Not surprisingly, a string adjectives — exuberant, delicate, lavish, or diminutive, for example — springs to mind when first confronting the objects on display in “Excellence and Elegance: Decorative Arts of the Eighteenth-Century Qing Court” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is a natural response to Qing dynasty wares — particularly those made in the 18th century — for their riot of varied surface decoration and multitude of materials makes it seem as if each object contains an entire universe of forms and ideas.

Founded in 1644 by the semi-nomadic and technically non-Chinese Manchu, the Qing (pronounced ching) dynasty marked the beginning of a distinctive, yet often derided, period of artistic production for Chinese decorative arts. The Qing Emperors’ deep admiration of the Chinese decorative arts traditions led to the establishment of important imperial workshops, which facilitated new techniques, such as a mastery of volatile famile rose glazes and the use of enamel on copper. Craftsmen were encouraged to hone and elevate their technical skills, and constantly tested the boundaries of how decoration could be used to create bold formal designs, which often resulted in feats of miniaturization, intricate carvings, and strident coloring. Qing craftsmen even incorporated new Western motifs with the more traditional Chinese themes to create striking cultural hybrids.

With the distinct exception of monochrome glazed porcelains made during the Kangxi (1664–1772) reign, however, most connoisseurs of Chinese decorative art generally dismiss Qing wares, considering anything produced after the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) to be of inferior quality. In this line of thinking, Qing wares are too brashly colored, too overwrought with excessive detail, too influenced by Western culture, do not adequately reflect the austerity demanded of scholars’ implements, and are essentially just garish byproducts of a nouveau riche non-Chinese people.

The irony is that much of the Qing’s artistic production was created with an eye to emulate historical Chinese artifacts. This eventually manifested itself as a desire to make wares that would be hyperrealistic avatars of the original examples. In the process, the Qing created the first truly modern Chinese decorative arts objects, and ushered in what was arguably the most accomplished period of artistic production of Chinese art since the fabled Song (960–1269) dynasty.

The Qing artists’ desire to pack as much possible information into every piece is seen in a pair of enamel-on-copper-covered jars. Each one has a taut tension created through juxtapositions: an abstract composition is paired with realistic, narrative elements; decorative marks swirl within the simple, gently sloping body of the jars, and hard-edged, precisely painted forms are colored in soft pastels. The overlapping layers of pattern — a canary yellow ground covered in hot pink peonies; sage green and cobalt blue ribbons, each covered in floral motifs; turquoise medallions; and sprays of leaves, petals and buds — make the Pattern and Decoration work of Kim MacConnel or Miriam Schapiro seem downright tame by comparison. A big pink bow painted around the neck of each jar heightens the notion that these objects are as special as delicate confections.

Often composed of materials such as bamboo, agate, and ivory, Qing snuff bottles take all the energy of these covered jars and compact it, crowding a profusion of forms onto a postage-sized surface. Looking at the almost microscopic swarm of heads populating the porcelain snuff bottle that depicts a scene of 100 children, it seems as though Qing craftsmen attempted to out-do all previous pieces with ever-more complex arrays of decoration in each subsequent piece.

But this need to up the ante on every object did not always translate into brightly colored, intricately painted bundles of forms. The Qing artists were able to transpose the same intensity to more exotic materials, such as jade and lacquer, allowing the inherent nature of the material to become an integral part of the experience of the object. These objects are tactile and sculptural, relying on intricate carving to delineate space. With the lacquer pieces, the optical interplay between the cinnabar and a contrasting dark black reinforce the angularity of precise laser-like cuts. The more muted tones of jade tend to let one carved detail blur into another, relieving the stone of its feeling of weight.

And then, of course, there are the monochrome glazed porcelains that were produced in the renowned imperial kilns in Jingdezhen. The colors of the glazes — such as mottled blue, sang de boeuf, tea dust, and celadon — represent the technological breakthroughs made possible by the munificent patronage of the Qing emperors. Some have an impenetrable depth, the result of many layers of glazes, while others sit entirely on the surface and have the feeling of glass. The bodies supporting the monochrome glazes are equally important because their often very simple shapes provides volume and contour. But the overall simplicity of the monochromes is a slight ruse, for these glazes are full of incident, movement, and nuance.

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