Page 52 - J. P Morgan Collection of Chinese Art and Porcelain

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

Iain. Another character, yao, of more recent construc-
tion, is now used for "kiln"; and also, again, for ware
fired in a kiln, so that kiian yao (imperial ware),
is the ordinary name used for the productions of the
imperial potteries at Ching-te-chen. Their word for
earthenware is wa, the character for which was orig-
inally the picture of a rounded tile.

Porcelain was certainly invented in China. This
is acknowledged, as it were, by the English 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 chini has a sim-
ilar connotation. For the creation of a scientific

classification of ceramic products we are indebted
to Brongniart, and may adopt his definition of the dis-

tinctive characteristics of porcelain. Porcelain ought
to have a white, translucent, hard paste, not to be
scratched by steel, homogeneous, resonant and vitri-

fied, exhibiting, when broken, a conchoidal fracture
of fine grain and brilliant aspect. These qualities,
inherent in porcelain, make it impermeable to water,
and enable it to resist the action of frost even when

uncoated with glaze. Among the characteristics of

the paste given above, translucency and vitrification
define porcelain best. If either of these two qualities

be wanting, we have before us another kind of pottery;

if the paste possess all the other properties, with
the exception of translucency, it is a stoneware; if
the paste be not vitrified, it belongs to the category
of terra-cotta or of faience.

The Chinese define porcelain under the name of
tfii, a character first found in books of the Han dy-

nasty (b. c. 206-A. D. 220), as a hard, compact, fine-
grained pottery (t'ao), and distinguish it by the clear,
musical note which it gives out on percussion, and by

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