Page 341 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

Miscellaneous Potteries 193

shoulder and dragons in relief.^ An unusually ornate example is

shown on Plate 49. It has a cloudy green crackled glaze with

dragons of both the ordinary and the archaic kind, besides storks

and a bat in low relief, and there are touches of dark blue and

yellow, white and brown in the glaze. It is probably of Canton

make and not older than the seventeenth century. In modern

times jars are made in Borneo itself by the Chinese in the coast

towns.

A certain amount of Chinese pottery found its way, like the

celadon porcelains in early times, by the caravan routes into

Turkestan, India, Persia, and Western Asia. Such wares would

be more naturally drawn from the potteries in Honan, Chihli, and

the north-western provinces, and it is not surprising that the frag-

ment found by Sir Aurel Stein in the buried cities of Turkestan

should have included the brown painted wares of Tz'ii Chou.

But the greatest difficulties in classification are presented by

the miscellaneous pottery which collectors have picked up from

time to time in China, or antique dealers have sent over to supply

the demand created by the increasing interest taken in Chinese

pottery by Western amateurs. These come, as a rule, without any

hint as to their place of origin, and in most cases it is quite impos-

sible to locate them. There are, however, certain well-defined

groups which come together naturally.

One of these is represented by the Tradescant jar in the Ashmo-

lean Museum, Oxford. It was exhibited at the Burlington Fine
Arts Club in 1910, and described in the catalogue ^ as "Jar with

globular body, short neck, and wide mouth ; five loop handles
;

stoneware covered with a bright green glaze ; the ornament con-

sists of floral scrolls in yellow with touches of brown and is in low

Arelief; round the base a formal design. Height, 12 inches."

similar jar is shown on Plate 56, and in the Goff collection in the

Brighton Museum is another of the same make, but with the design

incised with a point instead of applied in relief. The Tradescant
Collection was given to Elias Ashmole in 1659 by John Tradescant.
It was formed by the father of the donor, who died in 1627, so that

1 On the subject of pottery among the Dyaks in Borneo, see H. Ling Roth, The
Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, vol. ii., p. 284 ; A. W. Neuwenhais,

Quer durch Borneo, vol. ii., plate 40 ; Hose and McDougall, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo,
1912, vol. i., pp. 64 and 84, and plates 46-48. See also A. B. Meyer, Alterthumer aus
dem Ostindischen Archipel.

2 Cat. B. F. A,, 1910 I 11.

—I Z
.