Page 345 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

MONOCHROMATIC WARES

than a solitary quotation from an ancient memoir to

support his dictum that red glazes were manufactured

so far back. On the other hand, H'siang, himself a

collector, apparently a keener connoisseur than the

writer of the Tao-lu, and living, moreover, three cen-
turies nearer the times of which he wrote, makes no

mention of red Ting-yao, though he carefully enu-
merates the varieties of that beautiful ware which

were most highly esteemed in the sixteeenth century.

The student must be content, therefore, to leave this

point unelucidated so far as the Ting-yao is concerned.

Turning, however, to the Chun-yao of the Sung

dynasty, it appears that whether pure red mono-
chromes were produced or not, the use of red in the

glaze was undoubtedly well understood. H'siang,
speaking of this ware, says that " of the colours used
in the decoration none excelled the vermilion red

and the aubergine purple." The typical Chun-yao,

familiar to modern collectors from genuine Sung

specimens or later, though not inferior, imitations

made at Ching-te-chen, had a glaze of exceedingly

delicate red, finely flecked with clair-de-lune and can-
,

not, therefore, be strictly classed among monochromes.
In a variety of the same ware, made at Ching-te-chen

during the present dynasty, and supposed to have had

its prototype in the Sung Chun-yao, there is a glaze

called Hai-tung-hung, in consequence of its resem-

blance to the colour of the Pyrus "Japonica blossom.

None of the original Sung pieces, so far as is known,

could properly have been described by such a

name.

During the Tuan dynasty (12601367) red in the

glaze seems to have been used only as an auxiliary.
It is found associated, in the form of splashes or

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