Page 401 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

MONOCHROMATIC WARES

interesting and instructive. " There is another glaze,"
he writes, " called Tzu-chin-yu, that is to say, golden
brown. I should be disposed to call it rather glaze

of the colour of coffee, or bronze or dead leaves. To
make it, common yellow clay is taken and treated
after the manner of porcelain earth. Of this only

the finest parts are employed. They are thrown into

water, and formed into a sort of paste as liquid as the
purest white glazing material prepared from petro-

silex. The two i.e. the material obtained from the

yellow clay and that from petrosilex have to be
subsequently mixed, and in order to determine whether
they have been brought to the same degree of con-
sistency, bricks of porcelain are dipped into them, and
the marks of the liquids on the bricks in each case are

compared. To the combined liquids there is further

added a compound of lime and fern ashes, which

has been brought to a similar state of consistency.

The proportions in which the three are mixed depend

upon the nature of the colour which it is desired to

produce. ... At one time it was customary to

manufacture cups with this golden brown glaze out-
side, and a pure white glaze on the inner surface.
Subsequently the method was varied, and when a vase
was to receive the Tzu-chin-yu, small spaces, round or
square, were covered beforehand with moistened

paper. After applying the glazing material, these
papers were removed, and the unglazed spaces thus

reserved were decorated with red or blue. When the

porcelain was dry it received the usual colourless,
translucid glaze, either by immersion or insufflation.

Some artists filled the reserved medallions with an

uniform ground of azure or black, with the intention
of applying designs in gold after the first stoving."

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