Page 134 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

6o Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

the Cho keng lu and Ko ku yao lun make no attempt to differentiate ^
this porcelain from the later Kuan yao, but we find in a sixteenth-

century collection of miscellanies, the Liu cKing jih cha, the follow-
ing scrap of information : that " specimens (of the K'ai-feng ware)
with streaky colour, white on the upper part and thin as paper,
were inferior to Ju ware " ; and the more modern T'^ao lu informs

us that the K'ai-feng Kuan ware was made of fine unctuous

material with thin body, the colour of the glaze being cKing (blue
or green) with a tinge of pale red {fen hung) and of varying depth

of tone. It is further stated that in the Ta Kuan period moon

white or clair de lune {yiieh pai), pale green or blue {fen ch'ing)

and deep green {ta lu) glazes were esteemed, whereas in the Cheng

Ho period only the cKing colour in varying depth of tone was

used. Moreover, the glaze had " crab's claw crackle," and the
vessels had a " red-brown mouth and iron foot." The latter phrase
(explained below) is not consistent with the account in the Liu
ch'ing jih cha, " white on the upper part," which certainly implies

a light-coloured clay, but I confess that I have little confidence

in the subtle distinctions of the T'ao lu in this passage. They are
mere assertions, without any reasons given, and it is not difficult

to find a source from which they may in part, at least, have been

derived, and which in itself guarantees no such differentiation.-
It is likely enough that the K'ai-feng ware differed in body from

the red ware of Hang Chou, but it is not likely to have differed

very greatly in other respects, seeing that the southern variety

continued the traditions of the northern, and that the earliest

authorities do not trouble to distinguish the two wares at all.

Another critic,^ discussing Kuan ware as a whole, makes its
characteristics practically the same as those of the Ko ware, to
which we shall come next, and states that " in regard to colour

in both cases the pale ch'ing {fen cKing) specimens are the best,

A1 passage quoted in Tao lu, bk. ix., fol. 13, from an eighteenth-century work,

the Wen fang ssO. k'ao, forms a commentary on this attitude. " The old capital Kuan
factory," it says, " had only a brief existence, so that we must consider the Hsiu nei
ssu make to be first and the ' recent wares ' to be second."

2 The list of wares made at the Imperial factories at Ching-te Chen about 1730,
and published in the Chiang hsi fung chih (vol. xciii., fol. 11), refers to the imitation
of Kuan wares as follows : " Ta Kuan glazes on an iron-coloured body. These are

— —three kinds yueh pal, fen ch'ing, ta lu all imitating the colour and lustre of Sung

ware sent to (or from) the palace (nei fa sung ch'i)." There is no reason to suppose

that Ta Kuan here is more than a mere synonym for Kuan (ware).

3 Chang Ying-wen in the Ch'ing pi tsang, published in 1595.