Page 146 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

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68 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

the Kuan. With regard to the crackle, other writers assert that

short cracks are characteristic of the Ko yao, and one author uses

the picturesque phrase, " crackle of a hundred dangers." ^
Accidental splashes of contrasting colour, which sometimes

assumed fantastic forms, were common to the Ko and Kuan wares,

as mentioned on p. 65, and the author of the Po wu yao Ian explains

these as " originating in the colour of the glaze and forming on
its outer surface," and as " due to the fire's magic transmutation."

Another account of the ware given in the Ko ku yao lun depicts

it as of deep or pale cliing colour, with brown mouth and iron foot,
and adds that when the colour was good it was classed with Tung ^
ware. The same passage further informs us that a great quantity
of the ware " recently made at the end of the Yiian dynasty
was coarse and dry in body and inferior in colour, a statement to
which we shall return presently.

Other descriptive references to Ko yao include a verse on a
Ko ink palette belonging to Ku Liu,^ which was " green {lii) as the

waves in spring " ; the eighteenth-century list of Imperial wares ^

which mention " Ko glazes on an iron body," of two kinds, viz.

millet-coloured and pale green^ (or blue), both stated to have been

1 •g'^^ pai chi sui, used by the author of the P'ai shih lei p'ien; see other references

in the T'ao sluio and the T'ao lu.

- See p. 82.

» Quoted in the Tao shuo (bk. v., fol. 9 verso).

* See vol. ii., p. 223.

^fe ^i* se is rendered in Giles's Dictionary, " Straw
il^# "^' ^^ /^" (^f^'i^9-

colour, the colour of yellow millet," and all Chinese authorities whom I have questioned

agree that it is a yellow colour. Bushell in much of his published work rendered it

"rice coloured," following Julien's couleur du riz, and others, including myself, have

been misled by this rendering. Bushell, however, in a note in Monkhouse's Chinese

Porcelain, p. 67, which is quoted at length in vol. ii., p. 220, pronounces in favour

of the rendering yellow. The difficulty of finding a true yellow among the Sung wares

to support the comparison with yellow millet has further complicated the question.

The vase in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is figured in Monkhouse (fig. 22)

as a specimen of old mi se, is probably a Yung Cheng reproduction of the Sung type.

It has a stone-coloured crackle glaze, overlaid with a brownish yellow enamel, a technique

which is foreign to the Sung wares. Possibly one type of Sung mi sS was illustrated

by the " shallow bowl with spout, of grey stoneware with opaque glaze of pale sulphur

yellow," which Mr. Alexander exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910

(Cat. K. 18). Another kind is described by Bushell in the catalogue of the Morgan

collection (p. 38) as follows : " Shallow bowl (wan). Greenish yellow crackled glaze

Aof the Sung dynasty, leaving a bare ring at the bottom within. specimen of ancient

mi s& or millet-coloured crackle from the Kiang-hsi potteries. Formerly the possession

of His Excellency Chang Yinhuan. D, 6 inches." Specimens of this tj^je, with

greenish and brownish yellow crackle glaze, have been found in Borneo, where they