Page 196 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

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sively of the type of tea bowls which proved so popular in Japan.
They have a dark stoneware body decorated with a thick, oily iron
glaze running to big drops at the foot. The colour is basically a
very dark brown verging on black, often streaked with blue or
steel grey, producing marks known as "hares fur," or bluish "oil
spots" caused by the coagulation of grey crystals. These were im-
itated in a rather coarse, lustreless ware made at Chi-chou in
Kiangsi—often confusingly called Kian ware in older books—and
at other kilns in Fukien such as Kuang-che, Fu-ch'ing, and
Ch'uan-chou.
When, after a few years at Hangchow, the Southern Sung court
2 2 Tea bowl, Fukien immaku ware.
Stoneware with black "hare's fur" glaze. began to realise that this was to be more than a temporary halting
Southern Sung Dynasty.
place, steps were taken to enlarge the palace and government of-
fices and to set up factories to manufacture utensils for court use
which would duplicate as closely as possible those of the old
northern capital. The supervisor of parks, Shao Ch'eng-chang,
who was in charge of this work, established a kiln near his own of-
fice (Hsiu-nei Ssu) on Phoenix Hill just to the west of the palace,
which lay at the southern end of the city. There, according to a
Sung text, Shao's potters made "a celadon which was called Nei-
yao [palace ware]. Its pure body of exceptional fineness and deli-
cacy, its clear and lustrous glaze, have been prized ever since." The
Phoenix Hill area has been repeatedly built over, and the kilns have
not been discovered, nor is it known how long they were in oper-
ation. But before long another imperial factory was set up to the
southwest below the suburban Altar of Heaven (Chiao-t'an). This
has become a place of pilgrimage to ceramics enthusiasts, who
over the years have picked up quantities of shards of the beautiful
"southern kuan" which graces many Western collections. Its dark
body is often thinner than the glaze, which is layered, opaque, vit-
rified, and sometimes irregularly crackled, ranging in colour from
a pale bluish-green through blue to dove grey. The ware has an air
of courtly elegance combined with quietness and restraint that
made it a fitting adornment for the Southern Sung court.
We should not try to draw too sharp a line between Hangchow
kuan ware and the best of the celadons made at Lung-ch'iian in

Map i i Kiln sites in the Hangchow
area.
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