Page 161 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

PORCELAIN DECORATED

appearance, more curious than beautiful. This crit-

icism, however, must not be understood as applicable

to specimens of earlier date than the end of the last

century. The granulated glazes of the Ming and

principal Tsing factories were both interesting and

attractive. In the Tao-lu it is nevertheless stated that

this Tsung-yen-yao, or ware a boutons d Aralia, which

is the Chinese term for strongly chagrined glaze,

was classed among ordinary porcelains and did not

rise to the dignity of a really choice production.

It was, in fact, hard-paste porcelain.

Since Chinese connoisseurs place the Hsuan-te era

at the head of blue-and-white porcelain epochs, it

might be expected that the names of some of its dis-

tinguished keramists would have been handed down

to posterity. But one only is mentioned, an artist

called Lo, wr hose specialty was the delineation of

fights between grasshoppers. Fashionable folks of

Lo's time are said to have amused themselves pitting

these insects against each other.

The year-mark of the HtshueaHns-utaenp-etrei"od is Hsuan-te
Fre-
men chi, " manufactured in (era).

quently in this, as in all the Ming periods, the

year-mark was prefixed by the ideographs Ta-mingt
signifying " Great Ming."

The three eras immediately following Hsuan-t$

were Chang-tung, from 1436 to 1449; Chiang-tai,

from 1450 to 1456, and Tien-shun, from 1457 to

1464. They produced nothing specially worthy of

note, and their year-marks are rarely found upon

keramic specimens. No reference is made in Chi-

nese works to the manufactures of this interval of

nearly thirty years, though the nine years (14261435)

of Hsuan-te's reign receive extended and enthusiastic

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