Page 142 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

period may probably be assigned the first manufac-

ture of hard-paste translucid porcelain in China. It
is impossible, of course, to speak with absolute cer-

tainty on such a point. Were there question of a
new discovery, such as that made by John Schnorr
at Ane, or by Madame Darnet at St. Yrieix, it might
be easy to be more explicit. But the story deals,

rather, with what seems to have been a gradual tran-

sition. The records of Ching-te-chen show very
plainly that, from the time when the potter's in-

dustry first began to flourish there (circ. 580 A.D.),
kaolin, or porcelain earth, was used at the factories.
Indeed it was the presence of feldspathic rock that
lent the locality its importance as a keramic centre.
In order to manufacture fine porcelain, however, it
was necessary to mix other clays with this petrosilex,
and the nature of the ware produced would have
varied, of course, with the proportions in which the
ingredients were combined. So long as thick lus-

trous glazes constituted the chief decoration of a
piece, a solid pate was probably found to possess spe-

cial advantage. But when colourless, translucid glaze
came to be required, as in the case of blue-and-white

ware, the quality of the body of a vase naturally

underwent some change. The progress of the two

processes decoration with blue under the glaze and
the manufacture of a true hard-paste porcelain bis-

cuit may therefore be said to have occurred simul-

taneously during the same epoch the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries and to have attained

appreciable development, though by no means yet
reaching a point of culmination, at the close of the
Yuan dynasty.

Among the keramic products of China, none, per-

100