Page 313 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

MONOCHROMATIC GLAZES

a pate as fine as pipe-clay, as tender as vellum, and

withal so elastic that good specimens appear to spring

under pressure. The Catalogue of H'siang shows

that the potters of the Sung dynasty generally took
ancient bronzes as models for white Ting-yao, and

that they accurately copied not only the shapes of

these but also their decorative designs, incised or in

relief. Such models were naturally best adapted to

Whenvases, censers, libation-cups, and so forth.

there was question of bowls or plates the potter chose
ordinary shapes and ornamented them internally with

sprays of leaves and blossoms, floral scrolls, or two

fishes, incised or in relief, leaving the exterior plain.

The glaze was not crackled in Ting-yao proper, but

in the Tu-Ting-yao, or Ting-yao pottery, an inferior

and comparitively clumsy production, crackle of me-

dium size always appeared. It need scarcely be said

that genuine specimens of Ting-yao dating from the

Sung dynasty are virtually unprocurable.

It has been shown that the production of northern

Ting-yao, or Pai-ting, ceased in the year 1126, and

that the ware was thenceforth represented by the

Southern Ting-yao, or Nan-ting, manufactured at

Nan-chang in Kiang-si. Nan-chang and Ching-te-

chen were virtually synonymous. The keramic in-

dustry in this, its metropolitan, district progressed

steadily without much reference to changes of dynasty,
and when the Tuan Mongols became masters of the

whole empire, the production of Ting-yao at Ching-

te-chen went on as before. Thenceforth, however,

the porcelain was called Shu-fu-yao, or "
imperial

ware," to mark the fact that its chief destination was

the Court. The materials employed in the manu-

facture of this Tuan Shu-fu-yao being identical with

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