Page 130 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

24 CHINESE ART.

enshrined in the Buddhist temple Pao-kuo-ssu at Peking, the
eariy date of which, the thirteenth century of our era, is authenti-
cated by the records of the monastery- Painted decoration was
still more sparingly employed, although we learn from the Ko ku
yao Inn that in the province of Chihli, both the Ting-chou and
Tz'u-chou porcelains of the time were occasionally painted with
ornamental designs in brown. Cobalt blue, it is recorded in the
annals, was brought to China by the Arabs as early as the tenth
century, and was first used, probably, in the preparation of coloured
glazes, as we know nothing of painting in blue under the glaze
until the Yuan dynasty. The earliest "blue and white'' dates
from the thirteenth century, when the technical process of painting
in cobalt on the raw body of the porcelain seems to have been
introduced, perhaps from Persia, where it had long been used in the
decoration of tiles and other articles of faience, although porcelain
proper was unknown to the Persians, except as an importation
from China.
There were many potteries in China during the Sung dynasty,
but Chinese writers always refer first to four ceramic productions
{yao) as the principal, viz., Ju, Kuan, Ko, and Ting placing
;
the celadon ware of Lung-ch'iian and the /?«;h6<'' faience of Chiin-
chou ne.xt : and relegating the other minor factories, which may
be neglected here, to an appendix.
The/z«-y«o was the porcelain made at Ju-chou, now Ju-chou-fu,
in the province of Honan. The best was blue rivalling, we are
told, the azure-tinted blossoms of the ]'i'ex incisa shrub, the " sky
blue flower " of the Chinese, and carrying on the tradition of the
celebrated Ch'ai Yao of the preceding dynasty {see p. 20), which
was made in the same province. The glaze, either crackled or
plain, was often laid on so thicklj' as to run down like melted lard
and end in an irregularly curved line before reaching the bottom
of the piece. This is well seen in the example chosen from my
own collection for illustration in Fig. 7, although the glaze is here