Page 135 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

PORCELAIN. 25

a crackled celadon, with no tinge of blue.* It may be described
as a Buddhist vase of Ju-chou jiorcelain modelled in strong relief,
with a circle of twelve standing figures round the shoulder sup-
ported by a wavy pedestal, a seated figure of Sakyamuni Buddha
with two attendants, together with alternating lotus flowers and
serpents on the neck, and a dragon coiled round the rim guarding a
disk elevated on a scroll of clouds. The celadon glaze of greyish-
green colour and finely crackled texture terminates below in a
curved unctuous line before it reaches the foot of the vase. On the
rosewood stand is carved in gilded letters Ju-yao Kuan-yin T&iin,
" "
i.e., Kuan-yin Vase of Ju (chou) porcelain : and, underneath
in relief, the seal of Liu Yen-t'ing, a famous antiquary and scholar,
to whose collection it formerly belonged.
The Kuan Yao was the " imperial ware " of the Sung dynasty,
kiian meaning " official," or " imperial," and the name is still
applied to the productions of the imperial potteries at Ching-te-
chen. The first manufactory in the Sung dynasty was founded
early in the eleventh century at the capital Pien-chou, the modern
K'ai-feng-fu. A few years later the dynasty was driven southward
by the advancing Tartars, and new factories had to be founded in
the new capital, the modern Hang-chou-fu, to supply table services
for the palace. The glazes of the early Kuan Yao were rich and
unctuous, generally crackled, and imbued with various monochrome
tints of which yueh-pai, or clair de lime was the most highly esteemed
of all, followed by fcn-ch'ing, " pale purple," ta-lii, " emerald
green " (literally gros vert), and lastly hiii-sc, " gray." The Hang-
chou Kuan Yao was made of a reddish paste covered with the
same glazes, and we constantly meet with the description of bowls
and cups with iron-coloured feet and brown mouths where the
glaze was thinnest. A curious characteristic of all the above

* The colour of the glaze of this vase and of some other typical specimens of
Sung porcelain is well represented by the tnree-colour process in the frontispiece
of Cosmo Monkhouse's Chineic Porcelain [Cassell & Co., 1901).