Page 268 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day
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CHAPTER XI
PORCELAIN AND ITS BEGINNINGS
THE reader will have noticed that the word porcelain, which
was avoided in the discussion of the earlier periods, has
insensibly crept into the chapters which deal with the Sung
wares. It was no longer right or proper that it should be ex-
cluded, and it is high time that our attitude on the interesting
question of its origin was defined. Unfortunately, that attitude
— —is still and must necessarily remain one of doubt and uncer-
tainty, but we can at least clear away some of the existing mis-
apprehensions on the subject.
The myth which carried back the manufacture of porcelain
some eighteen centuries before our era has been definitely dis-
credited, and the snuff bottles supposed to have been found in
ancient Egyptian tombs which gave rise to the idea are now known
to be of quite modern make. The more modest computation which
placed the invention in the Han dynasty (206 B.C. to 220 a.d.)
might have been almost as lightly dismissed had not Dr. Bushell,
after disposing of the theory in his Oriental Ceramic Arf^ in 1899,
seen fit to reverse his decision in later publications.
The reasons given for this later attitude are on the surface so
convincing that it is necessary to consider them in detail and to
examine the authorities on which they are based. Bushell's state-
ment runs as follows : " It is generally agreed that porcelain was
first made in China, but authorities differ widely in fixing a date
for its invention. The Chinese attribute its invention to the Han
dynasty, when a new character tz'u was coined to designate, pre-
sumably, a new substance. The official memoir on ' Porcelain
Administration ' in the topography of Fou-liang, the first edition of
which was published in 1270, says that according to local tradition
1 Op. cit., pp. 17-20.
* Chinese Art, vol. ii., p. 17, and the Catalogue of the Morgan Collection (1'907),
p. xlviii.
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