Page 64 - J. P Morgan Collection of Chinese Art and Porcelain

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

which it is composed. Perhaps it may be permitted
here to sum up results, and to refer those interested in

the subject to my too bulky Oriental Ceramic Art for

further details and references to better authorities.

Beginning with the Sung dynasty, which reigned
from 960 to 1280, when it was overthrown by Kublai
Khan, the grandson of the famous Genghis Khan, and
the founder of the Yuan dynasty, which ruled China
till it was in its turn succeeded by the native Ming
dynasty in the year 1368, we have a ceramic period
marked generally by the primitive aspect of its pro-
ductions. Actual specimens of the time are now

available for comparison with the descriptions of the

writers on porcelain, and the illustrations of the artists

in the old albums which have come down to us. The

most useful of these last is the album of the sixteenth

century, in four volumes, from the Peking library of

the hereditary Princes of Yi, described by me in the

Journal of the Peking Oriental Society for 1886, which

has been often cited since. This album, entitled Li tai

ming tfU t'ou p'u {Illustrated Description of the cele-

brated Porcelain of different Dynasties), was the

work of Hsiang Yuan-p'ien, a well-known connoisseur

and collector of his time, and its eighty-three illus-
trations were drawn and colored by himself. The

seal in antique script of Mo-lin Shan jen attached to

"Ahis preface, gives his literary title, dweller in the

hills of Mo-lin," and is identical with the vermilion

stamp with which Hsiang guarantees as a critic,

the early picture of Ku K'ai-chih now in the British

Museum.

The ceramic productions of the Sung and Yuan dy-
nasties are rightly classed together by M. Grandidier,
whose classification it is proposed to follow here, ar-

ranged as it is in chronological order after a Chinese

model. It comprises five fairly well marked ceramic
classes, and as a rule it will not be found difficult to

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