Page 172 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

The next two periods, Lung-ching (i 567 1573)

and Wan-li (15731620), may be conveniently

classed together as to their blue-and-white porce-

lains. In the Tao-lu their wares are called Lung-

ivan-yao, as though no distinction existed between

the two reigns. The important points to be noted

with regard to these wares are that Mohammedan

blue was no longer procurable and that the materials

for manufacturing the porcelain mass had become in

part exhausted and in part inferior. It is exceed-

ingly probable, though the fact cannot be asserted

with absolute confidence, that from 1 570, approxi-

mately, until the end of the Ming dynasty (1644),

very little soft-paste blue-and-white porcelain was
Amanufactured at Ching-te-chen.
principal ingre-

dient for its biscuit was taken, as has been already

stated, from the bed of the river on which the city

stood, and this source of supply came to an end or

ceased to be available during the Lung-ching era. On

the other hand, large quantities of hard-paste porce-

lain were made. Numerous surviving examples may

be seen. In all of them the biscuit is dense and

heavy. Small pieces show excellent technique, but
the larger are more or less clumsy and roughly fin-
ished. Their bottoms, instead of being turned on
the wheel as was the case with preceding wares of
the better class, generally exhibit marks of the knife
used to remove superfluous clay. Often, too, the
bottom is not depressed, but filled up level with the
rim. In such specimens the year mark is written
either on the outside of the piece usually round

the upper or lower edge or in a rectangular space
cut in the centre of the under surface and glazed.

The type of blue-and-white Lung-wan-yao is essen-

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