Page 334 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

i88 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

the manufacture of artistic pots for holding fighting crickets. In

reference to these we are informed in the T^ao shuo (see Bushell,
op. cit., p. 140) that " those fabricated at Su Chou by the two

%makers named Lu |^ and Tsou were beautifully moulded, and

artistically carved and engraved, and the pots made by the Elder
and the Younger Hsiu f^, two daughters of Tsou, were the finest
of all. At this time fighting crickets was a favourite pastime,
and hundreds and thousands of cash were staked upon the event,
so that they did not grudge spending large sums upon the pots,

which were decorated in this elaborate way, and consequently far

surpassed the ordinary porcelain of the period."

^The large and important potteries at Po-shan Hsien i^ lU

in the Ch'ing-chou Fu, in Shantung, were represented only by a

small exhibit at the Paris Exhibition of 1878, consisting of " a
bottle of glazed pottery, three tea jars in red ware, ten specimens

of glazed pottery, a brazier in terra cotta, and seven crucibles."
Laufer tells us that these potteries date back to Sung times, and
have preserved the old traditions of manufacture. The district
is also noted for its glass, enamels and glazing materials, but it
is situated inland, and not conveniently near any of the treaty

ports.

In the early days of the European trading companies, pottery,

as distinct from porcelain, does not seem to have received much
attention from the merchants, and we may fairly assume that

most of the earthenwares which reached Europe before the last
century hailed from the neighbourhood of Canton or from Yi-hsing
and the Shanghai district. But long before the first European
vessels reached the coasts of China, Arab and Chinese merchantmen
had carried cargoes of pottery and coarse porcelain to the Philip-
pines, the East Indian Archipelago, the Malay Peninsula, Siam,
Ceylon, and India. The Arabs had a trading station in Canton
in the eighth century, and Chinese junks sailed from Canton and

the Fukien ports in the Sung, Yiian, and Ming dynasties. A Chinese

account of the sea trade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

may be read in the work of Chao Ju-kua,i and it will be found from

this book and from Marco Polo's accounts that Ch'iian-chou Fu

on the Fukien coast was a busy centre of foreign trade in the Sung
and Yiian periods. Hirth ^ has traced the probable route by which

1 Chau Ju-kua, translated by F. Hirth and W. W. Rockhill. St. Petersburg, 1912.

* Ancient Chinese Porcelain, op. cit. See also p. 86.