Page 426 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

Chapter XII

CHINESE POTTERY

what has been written in preceding

FROMchapters, it will be gathered that the dis-
tinction between pottery and porcelain in
Chinese wares is not always so clearly
marked as the amateur might anticipate. Between
the extremes of hard-paste translucid porcelain and

genuine pottery there are many varieties of soft-paste

and stone-ware. In fact the keramist varied the
composition of his pate to suit the glaze he desired to

apply to it. Even at an epoch when the processes of

manufacturing hard-paste porcelain were thoroughly
familiar to him, he preferred soft pate, and sometimes
stone-ware, as a ground for his choicest glazes or
most delicate decoration. But though translucency
and timbre were not points of special excellence in
his estimation, he regarded pottery proper as a de-
cidedly inferior product. Dr. Bushell writes thus :

" Tsu is defined in the older dictionaries as a
fine, compact tao, pottery. It is distinguished from
earthenware (wa) by the clear musical tone it gives

when struck sharply with the finger nail. The term

pottery, as with us, includes porcelain and earthen-
ware, both glazed (lm-li-*U)a\ and plain. Prince

Kung, one day, admired a glazed Buddha from the

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