26 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XII. 



The other group of pottery in the Cole collection is characterized 

 by well-made thick and oily glazes ranging in color from a peculiar light- 

 blue to shades of grass-green, dark-green, olive-green, and lilac, some- 

 times combined on one surface. There can be no doubt that all these 

 pieces represent Kuang yao, either made at Yang-ch'un, or at Yang- 

 kiang, in Kuangtung Province. None of them is a real celadon, though 

 some of the glazes, in particular the jar on Plate XII, come near to it, to 

 a certain degree. 1 Similar glazes are still turned out at Yi-hsing on the 

 Great Lake (T'ai hu) near Shanghai, but they are inferior in quality to 

 these specimens. They owe their attractions entirely to the glaze 

 brilliant with its varying colors blue speckled, flecked with green, or 

 green being the prevailing tint, the blue looking out from beneath it in 

 spots or streaks; in one example (PI. IX, Fig. 2), fine purplish lines 

 like bundles of rays are brought out around the shoulders under the 

 glaze. The only exception is represented by the jar in Plate XI, which 

 is covered by a dark olive-green glaze, (also in its interior) interspersed 

 with yellowish and brownish spots. It is possibly a Sung production, 

 while the others may belong to the Ming period. The only decorated 

 jar is that in Plate XIV which is adorned with a flat-relief band of floral 

 designs. The jar in Plate XII has the four ears worked into animal-heads 

 which differ in style from the lion-heads on the dragon-jars. The 

 larger jars are used in China for holding water, the smaller specimens 

 are wine-vessels. 



In regard to the three small pieces grouped on Plate XVII, I have 

 no positive judgment, for lack of material that could be adequately 

 compared with them. The most interesting of these specimens is that 

 in Fig. 1 . The ornaments of this stoneware dish are laid out in a cinna- 

 bar-red paint over a buff -colored glaze; this paint is produced either by 

 means of vermilion or silicate of copper. A ring on the inner side of the 

 dish is left unglazed ; the lower side is completely glazed with exception 



cient type of pottery. During the middle ages, the province of ChSkiang enjoyed 

 a certain fame for their manufacture (see S. W. Bushell, Description of Chinese 

 Pottery and Porcelain, p. 130). At the present time, the best are made in the kilns 

 of Yi-hsing in the province of Kiangsu. — Porcelain jars decorated with dragons are 

 mentioned as having been made in the imperial factory established under the Ming 

 (St. Julien, Histoire et fabrication de la porcelaine chinoise, p. 100). The extensive 

 rdle which the dragon played during that period is too well known to be discussed 

 here anew. But as early as the Sung period (and possibly still earlier) the dragon 

 appears as a decorative motive on pottery. In our Chinese collection in the Field 

 Museum, e. g., there is a large Sung celadon plate the centre of which is decorated 

 with the relief figure of a dragon. Dragons and many other motives were doubtless 

 applied to common pottery centuries before they made their debut on porcelain. 



1 1 am inclined to think that such pseudo-celadons have caused travellers in the 

 Archipelago unfamiliar with the ceramics of China or having merely a book knowl- 

 edge of the subject to see celadons in many cases where there are none, and am 

 seconded in this opinion by Dr. Bushell (/. c, p. 13). 



