322 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1900. 



gritty character; according to others, the frequency of cracks caused 

 by too rapid or careless baking. As, however, they agree in ascribing 

 the introduction of Ju-yao and its success to the earlj' part of the Sung 

 dynasty — that is, to the very time from which date the tin est specimens 

 of the Tingchou porcelain — it is difficult not to conclude that native 

 authors, writing centuries later, have ascribed the establishment of this 

 factory to erroneous causes. 



The finest specimens, which were very thin and delicate, were supe- 

 rior to imperial ware {Knan-yao), and were of either plain or crackled ^ 

 surface, with the ornamentation engraved under the paste. The 

 craquelure^ though coarse in inferior specimens, must in the better 

 grades have been very close and fine, as it is described as resembling 

 fish roe. But that not crackled was the most highly esteemed. Hsiang 

 Tzff-ching, describing a beaker of old bronze design with engraved 

 decoration under a bluish-green color not crackled, speaks of it as 

 "a rare kind of Juchou ware." In color it was celadon. In one 

 place this porcelain is described, it is true, as being like the sk}- after 

 rain, but as elsewhere it is stated to have resembled the Ko-yao^ or 



'Crackling {craquelure) was originally considered in Europe a defect of baking, 

 which resulted from a lack of homogeneity between paste and glaze, canning one to 

 contract more rapidly than did the other. It was not till a comparatively recent date 

 that the actual facts came to lie appreciated, namely, that in the eyes of the Chinese 

 the craquelure is a species of decoration, and that they have a special kind of en- 

 amel, into the composition of which steatite enters largely, the sole object of which 

 is to jiroduce this curious appearance. By means of this enamel they can at will 

 cover the surface of a vase with any one of a variety of craquelure, either large 

 "like cracks in ice," or small as " the fish roe, " "the dodder," or "the crabs' claws." 

 In some specimens bands are found crackled separating other bands not crackled; or 

 colors, usually either black or red, are rubbed into the crackling to render it more 

 apparent, or to impart a tinge to the entire surface. In other specimens again, 

 though for what reason is not known, the paste, after having been decorated, is cov- 

 ered with a crackled glaze, and a second decoration, having no apparent connection 

 with that beneath, is painted above the glaze. The col(jrs of the Juchou, govern- 

 ment {Kuan), Ko, Lungch'iian and Chiinchou porcelains were all some shade of 

 what the Chinese call ch'ing. Now cli'hig means in some combinations blue, in others 

 a pale dull green, as of the fresh olive, which is called by the Chinese ch'ing-kuo, (lie 

 c/i'(?i^ colored fruit. Pere d'EntrecoUes, when writing of the Lungch'iian ware, 

 describes its color correctly as teinte d' olive. M. Julien, however, in spite of a hint 

 given from the technical annotator M. Salvetat, which might have set him right, 

 rejected this sense on what seemed to him sufficient grounds, and insisted on (errone- 

 ously) translating this word throughout his work as "blue," though by so doing he 

 had to make his porcelain "as l>lne as [green] jade " — with the result that subsequent 

 writers on this subject have failed to derive any assistance from his work in deter- 

 mining the origin and history of celadon porcelain. Hirth, Ancient Chinese Porce- 

 lain, p. 7. 



Ci^ladon was originally the name of the hero in the popular novel V Astree, written 

 by Honore d'Urfe in the seventeenth century. Celadon was attired in clothes of a 

 kind of sea-green hue with gray or bluish tint, and his name thus came to be applied 

 to the clothes he wore, precisely that designated by the Chinese as ch'ing. 



