Page 258 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

132 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

colour of the raven's wing lines of soft silver, regular as hair."
;

The tea-testing contests seem to have lost popularity in China

at an early date, and late Ming writers took little interest in the
partridge cups, which one ^ at least of them voted " very inferior.'*

In Japan, on the other hand, the vogue of the tea ceremonies has

continued unabated to modern times, and no doubt the Chien

bowls were eagerly acquired by the Japanese aesthetes. Hence

their rarity in China to-day. Moreover, the Japanese potters of

Seto and elsewhere have copied them with astonishing cleverness,

so that the best Seto imitations are exceedingly difficult to dis-

tinguish from the originals. The ordinary run of the Japanese

copies, however, are recognised by a body of lighter tint and finer,

more porcellanous texture, besides their general imitative char-

acter and the Japanese touch which is learnt by observation but

is not easy to define in words.

Though we hear nothing further of this Chien yao after the

Yiian dynasty it is practically certain that the manufacture of

Apottery of some sort continued in the district. small pot of

buff stoneware with a translucent brown glaze (much thinner

than that of the hare's fur bowls and without the purple tint or

the golden brown markings) was found in a tomb near Chien-

ning Fu with an engraved slab dated 1560. The find was made

by the Rev. H. S. Phillips, who presented the pot, with a rubbing

of the inscription, to the British Museum.

In addition to the characteristic temmoku we have now quite

a large family of bowls, dishes, jars, and vases with thick purplish

black glazes more or less diversified by golden brown and tea-dust

green, which are at present grouped with the Chien j^ao pending

some more precise information as to their origin. They are, how-

ever, distinguished by a coarse porcellanous body of greyish white

or buff colour, and I understand that many of the bowls have come

from excavations in Honan ; and there are features in the orna-
ment and in the ware itself which suggest that they date back as

far as the T'ang period. Fig. 3 of Plate 43, for instance, with its

large brown mottling on a black glaze, is analogous in form and

material to the white-glazed T'ang wares and in the mottling of

the glaze to the typical T'ang polychrome. The bowls, which are

usually small and shallow with straight sides, wide mouth, and

very narrow foot, or with rounded sides slightly contracting at the

^ The Lin cliiivj jili elm.