Page 117 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

The Sung Dynasty, 960-1279 a.d. 47

Sung. Meanwhile it would be well to suspend judgment on this

interesting point.

The bulk of the Sung wares, at any rate, and among these the

—best of them, were either wholly undecorated that is, wholly

dependent on form and glaze, or else ornamented by such methods

as moulding, stamping, application of clay reliefs, carving, or etching

with a fine point. All these processes were applied while the clay

was still unfired, and the glaze was afterwards added and the

ware finished once and for all in a single firing. It follows, then,

that the glaze must be capable of standing the fierce heat required

to bake the body, and as the Sung bodies are mostly of a high-fired

porcellanous nature, the glazes used on them were limited to the

refractory kinds composed largely of petuntse or porcelain stone.

It follows also that any impurity, any particle of iron, for instance,

in the clay would make its presence felt in the glaze and influence

the colour of the latter, locally at any rate.

There is a striking contrast between the characteristic coloured

glazes of the Sung and the T'ang periods. The latter are, as a rule,

comparatively soft lead glazes, resembling in their colour, texture,

and their minute crazing the latter glazes on Ming pottery. The

former are thick and hard, and the crackle where it exists is

positive and well defined.

Mr. W. Burton 1 makes some interesting comments on these

high-fired glazes : " There are certain technical points of great

interest to be drawn from a study of the Sung productions. In

the first place, they prove that the Chinese, from a very early period,

had learnt to fire their pottery at a much higher temperature than

the contemporary potters of the West were using. ... A third

point of even greater interest, which seems to have escaped the

notice of every previous writer, is that the method of firing used

by the Chinese naturally produced glazes in which the oxide of

iron and oxide of copper were present in the lowest state of oxidisa-

tion ; and this is the explanation of the seeming paradox that the

green glazes, known to us as celadon, and the copper-red glazes,

were amongst the earliest productions of the Chinese porcelain-

makers, while in Europe they have been among the latest secrets

to be acquired."

The most important feature of the Sung Avares lies in their glaze,

which holds la qualite maiiresse de la ceramique, as an enthusiastic

A^ Porcelain, Sketch of its Nature, Art and Manufacture, p. 56.