Page 297 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

The Ylian Dynasty, 1280-1367 a.d. 163

translucent Ming porcelain, such as the white Yung Lo bowl in

the Franks Collection (see Plate 59). Just such an intermediate

position as this is held by a bowP in the British Museum with

white, translucent body, soft-looking glaze of faint creamy tinge
and engraved design of phoenixes and peony plants in Sung
style. It has, moreover, a raw mouth rim which shows that it

was fired inverted, and as there is no shu fu mark it may well

have been one of the copies of the Palace types which the T'ao

lu informs us were made at the private factories.

It is always difficult to determine the age of plain white wares,

but among the archaic specimens of translucent porcelain with
creamy white glaze and rough finish at the base which have come

from China in recent years under the varying descriptions of Sung,
Ylian and early Ming, there are, no doubt, several examples of
the Yiian wares of Ching-te Chen (see Plate 46, Fig. 2).

The mention, in the Memoirs of Chiang and the Ko ku yao lun,

of painted decoration, enamelled ornament, silvering, and gilding,
though apparently but crudely used and little appreciated, is

nevertheless of great interest from the historical standpoint.
The potteries at Hu-t*ien which are mentioned in the Memoirs

of Chiang (see p. 160) were only separated from Ching-te Chen
by the width of the river. They are described in the T'ao lu ^
as active at the beginning of the Yiian dynasty and producing a
ware which, though of coarse grain, had " a considerable amount
of antique elegance," and appealed to the taste of the inhabitants
of the Chekiang. The clay was hard and tough, and the colour of
the ware brownish yellow ^ as a rule, but even when of a " watery
white " tone it was tinged with the same brown colour. At the
end of the eighteenth century all trace of the factories had dis-
appeared, though the village still existed ^ and the old wares were

still to be found.

Brinkley, who seems to have met with examples of the ware
in Japan, describes it as follows ^ : " The pate is thick and dense,
without any of the delicacy of porcelain, and the glaze is muddy

^ See Burlington Magazine, August, 1909, p. 298.

« Bk. v., fol. 3 verso.
^ huang hei, lit. " yellow black."

H* The village iS9 "r^ Hu-t'ien Shih and the pagoda are marked in the map of Ching-td

Chen ( Tao lu, bk. i., fol. 1) on the south of the river and opposite to the Imperial

factories.

* China and Japan, vol. ix., p. 303.