Page 158 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

170 Lobed bowl. Yueh ware. —
Stoneware covered with greyish-olive
years of its heyday and bears witness to a flourishing export trade
glaze T'ang Dynasty.
in Chinese ceramics.
What was this mysterious white ware? An almost pure white
porcelain was being produced in Kung-hsien, Honan, very early
in the seventh century, but there was another T'ang ware that was
whiter and finer still. An Essay on Tea (the Ch'a-ching), written, it
is believed, by the poet Lu Yu in the latter half of the eighth cen-
tury, says that for drinking tea one should use Yuen bowls, which
gave it the colouring of ice or jade, or the ware of Hsing-chou,
which was as white as snow or silver. In spite of intensive searches
in recent years in the Hsing-chou area, now called Nci-ch'iu-
hsien, no kilns producing a pure white ware were found there. But
in 1980 and 1981, investigators discovered in four kilns in Lin-
ch'cng-hsicn, a little to the north, remains of porcelain that ex-
actly fits Lu Yii's description of "Hsing ware." These scholars
point out that early writers—and Lu Yu was, after all, a poet
were not always precise in designating the source of ceramic
wares, citing the example of T'ang Ting ware, which was actually
made not in Ting-hsien but in neighbouring Ch'u-yang-hsien.
The white porcelain soon became popular and was widely imi-
tated, notably in the white-slipped stonewares of Hunan and
Szechwan. At the same time, the number of kilns making the finer
wares began to multiply. In the latter half of the dynasty, white
porcellaneous wares were made—if a single reference in a poem
of Tu Fu is acceptable evidence—at Ta-yi in Szechwan; while pale
171 Vase, possibly Hsing ware.
Porcelain covered with a creamy while bluish-white ware, the predecessor of the lovely Sung ch'ing-pai
glaze. Tang Dynasty. (ying-ch'ing), was already being produced in the Shih-hu-wan