Page 236 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

120 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

the Yung Cheng period, though their shape precludes a greater age

than the Ming dynasty.

There are, however, many other imitations of Chiin ware in
which the body is not of tell-tale white porcelain. The Po wu

yao Ian, for instance, written at the end of the Ming dynasty, states
that " in the present day among the recent wares all this type of
ware (viz. the Chiin tj^pe) has the sandy clay of Yi-hsing ^ for its
body ; the glaze is very similar to the old, and there are beautiful
specimens, but they do not wear well." Yi-hsing is the place where
the red stoneware tea pots, often called Chinese " buccaro," were
made, and we know that a Yi-hsing potter, named Ou, was famous
at the end of the Ming dynasty for his imitations of Ko, Kuan,

and Chiin glazes.- A bowl in the British Museum seems to answer

the description of Ou's ware. It has a hard red stoneware body,
and a thick undulating glaze of pale lavender blue colour, the com-

parative softness of which is attested by the well-worn surface of

the interior.

The " Yung Cheng list " includes yet another type based upon

Chiin ware. It is called " Chiin glaze of the muffle kiln," clearly

a low-fired enamel rather than a glaze, whose colour is between
the Kuangtung ware and the added^ glaze of Yi-hsing, though
in surface-markings, undulations and transmutation tints it sur-
passes them. This appears to be the "robin's egg" type of
glaze,* to use the American collector's phrase, a thick, opaque
enamel of pale greenish blue tint flecked with ruby red (see

Plate 128).

The manufacture of glazes of the Chiin type has continued at
Yi-hsing since the days of Ou, and what is called Yi-hsing Chiin

is still manufactured in considerable quantity, the streaky lavender

glazes being of no little merit. When applied to incense burners

and vessels of archaic form, they are capable of being passed off
as old, though the initiated will recognise them by their want of
depth and transparency and by the peculiar satiny lustre of their

surface.

1 See p. 174.

2 See p. 181. The list quoted on p. 223 of vol. ii. of the wares made at the Imperial
potteries in 1730 includes " glazes of Ou : imitated from old wares of a man named

Ou. There are two kinds, one with red markings, the other with blue."

^^^ kua yu "applied or added glaze." The significance of the epithet kua

lies in the fact that the bulk of the Yi-hsing ware was unglazed.

* See Bushell, 0. C. A., p. 374.