Page 84 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

28 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

or Guardians of the Four Quarters in the Buddhist theogony, and a
figure of an actor. The amusements, as well as the serious occupations

Aof the dead, were provided for in the furniture of the tombs. whole

troop of mimes in quaint costumes and dramatic poses is shown

in the Field Museum at Chicago, and Plate 6 illustrates three seated

figures of musicians as well as a standing figure holding a dish of

fruit.

A study of the salient features of these and other authenticated

specimens leads naturally to the identification of fresh types, and
so the series grows. For instance, the type of wine vase with serpent
handles is found in glazes of various colours, all of the mottled
T'ang kind, and with slight additions, such as the palmette-like
ornaments in applied relief on a large example in the British
IMuseum. These ornaments in their turn appear on bowls and
incense vases often of globular form, like the well-known Buddhist
begging bowl, but fitted with three legs. Splashed, streaked and
mottled glazes further declare these to be T'ang, and the varying
colour and hardness of their body material give us a deeper insight
into the T'ang ware. All of these show the marks of the wheel,

and many are neatly finished with simple wheel-made lines and

ridges ; stamped ornaments in applied relief are their commonest
form of decoration.

A fine specimen in the British Museum will serve to illustrate

this type of bowl. It has a hard, white body, of typical globular
form, with slightly constricted mouth, three legs with strongly

modelled lion masks on the upper part, and between them pads
of applied relief with lion mask ornaments. The glaze is not of
the mottled kind, but is rather streaked ; it is deep, cucumber
green and minutely crackled, and has run down into drops under

the bowl. This fluidity is also the cause of the streakiness of the

colour, which was evidently a characteristic feature of the T'ang
pottery, for it appears unmistakably indicated in a T'ang paint-
ing figured by Sir Aurel Stein. ^ This painting, a silk banner of
the T'ang period, was found in a walled-up library at Tun-huang,
and depicts a standing Buddhist figure carrying a begging bowl
with boldly streaked exterior.

—In addition to the mottled glazes which, by the way, are the

1 Ruins of Desert Cathay, vol. ii., p. 195. Similarh^ bowls with spotted glaze are
indicated in several of the silk pictures found by Sir Aurel Stein at Tun-huang, which

are temporarily exhibited in the King Edward VII. galleries in the British IMuseum.