Page 52 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

8 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

see, there is nothing in the pre-Han pottery to attract the collector.
It will only interest him remotely and for antiquarian reasons, and

he will prefer to look at it in museum cases rather than allow it
to cumber his own cabinets. With the Han pottery it is other-

wise. The antiquarian interest, which is by no means to be under-
estimated, is now supplemented by aesthetic attractions caught from

the general artistic impetus which stirred the arts of this period

of national greatness. Not that we must expect to find all the

refinements of Han art mirrored in the pottery of the time. Chinese

ceramic art was not yet capable of adequately expressing the refine-
ments of the painter, jade carver, and bronze worker. But even

with the somewhat coarse material at his disposal the Han potter

was able to show his appreciation of majestic forms and appro-
priate ornament, and to translate, when called upon, even the
commonplace objects of daily use into shapes pleasant to the eye.

In a word, the ornamental possibilities of pottery were now realised,
and the elements of an exquisite art may be said to have made their
appearance. From a technical point of view, the most significant
advance was made in the use of glaze. Though supported by negative
evidence only, the theory that the Chinese first made use of glaze
in the Han period is exceedingly plausible.^ In the scanty references

^ If geological arguments could be accepted at their face value, a vase found at
Chi-ning Chou, in Shantung, would go far to prove the existence of a highly sophis-
ticated glazed pottery at a date not less than 500 years B.C. The find is described
and illustrated in the Zeitschrift fiir Etlmologie, Jahrg. 43, 1911, p. 153, by Herr Ernst
Borschmann. The vase, which is 10 cm. high, is of globular form, with a short
straight neck and two loop handles^ It is of hard buff ware, with a chocolate brown
glaze with purplish reflexions of a metallic appearance, and the glaze covers only the
upper part of the exterior and ends in an uneven line with drops. One would say

Sung or possibly T'ang, and of the type associated with the name Chien yao. This
pot was found not in a tomb, but in the undisturbed earth at a depth of seven metres,
by a German architect, while sinking a well ; and a reasoned case from the stratification
of the soil is made out to prove that it must have at least an antiquity of twenty-four

hundred years. It is, however, proverbial that geological arguments applied to
relatively modern archseology lead to results more startling than correct ; and I refuse
to accept this solitary specimen as evidence to upset the whole theory of the evolu-
tion of Chinese potterj'. For it must do nothing less. This piece is of a style which

is at present unknown before the T'ang dynasty. It has nothing in common with
Han pottery as we know it, still less with Chou, and to accept its Chou date would be

to believe that an advanced style of manufacture was in use 500 years b.c, that it
was forgotten again for some twelve centuries, and then reappeared in precisely the
same form. Fukien white porcelain seals have been found in an Irish bog in posi-
tions from which geologists might infer a colossal antiquity, but the history of porcelain
has not been disturbed on that account ; and I cannot help thinking that this strange

•phenomenon at Chi-ning Chou must be regarded in much the same light.