Page 133 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

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142 Mask Stoneware decorated with
dam <-rv and musicians in relief under a
golden brown glaze. From a tomb of
57$ at Anyang. Honan Northern Ch'i
Dynasty.

143 Water container in the form of a
lion-dog, Yueh ware. Stoneware
covered with an olive-brown glaze.
Chin Dynasty, late third to early fourth
century.
these pottery centres, the most important were those in Shang-
yu-hsien and around the shores of Shang-lin-hu in Yu-yao-hsien,
active into the T'ang and Five dynasties. In addition to celadon,
the kilns at Tc-ch'ing, north of Hangchow, also produced a ware
with a rich black glaze. But in general the early Chekiang celadons
show, in the growing strength and purity of their shapes, the final
emancipation of the Chinese potter from his earlier bondage to
the aesthetic of the metalworker.
Indeed, freedom in the arts seems to be the keynote of this pe-
riod, not only in technique and design but also in the attitude of
the privileged classes toward the arts. For this was the age of the
first critics and aestheticians, the age of the first gentlemen paint-
ers and calligraphcrs, the age of the first great private art collec-
tions and of the birth of such cultivated pursuits as garden design-
ing and conversation as a fine art. Just as the sixth-century
anthologist Hsiao T'ung selected the poems for his Wen-hsuan on
grounds of literary merit alone, so, it seems, did patrons in the Six
Dynasties come for the first time to value their possessions
whether paintings or calligraphy, bronzes, jade, or pottery—sim-
ply because they were beautiful.

144 "Chicken ewer." Yiich ware.
Stoneware covered with an olive-brown
glaze.

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