Page 193 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

204 Funerary pillow, Ting ware.
Porcelain covered with creamy white
glaze. Northern Sung Dynasty.

brown) Ting, and a coarse yellowish / » ("earth") Ting. Varieties of
Ting and near-Ting, however, are not always easy to distinguish.
The extensive surveys and excavations of recent decades have
made it apparent that not only was one type of ware often made in
a number of different kilns, with the inevitable local variations in
205 Bottle with copper-bound rim. Ju
character and quality, but also that one kiln centre might turn out ware. Stoneware covered with dove s-
egg-blue glaze. Northern Sung
a wide range of products. To take two examples, Koyama Fujio
Dynasty.
and, more recently, Chinese investigators discovered in the ruins
of the Ting kilns white, black, and persimmon-red glazed porce-
lain, unglazed, painted porcelain, pottery with white slip, with
patterns in iron oxide, with carved designs, with black, and with
buckwheat brown glaze. The Sung kilns at Ho-pi-chi, T'ang-yin-
hsien, Honan, first investigated in 1955, while turning out chiefly
plain white wares also produced coloured wares, white wares
with coloured decoration, cups glazed black outside and white in-
side, a high-quality Chiin-type stoneware, and black glazed vases
with vertical yellowish ribs in relief, such as the lovely vessel illus-
trated here. The value and beauty of the Ting wares lies not
merely in their glaze and decoration but also in the exquisite purity
of their shapes, many of which were copied not only in other
Sung kilns but also in the Korean wares of the Kory6 period. After
the fall of Kaifcng in 1 1 27, wares of Ting type were made at Chi-
chou in central Kiangsi, very probably by refugee potters who had
fled to the south.
1 ''
Since the Sung Dynasty, Chinese connoisseurs have classed
Ting-yao as a "classic" ware of Northern Sung, together with Ju-
yao, Chun-yao, and the now legendary Ch'ai-yao, which had a 206 Pitcher, northern ceLadon
glaze "blue like the sky after rain." When the too-fastidious em- Stoneware with carved decoration
under an olive-green glaze. Northern
peror Hui-tsung decided that, presumably because of its "tear- Sung Dynasty.