Page 273 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

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Porcelain and its Beginnings 145

such achievement, for though it is possible to make an artificial

porcelain with glass as a constituent, the converse is not true

you carmot make glass out of either pottery or porcelain. The

most probable explanation of the passage seems to be that Ho

Ch'ou (who was apparently not a potter) experimented at some
pottery with the materials used in glazing the green ware, and

found that he could make a very good glass {liu-li) with the potter's

green glaze, and perhaps other ingredients, a result which is in

no way surprising, seeing that the softer ceramic glazes have a
very close affinity to glass. But no further inferences can be drawn

from this passage, and it is not even clear that Ho Ch'ou made a

ceramic ware at all. All we are told is that he made liu-li. I have

rather laboured this negative point, because Professor Zimmer-

mann has published a declaration of belief that Ho Ch'ou was the

discoverer of porcelain.^ Apart from the obvious criticism which
the writer himself anticipates, that such an epoch-making dis-

covery would hardly have escaped the notice of Ho Ch'ou's bio-

grapher, Professor Zimmermann opens his case with a fundamental

error, for which he has to thank Dr. Bushell. It is true that he
only names Julien as the source of his information, but his version

of the story of Ho Ch'ou is taken verbatim from Bushell's Oriental

Ceramic Art," where the crucial passage is unfortunately rendered
" but he (Ho Ch'ou) succeeded in making vessels of green porcelain
which could not be distinguished from true glass." Tliis mis-
translation puts an entirely different complexion on the passage,

and goes a long way to justify Professor Zimmermann's inferences
that Ch'ou made a glassy ware of the nature of porcelain. It is

an instructive instance of the pitfalls which beset the student of

Chinese subjects, especially when he has to rely on other people's

translations.

Strange to say, a similar mistranslation occurs in Dr. Hirth's
short but excellent treatise on Ancient Chinese Porcelain,'^ in a
passage which is nevertheless of great importance to our quest.

It has been the custom with Chinese compilers of reference works

to incorporate the material of previous editions, adding their own

commentaries and any further information which happened to

^ Orientalisches Archiv, Bd. ii., 1911, and Chinesisches Porzellan, p. 24.
2 Op. cit., p. 20. Dr. Bushell, in his translation of the T'ao shuo, has given the
more correct rendering, " Ch'ou made some (i.e. liu-li) of green porcelain."

* Op. cit., pp. 3 and 4.

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