhibition catalogue of the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, the Qianlong painted enamel melon-shaped teapot was numbered 2191 (Fig.13).

China is a major centre of tea culture and drinking tea is an important part of Chinese food culture, similar to how Westerners like to drink coffee. The teapots used by the Imperial family in the Qing dynasty were made of a wide variety of materials, including gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, porcelain, clay, jade, glass, cloisonné enamel and agate. It can be clearly seen from the records of the Qing Archives that the large-scale boxing, sorting and collecting of porcelain began in the Third year of the Qianlong reign, and included not only the exquisite porcelains of the previous dynasties, but also the various cloisonné and painted enamels made in the Qianlong reign. The Archival record demonstrates how the Qianlong Emperor valued painted enamel utensils, and even he himself was reluctant to use them, but placed them in a box for his own collection. This painted enamel melon-shaped teapot was made in the early part of the Qianlong reign, and appeared in the Parry family collection in 1925, ten years later it was exhibited in the famous 1935-1936 Royal Academy Exhibition, and eighty-five years later, in 2021, the teapot is now being auctioned at Bonhams in London, ushering in new collectors. This is the past and present of the painted enamel melon-shaped teapot.

Zhang Rong,
1 September 2021