Page 372 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

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214 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

yii chill meaning made by Imperial command ; and in place of chih

we sometimes find the word isao ja or more rarely tso f^ both of which
have the same meaning " made."

The six characters may be written in two lines of three, or in

three lines of two, or again in one long line read from right to left

and for reasons of space, and sometimes for no apparent reason,

%the first two characters are omitted, e.g. ^. The omission of the

nien hao is rare except on a few Japanese copies of Chinese porcelain,

M =e.g. HH '^ ming nien chih made in the great Ming dynasty.

As already mentioned, the seal forms of the mark were frequently

employed from the eighteenth century onwards (see p. 209). An

archaic form of seal character occurs in the Yung Lo mark which is

given below.

The use of the nien hao on the Imperial wares made at Ching-te
Chen was made obligatory by a command issued in the Ching-te
period (1004-1007), when the name of the town was altered to

Ching-te Chen.

Ming Dynasty Ming Dynasty

4 '^ Hung Wu, Same in archaic

1368—1398. characters.

Same in seal HsiJAN Te,
1426—1435.
characters.
a
-^ 7% Yung Lo,
^ Same in seal
1403—1424 characters.

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