Page 123 - 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. 51

fire in 1888, and what we have now is, at best, the reproduction of

a copy, and probably that of a copy of a copy. It is quite possible

that the thinner Sung wares are still represented in Chinese col-

lections, rare though they must of necessity be. But I believe

that even our own collections are capable of supplying proof that,

making reasonable allowance for verbal exaggeration, the Sung

potters did make wares which could fairly be described as thin.

Many of the white Ting wares are thin enough to be translucent ; no

one questions the correctness of the description as applied to them.

It only wants one specimen to prove the case for the celadon glazes,

and that may be seen in the beautiful bowl in Mr. Alexander's

loan collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum (Plate 16).

As for the Ju and Kuan ware, it is useless to consider their case

until we are quite satisfied that we have established their identity
;

and in the nature of things the opalescent glazes and those de-

scribed as " thick as massed lard " by the Chinese can only have

accompanied a relatively thin body. On the other hand, many

of the Corean celadons are of unimpeachable thinness, and as

they were contemporary with the Sung porcelains and were almost

certainly copied from them, there seems no real ground to withhold

belief entirely from the Chinese statements with regard to the

thinness of certain coloured Sung wares.