Page 59 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

By comparison with the bronzes, the pottery of Western and early
Eastern Chou is sober stuff. Many of the finest pieces are crude
imitations of bronze vessels, though generally only the shape is
copied, such bronzclikc decoration as there is being confined to
bulls' heads or t'ao-t'ieh masks attached to the sides. Although a
few specimens of plain red ware have been found, most Western
Chou pottery consists of a coarse grey ware, the most popular
purely ceramic shape being a round-bottomed, wide-mouthed
storagejar which is often cord-marked.
But recent discoveries show that in addition to this mass of un-
glazed wares a much more sophisticated ceramic art was begin-
ning to develop. The Chinese language only distinguishes two
types of ware: t'ao (pottery) and tz'u (which includes both stone-
ware and porcelain). Some of the Western Chou wares arc cer-
tainly tz'u, if not what we would call porcelain, a particularly fine
example being the glazedjar illustrated here, which was unearthed
in 1972 from an early Western Chou burial at Pei-yao-ts'un in
Honan. The important tomb of the reign of Mu Wang at P'u-tu-
ts'un near Sian contained rather similar vessels decorated with
horizontal grooves and covered with a thin bluish-green felspathic
glaze quite different from the blackish or yellowish Shang glazes.
Other glazed wares, datcablc by bronze inscriptions to the elev-
enth and tenth centuries b. c. , have been found in graves in Honan,
Kiangsu, and Anhui. They may all be considered as ancestors of
the great family of celadons of later dynasties.