Page 36 - The art of the Chinese potter By Hobson

THE ART OF THE CHINESE POTTER

a degree of certainty in his production of true porcelain sufficient

to ensure an export trade as far afield as Mesopotamia. The white

wares are very similar to the Ting yao and allied wares of the Sung

dynasty ; while the celadons are like those known as " Northern

XXXChinese." Plates XXIX and show examples of early white

ware possessing characteristics similar to the Samarra fragments

with their gummy white glaze.

Usually, however, the T'ang body is of a white pipe-clay consist-

ency, but is sometimes hard enough to resist the knife.

During the last few years increasing evidence of the maturity of

the potter's art in the T'ang dynasty has been forthcoming.

Though the sensuous appeal of some of the later Sung glazes is

lacking, the T'ang pottery excels in graceful outlines and nobility

of form. There is nothing small about the T'ang ceramic art, and

as knowledge of this period grows we shall doubtless have greater

reason to admire and appreciate it.

Apparently ceramic factories existed up and down the length and

breadth of China wherever suitable clay deposits occurred, but

our knowledge to date does not permit us to identify the wares

made at the few factories which we know to have been operative

at the period ; still less can we differentiate the productions of
the many minor centres of which history has told us nothing.

Thus it is that we have to rest content at present with

assigning wares to such an extensive period of time as the 7th to

the 10th centuries, with no attempt at all at saying whether par-

ticular specimens were made in the north, south, east, or west. To

the archaeologist this is vexing no doubt, and will have to be

remedied by scientific excavation, but to the art lover it is sufficient

to see and admire such fine productions, for instance, as those

represented on Plates IX, XIX, and XXI. The men who made

the objects there depicted had nothing to learn, so far, at all events,

as artistic sense is concerned.

In the Sung dynasty (960-1279 A.D.) further developments were

made. Greater refinement of the materials used for the body of

the ware became general, and a wide range of glaze colours was

developed. The lead-silicate glazes were abandoned generally in

favour of the high-fired felspathic glazes which could be applied

much more thickly ; as a consequence a depth of glaze and a

heightened colour effect were achieved. These thick glazes are

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