Page 322 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

192 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

the stems of which with dragon designs in full relief are in an intensely-
dark tzii chin glaze, so dark, indeed, that the tops have been exactly
matched in the deep brown ware made by Bottger of Dresden
about 1710, the latter polished on the lathe to simulate the lustrous
surface of the Chinese glaze. In the same collection are two saucer
dishes of dark tzu chin glaze of fine quality painted with slight floral
designs in silver.^ This kind of decoration must have been singularly
effective in its original state, but the silver does not stand the test
of time, and though it still firmly adheres its surface has turned

black. An unusual effect is seen on a vase in the Peters collection

which has a lustrous coffee brown glaze passing into olive and
clouded with black; and a very rare specimen in the same col-
lection has a " leopard skin " glaze of translucent olive brown
with large mottling of opaque coffee brown. The latter piece

bears the Wan Li mark.

The lightest shade of this colour is what has been described
as Nanking yellow.^ It is used as a monochrome or as a ground
colour with panels usually of famille verte enamels, and sometimes
with enamelled decoration applied over the brown glaze itself. It
is clear that the sui yu or crackle glaze was sometimes mixed with
the tzU chin, for we find many examples of beautiful lustrous brown
crackle. They have, however, in many cases an adventitious tinge
of grey or green, for which the crackle glaze is perhaps responsible.

A near relation to the tzU chin (brown gold) glaze is the wu chin

(black gold), a lustrous black glaze obtained by mixing a little impure
cobaltiferous ore of manganese (or coarse blue material ^) with the
tzH chin glaze. Like the latter the black is an intensely hard glaze
fired in the full heat of the great kiln, and it has a lustrous metallic
surface which earned for it the name of " mirror black." ^ This
glaze seems to have really been a K'ang Hsi innovation,^ and possibly
it was a confusion with this fact which led d'Entrecolles into his
erroneous statement about the date of the lustrous brown.

^ See P^re d'Entrecolles, second letter, section xili. : " L'argent sur le vernis tse kin
(tzii chin) a beaucoup d'eclat."

* See p. 145.

'The blue of the cobalt is sometimes clearly visible in the fracture of the glaze;
and in other cases the black has a decided tinge of brown.

* d'Entrecolles, loc. cit., section viii. : " Le noir ^clatant ou le noir de miroir appell6
ou kim " {wu chin).

* d'Entrecolles declares that it was the result of many experiments, apparently
in his own time. See p. 194.