Page 55 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

C

The Han Dynasty, 206 b.c. to 220 a.d. 9

to earlier wares in ancient texts no mention of glaze appears, and,
indeed, the severe simplicity of the older pottery is so emphatic-
ally urged that such an embellishment as glaze would seem to have
been almost undesirable. The idea of glazing earthenware, if not

evolved before, would now be naturally suggested to the Chinese

by the pottery of the Western peoples with whom they first made
contact about the beginning of the Han dynasty. Glazes had

been used from high antiquity in Egypt ; thej^ are found in the
Persian bricks at Susa and on the Parthian coffins, and they must
have been commonplace on the pottery of Western Asia two hundred

years before our era.

It is possible, of course, that evidence may yet be forthcoming

to carry back the use of glaze in China beyond the limits at present
prescribed, but all we can state with certainty to-day is that the

oldest known objects on which it appears are those which for full

and sufficient reasons can be assigned to the Han period. To

explain all these reasons would necessitate a long excursion into

archaeology which would be out of place here. Many of them can

be found in Berthold Laufer's^ excellent work on the subject, and
others will in due course be set out in the catalogue of the British

Museum collections. But it would be unfair to ask the reader

to take these conclusions entirely on trust, and some idea of the

evidence is certainly his due.

There are a few specimens of Han pottery inscribed with dates,
such as the vase (Plate 2, Fig. 1) from the Dana Collection, which
, is now in the Boston Museum ; but in almost every case the in-

scriptions have proved to be posthumous and must be regarded at

best as recording the pious opinion of a subsequent owner. It

will be safer, then, to leave inscriptions out of consideration and to
rely on the close analogies which exist between the pottery and the

bronze vessels of the Han period and between the decorative designs
on the pottery and the Han stone sculptures, and, where possible,

on the circumstances in which the vessels have been found. Unfor-

tunately, the bulk of the Han pottery which has reached Europe in

recent years has passed through traders' hands, and no records have
been kept of its discovery. But there are exceptional cases in which

we have first-hand evidence of Han tombs explored by Europeans,

and in two instances their contents have been brought direct to the
British ^luseum. Both these hauls are from the rock-tombs in

— ^ Berthold Laufer, Pottery of the Han Dynasty, Leyden, 1908.

I