Page 326 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

i82 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

before mc as I write a tripod incense burner of archaic form, the

body a hght buff stoneware and the glaze a deep lavender, breaking

into blue. It is a thick and rather opaque glaze, sufficiently flowing

to have left the upper edges almost bare and formed thickly on

the flatter and lower levels the colour is broken by streaks and
;

clouding, which mark the downward flow of the glaze ; the surface

has a barely perceptible crackle, which will no doubt become more

marked with age, and a subdued lustre between the brilliancy of

the old opalescent Chiin types and the viscous, silken sheen of the

Canton glazes ^ which also imitate them. The colour and glaze

are distinctly attractive, and have much in common with the old

Chiin glazes, and though this is a frankly modern piece, it shows

the potentialities of the ware. Similar specimens made, say, a

hundred or two hundred years ago, and proportionately aged by

time and usage, might well cause trouble to the collector.

There are, besides, quantities of common glazed pottery made

at Yi-hsing in the present day, and probably for a considerable

time back, which has no mission to imitate the antique. Many

of the modern ginger pots are said to come from this locality, and

—their glazes some with clear colours (yellow, green, or purple),

others opaque and clouded, often covering moulded ornament in

—low relief may help us to identify kindred types of glaze on pieces

which are more ornamental and perhaps much older. But pottery,

as distinct from porcelain and the finer stonewares, has never com-

manded much interest in China, and it has never been systematic-

ally collected and studied. The result is that it is extremely diffi-

cult to place the various types which appear from time to time

Aexcept in large and ill-defined gi'oups. series of typical pieces

of modern Yi-hsing pottery, for instance, would no doubt be of

the greatest value in identifying the rather older wares made in

the same place under similar traditions, but no one in Europe ^

has thought it worth their while to form one.

I have noticed that a certain type of glazed pottery is distin-

guished by a concave base which serves instead of the usual hollowed-

A^ similar effect is produced by rinc and tin on modern English wares. See note

on p. 168. It has been suggested that these minerals were used on the Kuang-tung
stonewares, and appearances, at any rate, point to their presence in the Yi-hsing flamb^

glazes as well.

* Dr, Laufer collected a considerable series of wares made in certain modern factories-
which he visited in China, and they may be seen in the Field Museum, Chicago, and
in the Natural History Museum in New York.