April, 1917 
29 
of China in the literature of the world out¬ 
side the Empire. “They have,” said he, “m 
China a very fine clay with which they 
make vases which are as transparent as 
glass; water is seen through them. These 
vases are made from clay.” 
In the time of the Emperor Shi Tsung 
( 954 _ 959 ) of the brief Posterior Chou 
Dynasty established at K’ai-feng-fu prior 
to the Sung Dynasty, an imperial rescript 
ordered porcelain “as blue as the sky, as 
clear as a mirror, as thin as paper^and as 
resonant as a musical stone of jade.” 
All the porcelains of the times we have 
referred to seem long since to have disap¬ 
peared and the only knowledge of them 
which we have today is through the litera¬ 
ture of their contemporary writers. 
The Sung Dynasty (960-1280), the Yuan 
Dynasty (1280-1367) and the Ming Dynas¬ 
ty (1368-1643) open up to us surer knowl¬ 
edge, as specimens of the time are available 
to students. The porcelains of the Sung 
and Yuan Dynasties should be classed to¬ 
gether. The ceramic production (yao) 
made in the province of Honan in the town 
now called Ju-chou-fu—a Sung Dynasty 
porcelain therefore designated as Ju-Yao — 
stands famous for the qualities of its blues 
which Chinese poets assure us rival the 
blue blossoms of the Vitex iucisa shrub, 
the “Sky Blue Elower” of the Chinese. 
Sung and Yuan Porcelains 
The Imperial Ware of the Sung Dynas¬ 
ty was the Kuan Vao (two Chinese words 
signifying “official ceramic production”). 
Then there was the Ko Yao porcelain, the 
early crackled ware; and the Ting Yao, a 
porcelain having a delicate resonant body. 
This seems to be the most commonly met 
with among the wares of the Sung porce¬ 
lains. The Lung-ch’uan Yao of the Sung 
wares is the famed Celadon Ware made in 
the province of Chekiang. The Celadon 
Ware of this dynasty is distinguished by 
its onion-sprout green color. The Celadon 
Wares of later periods turn more either to 
greyish-greens or to sea-green hues. 
The Chiln yao, Dr. S. W. Bushell tells 
us in his introduction to the Catalogue of the 
Morgan Collection of Chinese Porcelains, 
formerly loaned to the Metropolitan Mu¬ 
seum, “was a kind of faience made at 
Chiinchou, now Yii-chou, in the province 
of Honan. The glazes were remarkable for 
their brilliancy and for their manifold varie¬ 
ties of color, especially the transmutation 
flambes, composed of flashing reds, passing 
through every intermediate shade of purple 
to pale blue, which have hardly been 
equaled since. The great variety of glaze 
colors turned out here in former times may 
be gathered from a list of old Chiin-chou 
pieces sent down from the palace to be 
reproduced at the Imperial potteries at 
Ching-te-chen in the reign of Yung-cheng 
(1723), the list comprising (1) rose crim¬ 
son, 920 Pyrus japonica-gink, (2) auber¬ 
gine purple, (3) plum color, (4) mule’s 
liver mixed with horse’s lung, (5) dark 
purple, (6) yellow-millet color, mi-se, (7) 
sky blue, (8) furnace transmutations, yao- 
pien, or flambes. These were all repro¬ 
duced in due course during the first half 
of the 18th Century on porcelain, and the 
new white body was in marked contrast, 
we are told, with the sandy, ill-levigated 
paste of the original pieces. The only 
remaining porcelain ware of the Sung 
This vase 0/ dead silvery white personi¬ 
fies opaqueness, suggestive of white 
taffy. Ch’ien Lung Period 
Delicate as the tones of an Oriental 
print, this design overlies a milky 
blue background. Yung Ching Period 
Blue and white—a fuzzy Chinese dog 
and a bird chat on this straight-shoul¬ 
dered jar. Ch'ien Lung Period 
Dynasty which requires a word of notice 
is the Chien Yao, produced in the province 
of Fuhkien, where the black enameled cups 
with spreading sides, so highly appreciated 
for the tea ceremonial of the time, were 
made. The lustrous black coat of these 
cups was speckled and dappled all over with 
spots of silvery white, simulating the fur 
of a hare or the breast of a gray partridge, 
hence the names of ‘hare’s-fur cups,’ and 
‘partridge cups’ given them by connois¬ 
seurs at the present time. 
“These little cups were valued also by the 
Japanese at immense prices, and were 
mounted by them with silver rims and cun¬ 
ningly pieced together when broken with 
gold laccpier.” 
The Cobalt Blues of Ming 
We now come to the Ming Dynasty 
(1368-1643), and in the reign of Wan-li 
(1573-1620) the art of making and dec¬ 
orating porcelain had so advanced that 
native contemporaries were fond of declar¬ 
ing that there was nothing that could not 
be made of the porcelain. It has been said 
of true porcelains of the Ming period that 
they look their age and that they never fail 
to disclose their period to the initiated eye. 
The cobalt blues came into favor in this 
period, and it is also the time of the famed 
“Mohammedan blue.” European and Amer¬ 
ican collectors have given a great deal of 
attention to the Blue-and-White porcelains 
that came in with the close of the Ming 
Dynasty. It was between 1662 and 1722, 
however, that the very flower of the Blue- 
and-White porcelain was produced. This 
marks the reign of K’ang Hsi. 
The K’ang Hsi Period was the cul¬ 
minating one of Chinese ceramic art. Says 
Bushell (in “Chinese Art”) : “The bril¬ 
liant renaissance of the art which distin¬ 
guishes the reign of K’ang Hsi is shown in 
every class; in the single-colored glazes, la 
qualite maitresse de la ceramique; in the 
painted decorations of the grand feu, of the 
jewel-like enamels of the muffle-kiln, and of 
their manifold combinations; in the pulsat¬ 
ing vigor of every shade of blue in the 
inimitable ‘blue and white.’ Porcelains of 
the famille verte class pervade the period, 
while those of the famille rose class may 
be said to have ushered in its close. The 
greens that give the porcelains of the 
famille verte and the famille rose classes 
their names are indeed gem-like in their 
beauty. Precious, too, to the collector are 
the Blue-and-White or the Black Haw¬ 
thorn jars of the period. Hawthorn is 
a misnomer, for the primus blossom and 
not the hawthorn blossom furnishes the 
motif of the decoration. 
“These charming jars, originally intended 
to hold New Year’s gifts of fragrant tea, 
are painted with a floral symbolical design 
appropriate to the season. The primus flow¬ 
ers- are bursting forth in the warmth of 
returning spring, while the winter’s ice 
seen through their meshes is just melting. 
Other jars are strewn with single primus 
blossoms and buds reserved in white on a 
pulsating blue ground, cross-hatched with 
lines of darker blue to represent crack¬ 
ing ice.” 
Glaze and Marks 
The master-quality of fine porcelain is 
its glaze and the glazes of old Chinese por¬ 
celains have never been surpassed. The 
{Continued on page 68) 
