Page 74 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

Ching-te-chen, and that in order to produce the
ferruginous ring in other white porcelains the bottom
must be coloured artificially. This is one of the chief

characteristics, and one of the tests applied by the

natives consists in looking for accidental patches or

little spots where the enamel for some reason or other
has allowed the raw paste to leak out, these spots

coming forward against the intentions of the manufac-

turer, since they reduce the value of the vessel if
;

the colour of these patches is genuine, like that of

the ring, it helps to increase the confidence in its age,

which, in all cases, must be of a date prior to the

closing of the factories at Lung-chuan and Ch'u-

chou." It must not by any means be assumed, how-

ever, that specimens of Lung-Chaun-yao, even though

they present the characteristics enumerated here,

necessarily date from the Sung era. The vast majority

of them probably belong to the fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries. For the factories in Chekiang remained

active until about the year 1620. They were not,

indeed, always at the same place. At the beginning
of the Ming dynasty (i 368), they were moved to Chu-
chou-fu, a town on the same river as Lung-chuan,

but about 75 miles farther down, and thus situated

half way between Lung-chuan and Wen-chow.

Here the manufacture was continued briskly, but the

productions lost their old excellence. The manner

of manipulating the porcelain stone or its quality

gradually deteriorated, and the colour of the glaze

lost its delicacy.

During the years immediately preceding the trans-

fer of the factory to Chu-chou-fu, the potters of

Lui-tien devoted much care to reproductions of the

Ko-yao. This was at the close of the Yuan dynasty

48