Introduction of Glazes into China 147 



period, in his Ling piao lu i, 1 where the making of earthen cooking- 

 kettles in the potteries of Kuang-tung is mentioned: "They were 

 fired from clay and then glazed" (^ fi H i ift ^). A gloss explains 

 yu as ?fi. What is meant here is the application of porcelain glazes to 

 earthenware. In ceramic literature the term yu refers exclusively to 

 porcelain enamels. 2 It is quite certain also that in the present col- 

 loquial language glass is exclusively styled p'o-li, never liu-li, which 

 strictly refers to glazed ware. 



While we recognize that the Chinese received the stimulus for 

 the production of ceramic glazes from western Asia, it must be empha- 

 sized at once that it was no more than a stimulus, and that the Chinese 

 were not slavish imitators, but soon applied their own genius to the 

 novel idea. The green glaze of the Han pottery, as analyzed by Mr. 

 Nichols (p. 93), may have its analogies in the West, and a thorough 

 search for corresponding materials would in all probability bring to 

 light a Western recipe of the same composition. The first step to 

 independence, however, is taken by the production of the porcelanous 

 glaze of post-Han times (p. 90), which hardly offers any contempo- 

 raneous parallel in the West. From this time onward the Chinese 

 have exercised their own acumen in perfecting the process of glazing 

 and multiplying the scale of beautiful colors. Flinders Petrie 3 has 

 offered the ingenious suggestion that glaze in prehistoric Egypt, where 

 it is found on quartz bases, was probably invented from finding quartz 

 pebbles fluxed by wood ashes in a hot fire; hence glazing on quartz was 

 the starting-point, and glazing on artificial wares was a later stage. 

 Such observations of natural glazes may have also impressed and 

 stimulated the Chinese. The Field Museum owns two earthenware 

 crucibles, obtained by the writer in Si-ngan fu (Cat. Nos. 1 19076 

 and 1 19077), which by purely natural causes, owing to the infusion of 

 molten metals, are colored a sky-blue with red flecks; likewise a melting- 

 pot (Cat. No. 1 19347), artificially glazed in the interior and in the upper 

 portion of the exterior, while the lower unglazed part has assumed 

 natural colors of fiery-red and dark green from the effect of liquid 

 metals. It is not impossible that this natural process of glazing in- 

 spired the imagination of the potters and gave the incentive for certain 

 mottled ceramic glazes. 



1 Ch. a, p. 6 (ed. of Wu ying Hen). 



* Julien, Histoire et fabrication de la porcelaine chinoise, pp. 245, 247. 



* Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt, p. 107. 



