Page 356 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

202 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

a man named Tan ^, the inhabitants were ordered to use tiles

on their houses in place of wood in order to lessen the risk of fire ;
kilns were erected to provide the tiles, and those who were too

poor to carry out the alterations by themselves received State

Ahelp. somewhat similar but more important edict was issued

Wuin the twenty-seventh year of Hung ^ (1394), that bricks and

tiles should be used in all the buildings in the capital, which was

then Nanking, and that kilns should be set up every year on the

Chu-pao shan for their manufacture. It was not long after this
that the famous " porcelain pagoda " was erected at Nanking, ^

the lower part of which was faced with white porcelain bricks,

the remaining storeys with pottery with coloured glazes.

Tile factories existed in all parts of China to supply local needs,

and the few singled out for mention in the T'w Shu^ were perhaps

of more than usual importance in the Ming dynasty. They are

Lin-ch'ing ^f^ in the extreme west of Shantung; Su Chou ^'>M

in Kiangsu, on the east side of the lake T'ai-hu, and facing the

potteries of Yi-hsing, which supplied tiles for the palaces and temples

of Nanking ; the neighbouring Ch'ang-chou Chen, and Yi-chen

and Kua Chou in the Yang-chou Fu of the same province ; Wu-

Ch'ing Hsien jE^^H, in the district of Peking, where the potters
asked for permission to make tiles for public use in 1574.

The tile works at Liu-li-chii (mentioned on p. 200) date from

the Yiian dynasty. They are also situated in the neighbourhood

of Peking, but whether in the Wu-ch*ing Hsien or not, I have failed

to discover.

When Peking became the capital of the Ch'ing emperors, no

doubt the tile factories at Wu-ch*ing Hsien assumed still greater

importance ; and according to the catalogue of the exhibition

in Paris in 1878,* the neighbourhood of Amoy was then celebrated

for its bricks and tiles. This branch of the potter's industry is

represented by a small collection of bricks, tiles, mouldings, and

antefixal ornaments in the British Museum. It includes unglazed

bricks from the Great Wall of China, which may date from 220 B.C.,
a few Han bricks and tile-ends with moulded ornament ; white

^ See the T'u Shu, section T'ao kung pu hui k'ao, fol. 7 verso.
- It was completed in 1430, and destroyed by the T'aip'ing rebels in 1853.
^ In the section T'ao kung pu hui k'ao, fol. 9.
* Catalogue special de la Collection Chinoise, op. cit., pp. 10 12. The exhibits from

Amoy included " carreaux de pavage, tuiles pour toitures."