Page 37 - Chinese Art From Two American Collections, April 5, 2017 Hong Kong

“TREASURED THROUGHOUT
THE WORLD”
This noble dish belongs to one of the most celebrated and at
the same time one of the most enigmatic ceramic wares of
China’s history. Crackled guan (‘official’) wares of the Southern
Song period (1127-1279), produced for the court right in the
capital, Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, are among the most
highly revered creations of China’s potters. The simplicity of
forms, the satisfactory texture of the thick, tactile glazes and
the endless variety of subtle shades and crackle patterns are
appealing like a work of art created by nature and please the
most sophisticated tastes.
In spite of the immense importance of these official ceramics
for the history of Chinese ceramics, guan ware is still less well
understood than most other ceramics of that period. Among
the many reasons are the fact that every piece is unique, and
contemporary wares can vary immensely; that this highly
prized ware was avidly copied right from the start; and that
examples to study are extremely rare and difficult to come by.
Unlike other ceramic wares of the period, including the
famous Ru wares of the Northern Song (960-1127) that
served as models, guan wares are marked by variation. Series
production, as was common at all other important Song kiln
centres that could create thousands of almost identical pieces,
was not practised here, and no two pieces of guan ware are
alike. While most other Song kiln centres had been active at
least since the Tang dynasty (618-907) and had refined their
materials and perfected their technology over a long period
of time, the guan kilns were set up by decree, to replace lost
access to northern ceramics, when the court fled to south
China and relocated in Hangzhou in 1127. The potters at the
newly established manufactories were probably a combination
of northerners, who had moved south together with the
imperial house and now had to come to terms with southern
materials, and locals, who had to adapt their materials and
traditional skills to recreate a northern ware. The need to
experiment probably explains both the vast variety and the
outstanding successes achieved by the new kilns.
The superb ceramics created in Hangzhou immediately found
echoes elsewhere. In the capital itself, at least two kiln centres introductory essay a re-dating of many pieces was proposed
making these crackled wares have been discovered, and yet
another kiln or kilns not yet identified may well have existed
(a possibility evoked also by Ts’ai He-pi at the Southern Song
guan ware conference, Nan Song guanyao wenji/A Collection of
Essays on Southern Song Dynasty Guan Kiln, Beijing, 2004, pp.
1-13). We cannot say for certain whether both kilns examined
so far were official kilns working directly for the court, or only cat. nos 98-102, 118-131 and 134). The first five were confirmed
one, or, for that matter, neither of them.
Similar wares continued to be made by at least one of the
two kilns, Laohudong, during the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368).
These Yuan wares are by some scholars categorised as
ge wares rather than guan, ge being another historically
documented name for important crackle-glazed wares. Other
scholars distinguish ge from guan by a more milky-beige or
-grey glaze colour and crazing lines in two different tones – a
difference that may, however, simply be due to the specific
conditions in the kiln. According to Nigel Wood: “It seems likely
that both ‘Ge-like’ and ‘Guan-like’ wares could have issued
simultaneously from the same kilns – simply showing the
natural variations of atmosphere, temperature and cooling
that dragon kilns often provide” (Chinese Glazes. Their Origins,
Chemistry and Recreation, London, 1999, p. 87). The term ge
can therefore not yet be used with confidence for any kind of
ware.
Other wares copying and often mixed up with guan wares, but
easier to distinguish, are Longquan and Jingdezhen wares.
Some very fine examples were made by the celadon kilns of
Longquan further south in Zhejiang province, both during and
after the Southern Song, but they tend to differ in shape and
body material. And since the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) but
mainly under Tang Ying as supervisor of the imperial kilns
during the Yongzheng (1723-35) and Qianlong (1736-95)
periods of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), deliberate copies of
guan ware were made at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province. The
latter can be exquisite and valuable in their own right, but the
potters there were used to working with white porcelain and
with higher firing temperatures, and were aiming for perfect,
impersonal porcelains that belie as much as possible human
involvement in their production. Not surprisingly, they had to
struggle to recreate the much warmer and more individual
creations of the early periods, where the skilful hand of the
master craftsman could still be detected and the outcome of
the firing was more variable.
The difficulty to understand guan wares is compounded by
the fact that genuine pieces are exceedingly rare, mostly
preserved in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, where larger
numbers, however, are only occasionally on display, and views
about attribution still differ. The first major exhibition of guan
ware from the Museum took place in Taipei in 1989, with a
catalogue by Ts’ai Ho-pi (Song Guan yao tezhan/Catalogue
of the Special Exhibition of Sung Dynasty Kuan Ware, National
Palace Museum, Taipei, 1989), where all pieces retained their
traditional attribution to the Song dynasty, although in the
and stylistic and technical differences were pointed out.
This catalogue includes twenty dishes of comparable mallow
shape, differing between each other in glaze, size, proportion
and firing method, some having been supported on spurs in
the kiln, some on their foot, like the present dish (Ts’ai 1989,
by Ts’ai as dating from the Song dynasty. A Yuan date was
suggested for five others, where the glaze at the rim is so thin,
that the dark body clearly shows through, or on account of
similarities with pieces believed to date from the Yuan dynasty,
excavated from a tomb of 1371 (Ts’ai 1989, cat. nos 118-121, p.
32). The rest was not expressly re-attributed.
More recently, two important exhibition catalogues presenting
guan ware were published by Yu Peichin (De jia qu. Qianlong
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