Page 136 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

62 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

points upwards and the glaze flows downwards and is thinner at

the mouth than on the rest of the body, so that the brown colour

(of the clay) is disclosed at the mouth." The iron foot is, of course,

the raw edge of the clay which appears at the foot rim. As this

peculiarity is not noted in the Cho keng lu, we are at liberty to
infer that it was not a constant feature of the Kuan wares, and

that some of them, as already hinted in the quotation from the

Liu chHng jih cha, had a whitish body.

Of the third Kuan yao made " below the suburban altar " at

a slightly later date, we know nothing except that it followed the

style of the older wares, but with inferior results.

Though we do not pretend to attach much weight to the illus-

trations in Hsiang's Album, the descriptions in the accompanying

text cannot be ignored. They include ten specimens of Kuan yao,^

five of which are explained as fen chHng (pale blue or green). Of

the rest one is " pale cliHng clear and lustrous like a sapphire blue

jewel," ^ evidently with a decidedly blue tinge another is " king-
;

fisher, blue as the clear blue sky," ^ recalling the Ch'ai " blue of the

sky after rain " ; another is " sky blue " {tHen cKing) ; another

" onion green " {cliing ts'ung), the colour of onion sprouts ; and

another is " egg green " (luan cKing), which recalls and perhaps

explains the luan pai (egg white) of the Ju yao.

Among the various Sung and Yiian wares with more or less

opalescent glazes which have reached Europe in recent years, it

is possible to differentiate a considerable group whose characteristics

seem to point to the Kuan yao. Their body is usually of fine grain,

whitish colour and porcellanous texture, but assuming a rusty

brownish tint in the exposed parts. It is, in fact, very much finer

than the Yiian wares, usually so called, and all but the choicest

wares of Chiin type (see ch. ix.). The glaze, too, though generally

opalescent, shows marked differences from that of the Chlin and

Yiian pieces. It is smooth and even instead of being lumpy and

1 An early sixteenth-century work, the Tu kung fan isuan (quoted in the T'ao lu,
bk. ix., fol. 8 verso) tells of a Chinese sybarite Li Feng-ming, who held a " lotus

flower banquet. There were crystal tables twelve in number, and on them a series
of vessels, all of Kuan porcelain, a display of elegance rarely seen at any time."

2 Ya ku ch'ing pao shih. Ya ku is explained by Bretschneider (Mediaeval Researches,
vol, i., p. 174) as equivalent to the Arabic yakut, and meaning a corundum, of which
the Chinese recognise various tints, including deep blue, pale blue, muddy blue, besides
yellow and white.

2 Ch'ing ts'ui jo yu Ian i'ien.