Page 152 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

72 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

grey glaze showing a faint tinge of red, which recall the se chHng

iaifen hung of the Kuan ware, was shown in the New York exhibi-

tion of 1914. All these three specimens have a dark reddish brown
body of fine close grain, and their glaze is very thick and unctuous

with a tendency to contract into thick wax-like drops under the

base.

From certain passages in the Chinese works it appears that a

revival of the Ko yao took place in the Yiian dynasty, if indeed
the manufacture had not been continuous. The Ko ku yao lun,
for instance, under the heading of Ko yao, states that the " ware

recently made at the end of the Yiian dynasty was coarse and dry
in body and inferior in colour." In the Po wu yao Ian ^ we read that

" certain Ko wares made in private factories took their clay from
the Phoenix Hill " (at Hang Chou, where the Kuan potteries were

located), and the T'ao lu ^ definitely states that clay was brought

from Hang Chou for this later Ko ware. Add to these the remark

—in the Ko ku yao lun on the subject of Kuan ware ^ " all the imita-
—tions which are made at Lung-ch'iian are without crackle " and

it is clear that the Lung-ch'iian potters in the fourteenth century

were busy copying both the Kuan and Ko wares, and that to obtain

a closer resemblance to the former they actually sent to Hang
Chou for the red clay which would produce the " brown mouth
and iron foot." The alleged absence of crackle would indicate

a departure from the original Ko methods, but we are at liberty

to doubt the universal application of such sweeping statements,
and I ventured to suggest * that a remarkable bowl in the British

Museum was a Yiian example of Ko ware, because, in spite of its
Ko crackle, it corresponds so closely to the other points in the

descriptions of this make. In any case, there is little doubt that
it belongs to an early period of manufacture.

The following extract from a work entitled Pi chuang so yu,^
which would be still more interesting if we knew its date, serves
to illustrate some of the difficulties the Chinese collector had to face

in the past : " Ancient examples of Ko yao of the Sung period

have survived, though for a long time past genuine and counter-

1 Bk. ii., fol. 4.
- Bk. vi., fol. 5 verso.
' See above, p. 61.

^ See Burlington Magazine, May, 1909, "Wares of the Sung and Yuan Dj'nasties,"

Plate iii., fig. 11.

'' Quoted in the T'ao lu, bk. ix., fol. 9.