Page 355 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

Miscellaneous Potteries 201

^^J^Ning-kuo Fu in the south-west of Anhui.i The latter

place is mentioned elsewhere ^ under its earlier name of Hsiian
Chou ^il'H as producing a thin white ware made of " plastic clay "

in the Yuan and Ming periods, A verse of Wang Shih-cheng (1526-

1593) speaks of the " snow white porcelain of Hsiian Chou." ^

The T'ao lu enumerates factories which began in the Ming dynasty

and continued to the nineteenth century, and apparently pro-

duced an inferior type of porcelain, and probably pottery as well.

They were located at Huai-ch'ing Fu i^^/if, I-yang Hsien gUf,^,
Teng-feng Hsien '^ J-^||, and Shan Chou \^>}\] in Honan ; at Yi Hsien

ttM and Tsou Hsien Ijjjgi in Yen-chou Fu in Shantung; in the

Lung Shang p||_h district in Shensi, and at Heng-feng 11 [Ii^ in

Kiangsi. The last-mentioned factory was established by a man

named Ch'ii Chih-kao from Ch'u-chou Fu in the early Ming period.

In the Chia Ching period (1522-1566) it was transferred to the

I-yang -^[^ district to a place called Ma-k*eng, not many miles

south of Ching-te Chen. Both the Lung-shang and Ma-k'eng

wares are described as very coarse.

The value of pottery for architectural purposes was recognised

in China from the earliest times. Unglazed bricks and tiles of

Han and pre-Han periods are preserved by Chinese collectors,

particularly when they happen, as is often the case, to have in-

scriptions in old seal characters, or other ornament. The familiar

Chinese roof tile is a long convex object like a horizontal section

of a tube, and those intended for the border are ornamented at

one end with a disc, usually stamped with a dragon or other design

in sunk relief. Here and there, on the apex of the roof or at the

corners, are ornamental tiles carrying figures of deities, heroes,

mythical creatures or birds, modelled in the round and usually

with great force and skill. Besides these, architectural mouldings

and antefixal ornaments in pottery are commonly used on temples

and pavilions of an ornamental kind.

—The use of tiles and, no doubt, of other architectural embellish-
—ments in pottery was encouraged by government enactments at

various times. In the T'ang dynasty (618-906 a.d.),* in the dis-

tricts south and west of the Yangtze, under the inspectorship of

^ T'u Shu, section xxxii, T'ao kung pu hui k'ao, fol. 9.

* T'ao lu, bk. vii., fol. 10 verso.
=» Quoted in the T'ao lu, bk. ix., fol. 2.
* Recorded in the T'ang Shu, the passage in question being quoted in the encyclo-

paedia, T'u Shu, section xxxii, T'ao kung pu chi shih, fol. 1 verso.

—I 2 A