Page 141 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

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Ju, Kuan, and Ko Wares 65

irregular, and it ends close up to the foot rim in a comparatively

regular line instead of ending short of the base in a thick roll or

in heavy drops. And the base instead of being quite bare or

covered with a brown glaze, has a patch of the surface glaze
underneath. The colours of this glaze show wide variations from
a deep brownish green, which suggest the ta lu, to pale dove
grey {fen cliing) and pale lavender blue tints, which approximate
to the Chinese t'ien cliing or sky blue, though perhaps not so closely
as does the so-called "old turquoise," Some of these glazes, especially
the pale lavender and dove greys, are broken by passages of red
or crimson, which in turn shade off into green and brown tints.

Although the expression tai fen hung in the Ko ku yao lun ^ has

already been rendered in its most natural sense, " with a tinge

of red," we should perhaps mention a possible alternative which
might make it refer to these very passages of red colour ; and the
fact that they sometimes assume fantastic shapes will explain why
the Chinese saw in them " butterflies, birds, fish, unicorns, and
leopards." ^ On the other hand, it is clear that these passages of

red are not always accidental, for they sometimes take symmetrical
forms, and it is quite possible that even the bird and fish forms

may have been roughly designed in the colouring medium.
Plate 17 will serve to illustrate this group of possible Kuan

wares. Another example is a dish in the British Museum which has

a whitish porcellanous body and a slightly crackled pale lavender grey
glaze of singular beauty. Other specimens in the same collection
include a small tea bowl •with misty grey glaze of the fen chHng
type, smooth and uncrackled, and a body which appears deep
reddish brown at the foot ; and a small bottle-shaped vase, with
lobed body of melon shape, which, though of doubtful antiquity,

answers closely to the Chinese descriptions. It has a dark-coloured

but well levigated body, deep brown at the foot, and showing a
brown tinge where the glaze has run thin at the lip, and the colour

A^ Se ch'ing tai fen hung. more literal rendering of this phrase is " the colour

of the glaze is ch'ing, with a tinge of red," which would refer to the reddish tone of

a pale lavender glaze. On the other hand, the word tai is apparently used to describe

the contrasting colours in parti-coloured jade and agate, e.g. huang se tai Cu pan in
Laufer (Jade, p. 140) to describe " yellow jade with earthy spots," and again (op. cit.,
p. 142), ch'ing yil tai hei si, " green jade with passages of black colour."

2 Po wu yao Ian (quoted in the T'ao shuo, vol. iii., fol. 13 verso). These accidental
effects are mentioned on both the Kuan and Ko wares, and are said to be either of

a yellowish or a brownish red tint.

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