Page 27 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

CHAPTER VIII.

POTTERY.
The term Pottery is used here in its widest sense to include every
production of the fictile art, comprising all kinds of earthenware
and stoneware, as well as porcelain, its highest achievement.
Chinese ceramic art is in all probability an indigenous culture and
has been developed continuously from the rudest origin in Chinese
soil. The general Chinese word for pottery is t'ao, a very ancient
character, the construction of which shows that it originally meant
" kiln," although now is applied to all kinds of ware fired in
it
kilns, from the commonest earthenware to the finest porcelain.
Another character yao, of more recent construction, is now used
for " kiln " and also, again, for the ware fired in the kiln, so
;
that kuan yao, " imperial ware," is the ordinary name used for
the productions of the imperial potteries at Ching-tc-chen. Their
word for earthenware is wa, the character for which was originally
the picture of a rounded tile. .
Porcelain was certainly invented in China. This is acknow-
ledged, as it were, in England by the adoption of the word " china"
as equivalent to porcelain ; and even in Persia, where Chinese
porcelain has been known and imitated for centuries, the only
country to which an independent invention has been plausibly
attributed by some writers, the word chdni has a similar connota-
tion. For the creation of a scientific classification of ceramic
products we are indebted to Brongniart, and it may be well to define
here the distinctive characteristics of porcelain. Porcelain ought
8941. c