Page 197 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

2 1 3 Tripod incense burner, southern
southern Chckiang. The imperial kilns at Hangchow made a Inun ware. Stoneware with crackled
light-bodied ware in addition to the dark, while Lung-ch'uan bluish-green celadon glairc Southern
Sung Dynasty.
turned out a small quantity of dark-bodied ware as well as the
characteristic light grey. It seems certain that the finest Lung-
ch'uan celadons were supplied on official order and could hence be
classed as kuan.
Probably of all Sung stonewares the celadons are the most
widely appreciated—outside China, at least. The name is believed
to have been taken from that of Celadon, a shepherd dressed in
green who appeared in a pastoral play, L'Astree, first produced in
Paris in 1610. These beautiful wares, known to the Chinese as
ch'ing tz'u ("blue-green porcelain"), were made in a number of
kilns, but those of Lung-ch'iian were the finest, as well as the most
abundant, and were, indirectly, the heirs of the Yueh wares. The
light-grey body of Lung-ch'uan ware burns yellowish on expo-
sure in the kiln, and wears an unctuous iron glaze ranging in col-
our from leaf-green to a cold bluish-green, which is sometimes,
though by no means always, crackled. Crackle, originally an ac-
cidental result of the glaze shrinking more than the body when the
vessel cooled after firing, was often exploited for its decorative ef-
fect, as in the feo-type celadons, in which a closer, secondary crack-
le was also developed. To the finest Lung-ch'iian celadons, which
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