Page 320 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

iQo Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

are those used on finer types of three-colour porcelain i with trans-
parent glazes fired in the temperate part of the great kiln. All
these glazes tend to become iridescent with age.

The colouring medium of the pale yellow is antimony combined
with a proportion of lead, and iron oxide is added to give the glaze
an orange or brown tinge. ^ It is noticeable that the yellow applied

to the biscuit is usually browner in tone. This is the nature, if

we may judge from the excellent coloured illustrations in the Walters

catalogue,^ of the eel yellow {shan yii huang), a brownish colour of

clouded smoky appearance, and one of the few glazes named in the

T'ao lu as a speciality of the directorate of Ts'ang Ying-hsiian.

The other yellow associated with the name of Ts'ang is the " spotted
yellow " {huang pan fien), discussed on p. 127. Its identification
is uncertain, and Brinkley describes it as " stoneware with a dark

olive green glaze with yellow speckles," while Bushell (0. C. A., p. 317)
regards it as a " tiger skin " glaze with large patches of yellow and
green enamel, the same as the huang lil tien (yellow and green
spotted), which he quotes from another context.

All these varieties belong to the couleurs de demi-grand Jen ; but
there are besides several varieties of yellow enamels fired in the
muffle kiln. Of these the transparent yellow was used as a ground
colour in the K'ang Hsi period, but the opaque varieties, such as

the lemon yellow, etc., belong rather to a later period. Among the

latter I should include the crackled mustard yellow, though examples
of it have often been assigned to the K'ang Hsi and even earlier
reigns. There is, for instance, a bottle-shaped vase with two elephant
handles in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which Bushell * regarded
as a specimen of the old mi-se (" millet colour ") glaze of the Sung

d5Tiasty. A careful examination shows that this crackled brownish
yellow is made in much the same fashion as the apple green and

the sage green crackles, viz. a yellow glaze or enamel overlying a
stone-coloured crackle. This is not a Sung technique, but rather

» See p. 147.

- There are some fine examples of orange yellow monochrome in the Peters Col-

mlection in New York. The colour was also used with success the Ch'ien Lung

period, the mark of which reign occurs on a good example in the Peters Collection.

* Bushell, 0. C. A., Plates xxv. and Ixxxiii.

* See Monkhouse, op. cit., fig. 22. The crackle on the mustard yellow glaze is

usually small, but there is a fine specimen in the Peters Collection with large even

crackle. Sometimes this yellow has a greenish tinge, and in a few instances it is

combined with crackled green glaze.