Page 336 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

190 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

jars, an ovoid body more or less elongated being common to all,

Awhile the neck varies a little in its height and width. series of

loop handles or pierced masks on the shoulder, to hold a cord for

suspension, is a constant feature. The older types, which are

said to date back to a period ranging from the thirteenth to the

fifteenth century, are frequently decorated with one or two large

dragons coiling round the sides, and either modelled in low relief

or incised in the body. Others are quite plain, and the glazes

include black, brown, dark green, and a brownish yellow of vary-

Aing depth. later group, not older than the end of the Ming

dynasty, is without ornament, but coated with single- colour or

—variegated glazes of the Canton and Yi-hsing types e.g. speckled

blue with green flecks, green with blue streaks and lines, blue and

—green mottled and crackled, light bluish green the glaze often

ending short of the base in an even line, which is, perhaps,

characteristic of Yi-hsing.

The British Museum has a small series from Borneo, which

includes, among the older types of pottery, a jar with black-brown

glaze and bands of cloud design and stiff leaves deeply incised,

and an ovoid jar with many loop handles on the shoulders, two

dragons in relief, and a ground of incised wave pattern all covered

with a yellowish brown glaze which ends in a regularly waved line

some way short of the base. Of later make is a jar with translucent

purplish brown glaze, and four circular panels with figure orna-

ment in low relief glazed green, a type described by the Japanese

as " Old Kochi." ^ There are, besides, a jar with roughly painted

blue dragon designs under a crackled white glaze, the ware being

a coarse porcellanous stoneware ; another with enamel colours in

addition to the underglaze blue including the rose pink which

is not older than the eighteenth century ; and another type with
rough stoneware or earthen body covered with a crackled, greyish

white enamel of putty-like surface on which enamel colours are

coarsely painted. The typical jar which the island natives so highly

prize is of the ovoid form with a number of loop handles on the

^ Kochi, the Japanese name for Kochin China, seems to have been used in a
vague and comprehensive sense for Southern China, and we understand by Kochi
ijaki the old pottery shipped from the coast towns of Fukien and Kuangtung.
This category in Japan seems to include not only a variety of earthenware with

— —coloured glazes green, yellow, aubergine, turquoise, and violet but the coarser,

yellowish white wares of the Cu ting (see p. 90) type. See Brinkley, op. cit., vol. ix.

p. 29.