Page 229 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

K'ang Hsi Blue and White 141

made, he says, with a mineral called hua shih (in place of kaolin),

a stone of glutinous and soapy nature, and almost certainly corre-
sponding to the steatite or " soapy rock " which was used by the

old English porcelain makers at Bristol, Worcester and Liverpool.
" The porcelain made with hua shih,'' to quote Pere d'Entrecolles,
" is rare and far more expensive than the other porcelain. It has

an extremely fine grain and for purposes of painting, when com-
;

pared with ordinary porcelain, it is almost as vellum to paper.

Moreover, this ware is surprisingly light to anyone accustomed

to handle the other kinds ; it is also far more fragile than the ordinary,

and there is difficulty in finding the exact temperature for its firing.

Some of the potters do not use hua shih for the body of the ware,

but content themselves with making a diluted slip into which they

dip their porcelain when dry, so as to give it a coating of soap-

stone before it is painted and glazed. By this means it acquires

a certain degree of beauty." The preparation of the hua shih is

also described, but it is much the same as that of the kaolin, and

the composition of the steatitic body is given as eight parts of

hua shih to two of porcelain stone (petuntse).

There are, then, two kinds of steatitic porcelain, one with the

body actually composed of hua shih and the other with a mere

surface dressing of this material. The former is light to handle,

and opaque ; and the body has a dry, earthy appearance, though
it is of fine grain and unctuous to touch. It is variously named

by the Chinese ^ sha-t'ai (sand bodied) and chiang-t'ai (paste bodied),

and when the glaze is crackled it is further described as k'ai pien

(crackled).

The painting on the steatitic porcelain differs in style from
that of the ordinary blue and white of this period. It is executed
with delicate touches like miniature painting, and every stroke
of the brush tells, the effects being produced by fine lines rather
than by graded washes. The ware, being costly to make, is usually
painted by skilful artists and in the finest blue. Fig. 3, of Plate 93,
is an excellent example of the pure steatitic ware, an incense bowl
in the Franks collection, of which the base and a large part of the
interior is unglazed and affords a good opportunity for the study
of the body material. The glaze is thin and faintly crackled, and

— —the design Hsi Wang Mu and the Taoist Immortals is delicately

drawn in light, clear blue.

» See Bushell, 0. C. A., p. 320.