Page 142 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

66 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

is a pale bluish grey with rosy tinges where the body colour is able

to penetrate the semi-translucent glaze. Another doubtful speci-

men, with very similar characteristics, was figured by me in the

Burlington Magazine some years ago.^
Since the genuine Sung specimens were sent to the Imperial

factories to be closely copied (about 1730), it might be supposed

that the relatively modem imitations would supply some clue to

the original types. There are one or two examples of eighteenth-

century copies of Kuan ware in the British Museum on which the

glaze is definitely lavender blue in tint, with a crackle which in
one case is wide and emphasised by blackened lines, and in the
other of a finer mesh.- The natural tendency, however, of modern
imitative wares is to exaggerate some characteristic which this
or that potter might imagine to be specially important, and as

it is impossible to say in many cases exactly when the piece in
question was made, we cannot be sure how far the potters in each
case may have strayed from the original type.^ No doubt in time

these imitations would become a mere convention. It should be
said in passing that the modern copies have a white porcelain
body, and to obtain the appearance of " brown mouth and iron
foot " the potters had recourse to the expedient of colouring the
parts concerned with brown ferruginous clay.

The Cho king lu^ refers to three minor wares which were regarded

as inferior to Kuan ware, and later writers have assumed that they

belonged to the same category. These are the Hsii wares, Yii-

hang wares, and wu-ni wares. The first ^ is so little known that

Hits identity has been lost in variant readings, such as Hsiin in later

writers, which is very near in appearance to tung 3|, a common form
used for the Tung ware (see p. 82) ; and we can safely leave it until

some clearer information is forthcoming. The- second, according

1 " Wares of the Sung and Yuan Dynasties," Burlington Magazine, May, 1909

Plate i., fig. 4.

- See Burlington Magazine, May, 1909, Plate i., fig. 28 ; Plate ii., fig. 6.

' Speaking of the imitations of Kuan yao early in the nineteenth century, the
Tao lu (bk. ii., fol. 10) remarks : " Originally there were special departments for
imitating Kuan yao. Now, only the imitators of the crackled wares make it. As
for the imitations made at the (Imperial) factory, they are more beautiful," sc. than
those made in the private factories.

* Bk. xxix., fol. 11.

5 The word HsU j^ has the meaning " continuation," and if it be not a place-
name at present unidentified, it might conceivably be " the continuation or later Kuan

ware."