Page 180 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

94 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

" the ancients favoured as tea bowls Ting ware \vith hare's fur

marking, and these were used in the powdered -tea competitions,"

but the work deals with tea rather than ceramics, and it is probable

that a confusion had arisen in the author's mind between the Chien

yao tea bowls and Ting ware. On the other hand, it would appear

that bowls with glaze which has some analogies with the " hare's

fur " were made at an early date in Northern China. (See Fig. 1

of Plate 43 and p. 132.)

Tliough little is heard of the coloured Ting wares after the

Sung period,^ the manufacture of white Ting and the commoner

i'u ting continued at Ching-te Chen and elsewhere. In fact, it

cannot be said to have suffered intermission up to the present

Aday. few of these imitative wares of later date were of such

excellence as to merit historical notice. In the Yiian dynasty,

for instance, P'eng Chlin-pao, a goldsmith of Ho Chou, in Shansi,-

was celebrated for his imitations of old Ting wares, and the Ko

ku yao lun, an almost contemporary work, describes his productions

as exactly like Ting ware when of fine body,^ but as being " short "

and " brittle," and consequently not really worth much. " But

dealers in curiosities give them the name of hsin ting or New Ting,

and amateurs collect it at great cost, which is most ridiculous,"

Again, the Po wu yao Ian describes another wonderful imitation

of Ting ware made in the sixteenth century ^ by Chou Tan-ch'iian,

a native of Wu-men, who settled at Ching-te Chen, and was reputed

the best potter of his time. Though, generally speaking, his

material was not as fine as the original, still his copies of Wen wang

censers ^ and sacrificial vessels with " monster heads and halberd

ears " so closely resembled the originals that it was only necessary

to " rub away the kiln-gloss all over the surface " to make the

illusion complete. Among the literary references to pottery and

^ The potteries in the Chen-ting Fu district were active up to tlie end of the Ming
dynasty, at any rate (see p. 199); and no doubt many of the coarse Vu ting specimens
belong to tlie Ming period, but as their forms are archaic it is almost impossible now-

adays to differentiate them.
* Julien, op. cit., p. 21, places this town in Kiang-nan, but this is clearly an error.
' In contrast with these there were specimens with " green moutli," ch'ing k'oii

which were " wanting in richness and lustre."
* The date of Chou Tan-ch'iian is not given, but he is mentioned in the Ni ku lu.

a mid-sixteenth-century work

A^ well-known type of bronze incense burner of the Shang dynasty. See the

Shin sho sei, bk. i., fol. 2 ; and Hsiang's Album, fig. 1, where a Ting ware copy is illus-

trated.