Page 89 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

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POTTERY. 15

undercut relief ; the body is covered with a bright green glaze, the
dragons are turquoise and purple, all three glazes being of finely
crackled texture.
The third. Fig. 6, is an example of the kind of ware which has
sometimes been wrongly attributed to the Sung dynasty. The
body, composed of a peculiarly dense dark-coloured stoneware, is
invested with a deep blue mottled glaze of transmutation (yao-
pien) or flambe type, thickening towards the foot of the vase, and
changing to brown at the mouth where it is thinnest. The seal-
mark stamped in the paste underneath, Ko Ming hsiang chih*
" made by Ko Ming-hsiang " is a potter's mark, recording the
individual name of the maker. A mark, Ko Yuan hsiang chih*
stamped underneath vases of the same class, is attributed to a
brother of the above. The two brothers are said to have worked
together early in the reign of Ch'ien Lung. The name of the
potter is rarely found attached to his work in China, which differs
in this respect from Japan.
PORCELAIN.
Porcelain has been broadly defined as the generic term em-
ployed to designate all kinds of pottery to which an incipient
vitrification has been imparted by firing. This translucent pottery
may be divided into two classes : i. Hard paste, containing only
natural elements in the composition of the body and the glaze.
2. Soft paste, where the body is an artificial combination of various
materials, agglomerated by the action of fire, in which the com-
pound called a frit has been used as a substitute for a natural
rock. No soft paste porcelain, as here defined, has ever been
made in China, so that it need not be referred to further. All
Chinese porcelain is of the hard paste variety. The body consists
essentially of two elements viz., the white clay, or kaolin, the
"
* These marks are given in facsimile among the •' Marks and Seals
reproduced in an appendix to this chapter (pp. 44-58).
8941. I