Page 231 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

Chiin Wares and Some Others 117

accidental effects would be very difficult to describe. On the edges

and salient parts where the glaze is thin the colour is usually a trans-

parent olive green which passes with the thickening of the glaze into

a frothy grey shot with fine purple streaks. The grey sometimes

remains thick and opaque, covering large areas, and it is liable to

become frosted over with a dull film of crab-shell green. It is in

this frosting and in the opaque curded grey that the V-shaped and

serpentine partings known as "earthworm marks" most frequently

occur ; and sometimes a steel blue colour emerges in these partings

and in small spots in the grey. For under the grey there seems

to be always blue and red struggling upwards towards the sur-

face. Hence the blue and lavender tinge which is so constant, the

Vien Ian of the Chinese. But it is the red which almost always

triumphs, emerging in fine streaks of purple, crimson or coral, like

the colour lines in shot silk, or in strong flecks and dappling, com-

pletely overpowering the grey, which only remains on sufferance in

a few fleecy clouds. The fine lines of colour are usually associated

with a smooth silken surface to which a faint iridescence gives

additional lustre ; whereas the strongly dappled and mottled glaze

is full of bubbles and pinholes (sometimes called " ant "
tracks

by the Chinese) which give the surface the seeded appearance of

a strawberry. The red dappling is usually opaque and tending

towards crimson or rouge red. It will be seen that the red varies

in quantity from a mere tinge or flush to the intensity almost of

a monochrome, and in tone from a pale or deep lavender to auber-

gine, plum purple, rose crimson, and rouge red. Making allow-

ance for the capricious nature of Chinese colour words, these tints

will be found to correspond with several of those indicated in the

Yung Cheng list quoted on p. 119. On rare examples the grey and

red colours are in abevance, and the dominant tint is the trans-

parent olive green, which is usually confined to the edges. This

and the crab-shell green mentioned above supply the green shades

which the Chinese writers include among the Chiin colours.

But none of these glazes can with strict accuracy be described

as monochromes " of uniformly pure colour " which the Po wu

yao Ian seems to have regarded as indispensable in the first-class

Chiin ware. In fact, it is difficult to conceive the possibility of

a Chiin glaze of perfectly uniform tint, without any trace of the

perpetual war waged in the kiln between the red, grey, and blue

elements. The nearest approach to a single colour is seen in some