400 KEPOKT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



surftice, with the ornameutatiou engraved uuder the paste. The 

 craqiielure, though coarse in inferior specimens, must in the better 

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

 fishroe. But that not crackled was the most highly esteemed. Hsiang 

 Tzti'-ching, describing a beaker of old bronze design with engraved dec- 

 oration 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 por- 

 celain is described, it is true, as being like the sky after rain, but as 

 elsewhere it is stated to have resembled the Ko-yao, or crackled celadons 

 in color, though somewhat darker in shade, there seems no reason to 

 doubt that its real tint was bluish-green, *. e., celadon, especially as the 

 specimens of this ware illustrated in the catalogue translated by Dr. 

 Buishell are so painted.* Hsiang Tzu'-chiug, the author of this cata- 

 logue, after describing a vase 6J inches high, which is stated to have 

 cost 150,000 cash, or about $150 gold, says "specimens of Juchou ware 

 are very rare, and, when met with, are usually plates and bowls. A 

 perfect unbroken vase like this is almost unique, and as it excels both 

 Kuan and Ko porcelain both in form and glaze, it is far more valua- 

 ble." Within three or four decades later, as has already been stated, 

 it seems to have been impossible to find any specimens at all of this 

 ware. 



KUAN-YAO. 



Kuan-yao — i. e., ofiQcial or government ijorcelain — was the produce of 

 the imperial factories established under the Sung dynasty between the 

 years 1107 and 1117 at Pienliang, the present department of K'aifeng, 

 in Honan province, and after the removal southwards of the court 

 before the advancing Mongols, at the southern capital, Hangchou, in 

 Chehkiang i)rovince. During the Takuan period (1107 to 1110) the 



though for what reasou 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 colors of the Juchou, govern- 

 ment (Kuan), Ko, Lung ch'iian and Chiiuchou porcelains were all some shade of what 

 the Chinese call ch'ing. Now chHng means in some combinations blue, in others a 

 pale dull green, as of the fresh olive, which is called by the Chinese chHng-kuo, the 

 ch'ing-coloved fruit. Pere d'Entrecolles, when writing of theLuug ch'iian ware, de- 

 scribes 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 grouuds, and insisted on (errone- 

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

 had to make his porcelain " as blue 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: Op. cit., p. 7. 



Celadon was originally the name of the hero in the popular novel VAstree, written 

 by Honore d'Urf^ in the seventeenth century. C61adon was attired in clothes of a 

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

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



* Julien : Op. cit. p. 63. Bushell : Ojj. cit. Nos. 19, 22, 34. 



