Page 201 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

Tz'u Chou Ware 103

the Tz'ii Chou family consists of the painted wares. Like the
rest of the Tz'u Chou pottery which has so far been identified,
these have a greyish buff body of porcellanous stoneware usually
coated with a white clay slip and covered with a transparent

glaze almost colourless, but with a creamy tinge. On this

glaze, and sometimes under it, the painters executed rapid, bold,
and rather impressionist designs in shades of brown, varying
from black to a soft sepia colour. The earliest specimens seem
to have been of this kind, and it is certain that this method
of decoration was practised in the Sung period, if not earlier.^
In a few cases the glaze seems to have been omitted, the brown
painting appearing on a lustreless white slip ; and where the
brown or black colour was laid on in broad washes, details were
often etched out with a pointed instrument. The black, more-
over, when in considerable areas, sometimes developed passages
of lustrous coffee brown ^ (due to the presence of iron), such as is

seen in the " partridge cups " of Chien yao. It is probable that

the Sung Tz'ii Chou ware, with its solid ivory white surface, often

crackled, and its sketchy floral designs, may have served as a model

to the Japanese for the Kenzan style of decoration and the ivory
white Satsuma faience.

Another style of ornament, which may date from Sung times,
and is certainly common on later wares, consists of a broad band

of floral scrolls, with large lily or aster flowers, enclosed by smaller
zones of floral pattern or formal designs. Next come the large
panels of figure subjects, usually of Taoist sages, or birds and animals
in foliage, enclosed by bands of formal ornament or floral scrolls.
In some cases a beautiful pale blue glaze of turquoise tint covers
this class of ornament (Plate 32, Fig. 1), strangely recalling
the Persian and Syrian pottery with still black paintings under a

turquoise glaze. Indeed, it was a common error a few years back

^The pottery found in Sung tombs near Wei Hsien, in Shantung, in 1903, includes
a few examples of this type of ware with sketchy brown designs. Laufer {Chinese
Pottery of the Han Dynasty, Appendix ii.) has illustrated this important find, though

he is inclined to think that it may have been made at the neighbouring potteries of
Po Shan Hsien. If this is so, we must reckon with the fact, in itself not at all sur-

prising, that other factories besides Tz'u Chou were working on the same lines. See

p. 107.

^ It would appear that the Tz'u Chou potters were capable of producing these
lustrous brown passages in the black glaze intentionally, for the floral design on

Fig. 1 of Plate 34 is expressed in this manner.^