Page 74 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

24 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

quantity Here, however, we have again been well served by the

ancient burial customs of the Chinese, which still held good for
part, at least, of the T'ang period.

The T'ang mortuary wares are similar in intention to those of
the Han, but bespeak a much maturer art. The modelling of the
tomb figures, which have been aptly compared with the Tanagra
statuettes of ancient Greece, displays greater skill, spirit, and delicacy,
and the materials used are more refined and varied. The body
of the ware, which is usually fine as pipeclay, varies in hardness
from soft earthenware, easily scratchable with a knife, to a hard
porcellanous stoneware, and in colour from light grey and pale
rosy buff to Avhite, like plaster-of- Paris. The usual covering is a

thin, finely crackled glaze of pale straw colour or light transparent

green, and sometimes the surface has a wash of white clay
between the bod}'' and the glaze. Some of the figures, however,
are more richly coated in amber brown and leaf green glazes with
occasional splashes of blue, while on others are found traces of unfired
red and black pigments.

But as the mortuary pottery ^ comprises the largest and most
important group of T'ang wares at present identified, we cannot
do better than consider it first and as a separate class, setting forth
at once the reasons for assigning it to this particular period. As

will be seen in the note to the previous chapter (p. 17), earthenware

appears to have been to a great extent superseded by wood as the

fashionable material for sepulchral furniture towards the end of the
T'ang period. This in itself is strong prima facie evidence that
the tombs furnished throughout with pottery are not later than the
T'ang dynasty. Another argument of an ethnographical nature is
supplied by the figures of ladies with feet of normal size. The fashion

of cramping the feet, though it may have begun before the T'ang

period, was certainly not universal until the end of this long dynasty."^

1 No doubt this mortuary pottery was made locally to supply local needs, and

there is no occasion to refer it to any of the better known pottery centres, though

we do find mention of an imperial order for scpulclinil ware sent to the potters at Hsin-

p'ing (the old name for the district town of Ching-te Chen) in the T'ang dynasty. See

T'ao lu, bk. viii., fol. 2, quoting from the Hsiang ling ming huan cbih.

A2 See Glossary of Reference on Subjects Connected with the Far East, by H. A.

Giles, Shanghai, 1900. " The practice among Chinese women of cramping the feet

is said by some to have originated about 970 a.d. with Yao Niang, concubine of the

pretender Li Yu. The lady wished to make her feet like the new moon. Others

say that it was introduced by Pan Fei, the favourite of the last monarch of the Ch'i

dynasty, 501 a.d."