Page 50 - Song Ceramics Lunyushanren Collection March 2018 NYC

dynasties, and are still made up to the present day. However, it is the
period 10th-14th century which saw the development of the wide variety
of decorative techniques for which Cizhou wares are famed, as well
as being the period of most extensive production. It is signifcant that,
despite being a popular, rather than an offcial ware in the Song, Jin and
Yuan dynasties, Cizhou ware is mentioned in the frst edition of the
Gegu yaolun 格古要論 (Essential Criteria of Antiquities) by Cao Zhao 曹昭,
published in Nanjing in AD 1388, where the author notes that fne pieces
are similar to Ding wares, but lack ‘tear-drops’, and also notes that some
pieces have incised or impressed designs. In the additions to the original
text made by Wang Zuo 王佐 in the revised and annotated edition of the
Gegu yaolun, called Xinceng gegu yaolun 新增格古要論, completed in 1459
and published in AD 1462, the place of manufacture for Cizhou wares is
noted to be Zhangdefu 彰德府, Henan province (see Sir Percival David,
Chinese Connoisseurship – The Ko Ku Yao Lun – The Essential Criteria of
Antiquities, London, 1971, p. 142, Section X). It was also suggested that
the price for some Cizhou wares was higher than that of Ding wares.
However, this may have been due to the misreading of a badly printed
character in the 1388 edition. It was not until the Ming dynasty that
Cizhou wares appear to have been part of offcial transactions. The 1700
edition of the Cizhou zhi 磁州志 notes that in the twelfth year of Hongzhi
(1498) some 11,936 wine jars were supplied in payment of tax to the
government, and there were offcial storehouses in the Cizhou area,
where the wine jars were kept until they were transported by water to
the capital. According to the 1587 edition of the Da Ming huidian 大明會
典, large court orders for wine jars were sent annually to the Cizhou kilns
in the Xuande reign (1426-35), and in the thirty-second year of Jiajing
(1553) another large order for wine jars was sent to Cizhou.

A resurgence of academic and commercial interest in Cizhou wares was
accelerated in the frst quarter of the 20th century with the discovery
of the habitation site of Juluxian 鹿縣, Hebei province. Excavation and
investigation began under the auspices of the Tianjin Museum 天津博物
院 in 1920 and the results published in 1923 in Julu Songqi conglu 巨鹿宋
器叢錄. A signifcant quantity of ceramics with white slip and colourless
glaze was found at Juluxian and these ceramics were in turn linked to
the descriptions of undecorated Cizhou wares in Chinese texts. The
Juluxian site was of particular interest since it was destroyed by fooding
of the Zhang River in AD 1108, thus providing a terminus ante quem
for the ceramics discovered there. The white wares found at Juluxian had
characteristic rust-coloured staining from the iron in the soil in which
they had been preserved. The white vase in the Linyushanren Collection
with trumpet mouth and everted rim (lot 512) not only has this type of
staining, but was made in one of the shapes associated with the Juluxian
fnds. A date of Northern Song dynasty, late 11th-early 12th century is
therefore probable for this vase.
In the second half of the 20th century more than twenty kiln sites
producing Cizhou wares were investigated predominantly in Henan,
Hebei and Shanxi provinces. From the Song to the Yuan dynasty the
area around Cizhou itself contained some of the most important kiln
sites – one group along the banks of the 漳河 Zhang River, and a second
group along the upper reaches of the 滏 源溝 Fu River. The largest (at
about 500,000 square meters) and best preserved of these is the Guantai
觀台 site on the Zhang River in Cixian, which was frst investigated in
1951 by the eminent Chinese scholar Chen Wanli, who published his
fndings in ‘Diaocha pingyuan Hebei ersheng gudai yaozhi baogao’,
Wenwu cankao ziliao 調查平原 河北二省古代窯址報告, 文物參考資料, 1952,
no.1. Further investigations were carried out by the Hebei Province
Cultural Relics Bureau in 1958 and 1960-61, while in 1963 the Guantai
site and others in the area were excavated by the Beijing Palace Museum
scholar Li Huibing 李輝炳, who published his fndings in ‘Cizhouyao
yizhi diaocha’, Wenwu, 磁州窯遺址調查, 文物 1964, no. 8, pp. 37-56. In
1987 a team comprised of members of the Department of Archaeology at
Beijing University, the Hebei Provincial Cultural Relics Institute, and the
Lot 517
拍品517號 Handan Regional Cultural Relics Protection Agency undertook a further
excavation of the Guantai kiln site, and published an extensive report of

The Classic Age of Chinese Ceramics 古韻天成 — 臨宇山人珍藏（三） 48