Page 126 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

54 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

Ainfer that the originals had the same peculiarities. reputed

specimen ^ of modern Ju glaze ^ has a pale greyish green tint, with

just a suspicion of blue, and would answer fairly well to the

description tan ch'ing or fen ch'ing.

But probably our safest clue to the appearance of Ju ware is

to be found in the important passage already mentioned,^ in which

a Sung writer describes the Corean wares as in general appear-

ance like the old pise ware of Yiieh Chou and the new Ju Chou

ware. The typical Corean wares of this time are not uncommon,

—and their glaze a soft grey green or greenish grey, with a more
—or less obvious tinge of blue would satisfy the Chinese plirases,

ian ch'ing and fen ch'ing, and in the bluer specimens might, by a

stretch of poetic phrase, even be likened to the sky after rain.

The " egg white," however, must have been a somewhat paler

tint if the expression can be taken in any literal sense.

From the foregoing considerations we may conclude that the

Ju porcelain was a beautiful ware of celadon type, varying in tint

from a very pale green to a bluish green.

Though it is nowhere definitely stated how long the Ju Chou

factories retained their supremacy, it is tolerably clear from Hsii
Ching's reference in 1125, or very soon after, to the " modern

porcelain of Ju Chou," that they came into prominence towards

the end of the Northern Sung period, perhaps in the last half of

the eleventh century ; and as we have no further information

about them, we may perhaps infer that they sank into obscurity

when the Sung emperors were driven from the North of China

by the invading Tartars in 1127. In any case, the Ju ware seems

to have become as extinct as the Ch'ai by the end of the INIing

dynasty. Hsiang Yiian-p'ien, late in the sixteenth century, states
that " Ju yao vessels are disappearing. The very few which exist

are almost all dishes, cups, and the like, and many of these are

Adamaged and imperfect." * few years later another writer ^

declares that the Ch'ai and Ju porcelains had ceased to exist.

1 See Bushell, O. C. A., plate 77.

* In a passage referring to modern imitations, tlie T'ao lu (bk. vii., fol. 10) states
that " at Ching-te Chen, the makers of the large vases known as kuan ku (imperial

antiques) for the most part imitate the colour of Ju yao glaze. Beautiful specimens

of these (imitations) are commonly called ' blue of the sky after "

rain.'

2 P. 39. Account of a mission to Corea in 1125 by Hsii Ching.

* Hsiang's Album, op. cit., Fig. 19.

* Son of the author of the Ch'ing pi tsang. His father (see p. 53) declared that

he had seen Ju porcelain.