Page 202 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

104 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

to class the stray specimens of this type as Persian but a com-
;

parison with the brown-painted Tz'u Chou specimens shows their

true origin, and the discovery of a small dish of this kind in a Sung
tombi proves the antiquity of this method of decoration in China.

The brown and black was supplemented, in the Ming period

if not earlier, first by a maroon slip and later by iron red and

Agreen enamel. ^ specimen with panelled decoration in these

colours was described by Brinkley^ as having been preserved in

Japan since 1598, showing that this class of decoration was at

any rate contemporary with the " red and green family " of por-

Acelain. specimen in the Benson Collection shows, further, that

aubergine and green were sometimes used in combination with

turquoise glaze, as in the Ming " three-colour porcelain." Under-

glaze blue is also found on Tz'ii Chou wares, but we have no clue

to the date when it was introduced.

The ordinary ware, made in quite modern times at Tz'ii Chou,

is illustrated by a small flask and a figure obtained by Dr. Bushell,

and now in the British Museum. Though decorated in the char-

acteristic style with slight sketchy design in brown and maroon,

they show a decided falling off when compared with the older

specimens. The body is a hard, greyish white stoneware ; there
is no slip covering, and the glaze is yellowish, soft-looking, and

freely crackled, without the solid qualities of the older ivory glaze

on a white slip coating. I am inclined to think that this degener-

ate type of ware dates back no farther than the nineteenth century,

and that the Tz'ii Chou pottery preserved its character up to and

perhaps throughout the eighteenth century. There are several

examples of pottery pillows, with body and glaze of good quality

and finely painted in black and brown, with panelled designs some-

times containing floral motives, sometimes figure subjects. One

of these, exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910,* was

tentatively ascribed to the late Ming period. Since then the British

Museum has acquired another, and I have heard of two more in

private hands. The three last bear the mark of a potter named

1 At Wei Hsien. See note on p. 103.

— —2 There are specimens mostly small bowls of a very archaic appearance, with

the red and green painting which are persistently claimed as of Sung period. But
see p. 46 and Plate 30.

* Catalogue of the Boston Exhibition, op. cit., 1884.

* Cat. B. F. A., 1910, E 63. This example has the mark of Wang Ch'ih-ming.

See p. 221.