Page 217 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

Tz u Chou Ware 107

ment, were made for many centuries, but there is good reason to

think that they date back to early times, for fragments both of
the graffiato with white sHp and mouse-coloured ground, and of
the dark brown glaze cut away, were found in Sir Aurel Stein's
excavations in Turfan on sites which can hardly have been open

after the twelfth century. ^ An important example recently
acquired by the British Museum actually bears a Sung date. It

is a pillow with carved panels on the sides containing each a large
flower and formal foliage ; and on the top is a panel with the
four characters Chia kuo yung an ("everlasting peace in the family
and state ") etched in a ground powdered with small circles. This
panel is flanked by two incised inscriptions stating that the pillow

was made by the Chao family in the fourth year of Hsi Ning

i.e. 1071 A.D.). I have seen one other dated specimen of graffiato
Tz'ii Chou ware with beautifully carvecc' floral designs and an
inscription of the year 1063. Another Tz'u Chou type is seen in
a pillow in the Eumorfopoulos Collection which has passages of
marbling in black and brown, and small black rosette ornaments

inlaid in Corean fashion. The variety of decorations used on

this group of wares seems to be inexhaustible.
It has already been hinted that other factories were at work

on the same lines as Tz'u Chou, and as we have no means of iden-
tifying their peculiarities, it would perhaps be safer to use some
such formula as " Tz'u Chou type " in the ascription of doubtful
pieces. Po-Shan Hsien, in Shantung, was mentioned in a note
on p. 103, and the T'ao lu^ gives a short account of another factory
at Hsii Chou,^ in Honan, where the tz'u stone (see p. 101) was also

used in wares which were both plain white and decorated. This
factory was active in the Ming dynasty, and it is stated that its
wares were superior to the " recent productions " * of Tz'u Chou.

A reference to porcelain figures in Honan in the Sung dynasty

may be quoted in this connection. It occurs in the Liang chH
man chih, an early thirteenth-century work by Fei Kuan, and
runs as follows : "In Kung Hsien (in the Honan Fu) there are
porcelain {tz'u) images called by the name of Lu Hung-chien. If

1 See p. 134.

* Bk. vii., fol. 14. Some authorities seem to have considered that the Hsii Chou
factories go back to Sung times.

• The Tao lu was written at the end of the eighteenth centurv.