Page 44 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

12 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

Te porcelain is unanimously voted the first place by Chinese writers,
and its excellence is ascribed principally to the superior quality

of an imported mineral variously described as su-ni-p'o, su-po-ni
and s^u-ma-ni. These outlandish names are, no doubt, attempts
to render in Chinese the foreign name of the material, which was
itself probably the name of the place or people whence it was ex-
ported. There is little doubt that this mysterious substance was

the same species as the Mohammedan blue {hui hui chHng) of the
following century. Indeed, this latter name is applied to it in
Hsiang's Album. The Mohammedan blue was obtained from
Arab traders, and its use for painting on pottery had been familiar

in the Near East, in Persia and Syria for instance, at least as early
as the twelfth century.^ The su-ni-p'o blue was no doubt imported
in the form of mineral cobalt, and though there was no lack of this

mineral in the neighbourhood of Ching-te Chen, the foreign material
was of superior quality. It was, however, not only expensive but
unsuited for use in a pure state. If applied by itself, it had a
tendency to run in the firing, and it was necessary to blend it with

proportions of the native mineral varying from one in ten for the
finest quality to four in six for the medium quality. The native
mineral used by itself tended to be heavy and dull in tone, owing
to its inability to stand the intense heat of the kiln, and was only

employed alone on the coarser wares. The supply of Mohammedan

blue was uncertain and spasmodic. It ceased to arrive at the
end of the Hsiian Te period, and it was not renewed till the
next century (see p. 29). Its nature, too, seems to have varied,
for we are expressly told that the Hsiian Te blue was pale in tone

while the Mohammedan blue of the sixteenth century was dark.

1 According to Bushell, O. C. A., p. 130, " cobalt blue, as we learn from the official
annals of the Sung dynasty {Sung shih, bk. 490, fol. 12), was brought to China by the

Arabs under the name of wu ming yi." This takes it back to the tenth century. Wu

ming yi (nameless rarity) was afterwards used as a general name for cobalt blue, and
was applied to the native mineral. The name was sometimes varied to wu ming izH.
Though we are not expressly told the source of the su-ni-p'o blue, it is easily guessed.
For the Ming Annals (bk. 325) state that among the objects brought as tribute by
envoys from Sumatra were " precious stones, agate, crystal, carbonate of copper,

^rhinoceros horn, and [S] hui hui ch'ing (Mohammedan blue)." See W. P. Groene-

veldt, V erhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genooischap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen,

vol. xxxix., p. 92. These envoys arrived in 1426, 1430, 1433, 1434, and for the last
time in 1486. Sumatra was a meeting-place of the traders from East and West, and

no doubt the Mohammedan blue was brought thither by Arab merchants. Possiblj-
some of the mineral was brought back by the celebrated eunuch Cheng Ho, who
led an expedition to Sumatra in the Yung Lo period. See also p. 30.