Page 175 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

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CHAPTER VII

S^TING YAO

TING ware is by general consent ranked among the finer Sung
porcelains, and it is happily, like the Lung-ch'iian celadons^
fairly well known to Western collectors. Its name derives
from its place of origin, Ting Chou, the modern Chen-ting Fu, in the
province of Chih-li, where the manufacture of a white ware, if not
actually a white porcelain, appears to have existed from remote times.
Indeed, the " white ware {pai iz'u) of Ting Chou " is mentioned in
the middle of the seventh century,^ though nothing further is heard
of it until it came to enjoy the patronage of the Sung emperors.
As already hinted in connection ^Yiih. the Ju Chou porcelain, the
Ting ware suffered a temporary eclipse at Court o^\'ing to some
defects in the glaze ; but it was not long in recovering its reputa-

tion, for the Ko kii yao lun states that it was at its best in the Cheng-
Ho and Hsiian Ho periods, which extended from 1111 to 1125 a.d.,

and we learn that the Ting Chou potters accompanied the Court
in its flight across the Yangtse in 1127. The manufacture seems

to have been re-established after this event in the neighbourhood
of Ching-te Chen, and the nan iing or Southern Ting ware is said
to have so closely resembled the original that to distinguish the
two in after years was regarded as a supreme test of connoisseur-

ship.

Ting ware has a white body of fine grain and compact texture,
varying from a slightly translucent porcelain to opaque porcellanous
stoneware. Though not so completely vitrified as the more modern
porcelains, and lacking their flint-like fracture, it was nevertheless
capable of transmitting light in the thinner and finer specimens,
and consequently it can be regarded as one of the earliest Chinese

1 See HhVa,"Ancient Chinese Porcelain, op. cit., p. 4. The passage discovered by
Hirth occurs in the T'ang pen Is'ao, the pharmacopoeia of the T'ang djTiasty, compiled
about 650 a.d.

* See T'ao shuo, bk.' ii., lol. 7 verso. 89

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