Page 366 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

220 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

Wedemi-grand feu. learn elsewhere that this cloisonne blue was

one of T'ang-ying's inventions.

Among the yellows are " porcelain with yellow after the European

style " which is identified by Bushell with the opaque lemon yellow

enamel introduced at this time, and there are two kinds of mi se

(millet colour) glazes/ pale and dark, which we are told " differed

from the Sung mi ^e." Bushell's explanation of the term mi si

given in Monkhouse's Chinese Porcelain,^ traverses his rendering

of the terms as rice colour in other books : " The Chinese term

used here is mi se, which Julien first translated couleur du riz, and

thereby misled us all. It really refers to the colour {se) of the yellow

Mimillet {huang mi), not of rice (p«i mi). se in Chinese silks is

a full primrose yellow ; in Chinese ceramic glazes it often deepens

from that tint to a dull mustard colour when the materials are less
pure. It has often been wondered why the old " mustard crackle "

of collectors is apparently never alluded to in " L'Histoire des Porce-

laines de King-te-chin." It is necessary to substitute yellow for

" rice coloured " in the text generally, remembering always that

a paler tone is indicated than that of the Imperial yellow, which

Mr. Monkhouse justly likens to the yolk of an egg^.""

In Giles's Dictionary mi se is rendered " straw colour, the colour

myof yellow millet," and all inquiries among Chinese collectors

as to the tint of the mi se glaze have led to the same conclusion.

One of the Chinese experts indicated a bowl with pale straw yellow

glaze of the K'ang Hsi period as an example of mi se, and this I

take to be the mi se which " differed from the Sung colour," being,

in fact, an ordinary yellow glaze, following the type made in the

IMing dynasty, and entirely different in technique from the Sung

glazes.

The precise nature of the Sung mi se which is included among

the Ko yao, Chiin yao and Hsiang-hu wares reproduced by the
Yung Cheng potters according to the Imperial list is a little doubtful.

Possibly one type was illustrated by the " shallow bowl with spout :
grey stoneware with opaque glaze of pale sulphur yellow," which
Mr. Alexander exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910.^
Another is indicated in the Pierpont Morgan collection * in a " shallow

1 See p. 225, No. 44. The colour has already been discussed in a note on p. 68
- Op. cit., p. 67.
2 Catalogue, K. 18.

'^Catalogue, vol. i., p. 38.
of vol. i. of this book.