Page 187 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

CHAPTER VII

MISCELLANEOUS PORCELAIN FACTORIES

jL LTHOUGH from the Ming period onwards our interest is almost

/--\ entirely centred in Ching-te Chen, there were other factories

which cannot be altogether ignored. A certain number have

already been mentioned at the end of the first volume, our scanty
information being drawn chiefly from the pottery section of the
K'ang Hsi Encyclopaedia. The same monumental work includes in
another part^ a discourse on porcelain (tz'u ch'i), in which several
additional factories are named. The passage in question is prefaced
by a quotation from the T'ien kung k'ai wu, a late-seventeenth cen-
tury manual, in which w^e are told that the white earth (o t'u ^) neces-
sary for the manufacture of fine and elegant ware was found in
China in five or six places only^ : viz. at Ting Chou, in the Chen-ting

Fu in Chih-li, at Hua-ting Chou in the Ping-liang Fu in Shensi, at
P'ing-ting Chou in the T'ai-yiian Fu in Shansi, and at Yii Chou in
the K'ai-f eng Fu in Honan, in the north ; and at Te-hua Hsien in the
Ch'iian-chou Fu in Fukien, at Wu-yiian Hsien and Ch'i-men Hsien
in the Hui-chou Fu, in Anhui, in the south. As to the wares made
in these localities, we are told that the porcelains of the Chen-ting
and K'ai-feng districts were generally yellow and dull and without
the jewel-like brilliancy, and that all put together were not equal
to the Jao Chou ware. It would appear, then, that the Ting Chou
factories so noted in Sung times were still extant, though they
had lost their importance. For the rest, the Ch'i-men district
supplied Ching-te Chen with the raw material, the Te-hua wares
will be discussed presently, and we have no information about

the productions (if any) of the other localities.

Ku* chin fu shu chi cb'ing, section xxxii., bk. 248, section entitled iz'ti ch'i pu

hui k'ao, fol. 13 verso.

' The supplies of porcelain earth in the immediate district of Jao Chou Fu were
exhausted by this time,

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