Page 112 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

42 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

we shall have occasion to discuss later.^ Needless to say, there

is no probability of this type being the real Ch'ai. Its compara-

tive commonness alone puts the supposition out of court, but the

suggestion serves to show that some Chinese thinkers, at any rate,

see the Ch'ai colour in just such glazes as the pale lavender blue

of Plate 38, Fig. 2, which undoubtedly satisfies in many respects

the description " blue of the sky after rain."

On the other hand, the celebrated Ju Chou ware of the Sung

dynasty, which aspired to equal the Ch'ai in colour, was evidently

of the grey green celadon type, with perhaps a tinge of blue like

Wethe early Corean wares.^ have, then, two theories on the

nature of the Ch'ai glaze : (1) that it was an opalescent, turquoise
glaze, such as is seen on the Chiin type of wares ; and (2) that

it belonged to the smooth grey green celadon class, with the bluish

tint strongly developed. There may be other theories ^ besides,

but it matters little, as no authentic specimen is known to exist.

In fact, the discussion under the circumstances would have but

little interest were it not for its bearing on some of the Sung wares,

which will be discussed in the next chapter.

1 See p. 48.

2 See pp. 39 and 54.
3 I have seen, for instance, a remarkable ware of white porcellanous type, with a
transparent glaze of a faint bluish tinge, to which the name Ch'ai was boldly given.
It was certainly an early type, perhaps as early as the Sung dynasty, but it belonged
to a class of porcelain which is almost certainly Corean. The only specimen I have
seen with a mark of the Posterior Chou period is not a blue-glazed piece but a large
vase with wonderful purplish black glaze of the Chien-yao type in the Eumorfopoulos
collection. The mark, however, has been cut at some time subsequent to the manu-
facture, and can only be regarded as reflecting some unknown person's opinion as

to the date of the piece.