CHINESE POTTERY AND PORCELAIN

Statue of a Lohan or Buddhist Apostle, T'ang dynasty
(618–906 A.D.)

Height with stand 50 inches. British Museum.

CHINESE POTTERY
AND PORCELAIN

AN ACCOUNT OF THE POTTER'S ART IN CHINA
FROM PRIMITIVE TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY

BY

R.L. HOBSON, B.A.

Assistant in the Department of British and Mediæval Antiquities and
Ethnography, British Museum. Author of the "Catalogue of the
Collection of English Pottery in the Department of British
and Mediæval Antiquities of the British Museum";
"Porcelain: Oriental, Continental, and British";
"Worcester Porcelain"; etc.; and Joint Author
of "Marks on Pottery"

Forty Plates in Colour and Ninety–six in Black and White

VOL. I
Pottery and Early Wares

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1915

CONTENTS

LIST OF PLATES

INTRODUCTION

WHEN we consider the great extent of the Chinese Empire and its teeming population—both of them larger than those of Europe—and the fact that a race with a natural gift for the potter's craft and a deep appreciation of its productions has lived and laboured there for twenty centuries (to look no farther back than the Han dynasty), it seems almost presumptuous to attempt a history of so vast and varied an industry within the compass of two volumes. Anything approaching finality in such a subject is out of the question, and, indeed, imagination staggers at the thought of a complete record of every pottery started in China in the past and present.

As far as pottery is concerned, we must be content with the identification of a few prominent types and with very broad classifications, whether they be chronological or topographical. Indeed, the potteries named in the Chinese records are only a few of those which must have existed; and though we may occasionally rejoice to find in our collections a series like the red stonewares of Yi–hsing, which can be definitely located, a very large proportion of our pottery must be labelled uncertain or unknown. How many experts here or on the Continent could identify the pottery made in South Germany or Hungary a hundred years ago? What chance, then, is there of recognising any but the most celebrated wares of China?

In dealing with porcelain as distinct from pottery, we have a simpler proposition. The bulk of what we see in Europe is not older than the Ming dynasty and was made at one of two large centres, viz. Ching–tê Chên in Kiangsi, and Tê–hua in Fukien. Topographical arrangement, then, is an easy matter, and there is a considerable amount of information available to guide us in chronological considerations.

The antiquity of Chinese porcelain, its variety and beauty, and the wonderful skill of the Chinese craftsmen, accumulated from the traditions of centuries, have made the study of the potter's art in China peculiarly absorbing and attractive. There is scope for every taste in its inexhaustible variety. Compared with it in age, European porcelain is but a thing of yesterday, a mere two centuries old, and based from the first on Chinese models. Even the so–called European style of decoration which developed at Meissen and Sèvres, though quite Western in general effect, will be found on analysis to be composed of Chinese elements. It would be useless to compare the artistic merits of the Eastern and Western wares.

It is so much a matter of personal taste. For my own part, I consider that the decorative genius of the Chinese and their natural colour sense, added to their long training, have placed them so far above their European followers that comparison is irrelevant. Even the commoner sorts of old Chinese porcelain, made for the export trade, have undeniable decorative qualities, while the specimens in pure Chinese taste, and particularly the Court wares, are unsurpassed in quality and finish.

The merits and beauty of porcelain have always been recognised by the Chinese, who ranked it from the earliest days among their precious materials. Chinese poets make frequent reference to its dainty qualities, its jade–like appearance, its musical ring, its lightness and refinement. The green cups of Yüeh Chou ware in the T´ang dynasty were likened to moulded lotus leaves; and the white Ta–yi bowls surpassed hoar–frost and snow. Many stanzas were inspired by the porcelain bowls used at the tea and wine symposia, where cultivated guests capped each other's verses. In a pavilion at Yün–mên, in the vicinity of Ching–tê Chên, is a tablet inscribed, "The white porcelain is quietly passed all through the night, the fragrant vapour (of the tea) fills the peaceful pavilion," an echo of a symposium held there by some distinguished persons in the year 1101 A. D., and no doubt alluding to wares of local make. Elsewhere[1] we read of a drinking–bout in which the wine bowls of white Ting Chou porcelain inspired a verse–capping competition. "Ting Chou porcelain bowls in colour white throughout the Empire," wrote one. Another followed, "Compared with them, glass is a light and fickle mistress, amber a dull and stupid female slave." The third proceeded: "The vessel's body is firm and crisp; the texture of its skin is yet more sleek and pleasing."

The author of the P´ing hua p´u, a late Ming work on flower vases, exhorts us: "Prize the porcelain and disdain gold and silver. Esteem pure elegance."

In their admiration of antiques the Chinese yield to none, and nowhere have private collections been more jealously guarded and more difficult of access. Even in the sixteenth century relatively large sums were paid for Sung porcelains, and £30 was not too much for a "chicken wine cup" barely a hundred years old. The ownership of a choice antique—say, of the Sung dynasty—made the possessor a man of mark; perhaps even a marked man if the local ruler chanced to be of a grasping nature.

A story is told on p. 75 of this volume of a Ko ware incense burner (afterwards sold for 200 ounces of gold), which brought a man to imprisonment and torture in the early Ming period; and, if the newspaper account was correct, there was an incident in the recent revolution which should touch the collector's heart. A prominent general, who, like so many Chinese grandees, was an ardent collector, was expecting a choice piece of porcelain from Shanghai. In due course the box arrived and was taken to the general's sanctum. He proceeded to open it, no doubt with all the eagerness and suppressed excitement which collectors feel in such tense moments, only to be blown to pieces by a bomb! His enemies had known too well the weak point in his defence.

Collecting is a less dangerous sport in England; but if it were not so, the ardent collector would be in no way deterred. Warnings are wasted on him, and he would follow his quarry, even though the path were strewn with fragments of his indiscreet fellows. Still less is he discouraged by difficulties of another kind, as illustrated 'by the story[2] of T´ang's white Sung tripod, which was so closely imitated that its owner, one of the most celebrated collectors of the sixteenth century, could not distinguish the copy from the original. An eighteenth century Chinese writer points the moral of the story: "When connoisseurs point with admiration to a vessel, calling it Ting ware, or, again, Kuan ware, how can we know that it is not a 'false tripod' which deceives them?" The force of this question will be appreciated by collectors of Sung wares, especially of the white Ting porcelains and the green celadons; for there is nothing more difficult to classify correctly than these long–lived types. There are, however, authentic Sung examples within reach, and we can train our eyes with these, so that nothing but the very best imitations will deceive us; and, after all, if we succeed in obtaining a really first–rate Ming copy of a Sung type we shall be fortunate, for if we ever discover the truth—which is an unlikely contingency—we may console ourselves with thoughts of the enthusiast who eventually bought T´ang's false tripod for £300 and "went home perfectly happy."

In spite of all that has been written in the past on Oriental ceramics, the study is still young, and it will be long before the last word is said on the subject. Still our knowledge is constantly increasing, and remarkable strides have been made in recent years. The first serious work on Chinese porcelain was Julien's translation of the Ching–tê Chên t´ao lu, published in 1856. The work of a scholar who was not an expert, it was inevitably marred by misunderstanding of the material, and subsequent writers who followed blindly were led into innumerable confusions. The Franks Catalogue, issued in 1876, was one of the first attempts to classify Oriental wares on some intelligible system; but it was felt that not enough was known at that time to justify a chronological classification of the collection, and the somewhat unscientific method of grouping by colours and processes of decoration was adopted as a convenient expedient. At the end of last century Dr. S.W. Bushell revolutionised the study of Chinese porcelain by his Oriental Ceramic Art, a book, unfortunately, difficult to obtain, and by editing Cosmo Monkhouse's excellent History and Description of Chinese Porcelain. These were followed by the South Kensington Museum Handbook and by the translation and reproduction of the sixteenth century Album of Hsiang Yüan–p´ien, and later by the more important translation of the T´ao shuo.

It would be impossible to over–estimate the importance of Bushell's pioneer work; and I hasten to make the fullest acknowledgment of the free use I have made of his writings, the more so because I have not hesitated to criticise freely his translations where necessary. The Chinese language is notoriously obscure and ambiguous, and differences of opinion on difficult passages are inevitable. In fact, I would say that it is unwise to build up theories on any translation whatsoever without verifying the critical passages in the original. For this reason I found it necessary to work laboriously through the available Chinese ceramic literature, a task which would have been quite impossible with my brief acquaintance with the language had it not been for the invaluable aid of Dr. Lionel Giles, who helped me over the difficult ground. I have, moreover, taken the precaution of giving the Chinese text in all critical passages, so that the reader may satisfy himself as to their true meaning.

While Dr. Bushell's contributions have greatly simplified the study of the later Chinese porcelains, little or no account was taken in the older books of the pottery and early wares. The materials necessary for the study of these were wanting in Europe. Stray examples of the coarser types and export wares had found their way into our collections, but not in sufficient numbers or importance to arouse any general interest, and the condition of the Western market for the early types was not such as to tempt the native collector to part with his rare and valued specimens. In the last few years the position has completely changed. The opening up of China and the increased opportunities which Europeans enjoy, not only for studying the monuments of ancient Chinese art, but for acquiring examples of the early masterpieces in painting, sculpture, bronze, jade, and ceramic wares, have given the Western student a truer insight into the greatness of the earlier phases of Chinese art, and have awakened a new and widespread enthusiasm for them. An immense quantity of objects, interesting both artistically and archæologically, has been discovered in the tombs which railway construction has incidentally opened; and although this rich material has been gathered haphazard and under the least favourable conditions for accurate classification, a great deal has been learnt, and it is not too much to say that the study of early Chinese art has been completely revolutionised. Numerous collections have been formed, and the resulting competition has created a market into which even the treasured specimens of the Chinese collectors are being lured. Political circumstances have been another factor of the situation, and the Western collector has profited by the unhappy conditions which have prevailed in China since the revolution in 1912.

The result of all this, ceramically speaking, is that we are now familiar with the pottery of the Han dynasty; the ceramic art of the T´ang period has been unfolded in wholly unexpected splendour; the Sung problems no longer consist in reconciling ambiguous Chinese phrases, but in the classification of actual specimens; the Ming porcelain is seen in clearer perspective, and our already considerable information on the wares of the last dynasty has been revised and supplemented by further studies. So much progress, in fact, has been made, that it was high time to take stock of the present position, and to set out the material which has been collected, not, of course, with any thoughts of finality, but to serve as a basis for a further forward move. That is the purpose of the present volumes, in which I have attempted merely to lay before the reader the existing material for studying Chinese ceramics as I have found it, adding my own conclusions and comments, which he may or may not accept.

The most striking additions to our knowledge in recent years, have without doubt been those which concern the T´ang pottery. What was previously a blank is now filled with a rich series covering the whole gamut of ceramic wares, from a soft plaster–like material through faïence and stoneware up to true porcelain. The T´ang potters had little to learn in technical matters. They used the soft lead glazes, coloured green, blue, amber, and purplish brown by the same metallic oxides as formed the basis of the cognate glazes on Ming pottery. They used high–fired feldspathic glazes, white, brownish green, chocolate brown, purplish black, and tea–dust green, sometimes with frothy splashes of grey or bluish grey, as on the Sung wares. Sometimes these glazes were superposed as on the Japanese tea jars, which avowedly owed their technique to Chinese models. It is evident that streaked and mottled effects appealed specially to the taste of the time, and marbling both of the glaze and of the body was practised. Carving designs in low relief, or incising them with a pointed instrument and filling in the spaces with coloured glazes, stamping small patterns on the body, and applying reliefs which had been previously pressed out in moulds, were methods employed for surface decoration. Painted designs in unfired pigments appear on some of the tomb wares, and it is now practically certain that painting in black under a green glaze was used by the T´ang potters. Moreover, the existence of porcelain proper in the T´ang period is definitely established.

One of the most remarkable features of T´ang pottery is the strong Hellenistic flavour apparent in the shapes of the vessels and in certain details of the ornament, particularly in the former. Other foreign influences observable in T´ang art are Persian, Sassanian, Scytho–Siberian, and Indian, and one would say that Chinese art at this period was in a peculiarly receptive state. As compared with the conventional style of later ages which we have come to regard as characteristically Chinese, the T´ang art is quite distinctive, and almost foreign in many of its aspects.

The revelation of T´ang ceramics has provided many surprises, and doubtless there are more in store for us. There are certainly many gaps to fill and many apparent anomalies to explain. We are still in the dark with regard to the potter's art of the four hundred years which separate the Han and T´ang dynasties. The Buddhist sculptures of this time reveal a high level of artistic development, and we may assume that the minor arts, and pottery among them, were not neglected. When some light is shed from excavation or otherwise upon this obscure interval, no doubt we shall see that we have fixed our boundaries too rigidly, and that the Han types must be carried forward and the T´ang types carried back to bridge the gap. Meanwhile, we can only make the best of the facts which have been revealed at present, keeping our classification as elastic as possible. Probably the soft lead glazes belong to the earlier part of the T´ang period and extend back to the Sui and Wei, linking up with the green glaze of the Han pottery, while the high–fired glazes tended to supersede these in the latter part of the dynasty.

The high–fired feldspathic glazes seem to have held the field entirely in the Sung dynasty, and the lead glazes, as far as our observation goes, do not reappear until the Ming dynasty.

The Sung is the age of high–fired glazes, splendid in their lavish richness and in the subtle and often unforeseen tints which emerge from their opalescent depths. It is also an age of bold, free potting, robust and virile forms, an age of pottery in its purest manifestation. Painted ornament was used at certain factories in black and coloured clays, and, it would seem, even in red and green enamels; but painted ornament was less esteemed than the true ceramic decoration obtained by carving, incising, and moulding—processes which the potters worked with the clay alone.

If we could rest content with a comprehensive classification of the Sung wares, as we have had perforce to do in the case of the T´ang, one of the chief difficulties in this part of our task would be avoided. But the Chinese have given us a number of important headings, under which it has become obligatory to try and group our specimens. Some of these types have been clearly identified, but there are others which still remain vague and ill–defined; and there are many specimens, especially among the coarser kinds of ware, which cannot be referred to any of the main groups. But the true collector will not find the difficulties connected with the Sung wares in any way discouraging. He will revel in them, taking pleasure in the fact that he has new ground to break, many riddles to solve, and a subject to master which is worthy of his steel.

Apparently a coarse form of painting in blue was employed at one factory at least in the Sung period,[3] and we may now consider it practically certain that the first essays in painting both under and over the glaze go back several centuries earlier than was previously supposed. Blue and white and polychrome porcelain chiefly occupied the energies of the Imperial potters at Ching–tê Chên in the Ming dynasty, and the classic periods for these types fall in the fifteenth century. The vogue of the Sung glazes scarcely survived the brief intermediate dynasty of the Yüan, and we are told by a Chinese writer[4] that "on the advent of the Ming dynasty the pi sê[5] began to disappear." Pictorial ornament and painted brocade patterns were in favour on the Ming wares; and it will be observed that as compared with those of the later porcelains the Ming designs are painted with more freedom and individuality. In the Ch´ing dynasty the appetite of the Ching–tê Chên potters was omnivorous and their skill was supreme. They are not only noted for certain specialities, such as the K´ang Hsi blue and white and famille verte, the sang de bœuf and peach–bloom reds, and for the development of the famille rose palette, but for the revival of all the celebrated types of the classic periods of the Sung and Ming; and when they had exhausted the possibilities of these they turned to other materials and copied with magical exactitude the ornaments in metal, carved stone, lacquer, wood, shell, glass—in a word, every artistic substance, whether natural or artificial.

The mastery of such a large and complex subject as Oriental ceramics requires not a little study of history and technique, in books and in collections. The theory and practice should be taken simultaneously, for neither can be of much use without the other. The possession of a few specimens which can be freely handled and closely studied is an immense advantage. They need not be costly pieces. In fact, broken fragments will give as much of the all–important information on paste and glaze as complete specimens. Those who have not the good fortune to possess the latter, will find ample opportunity for study in the public museums with which most of the large cities of the world are provided. The traveller will be directed to these by his "Baedeker," and I shall only mention a few of the most important museums with which I have personal acquaintance, and to which I gratefully express my thanks for invaluable assistance.

London.—The Victoria and Albert Museum possesses the famous Salting Collection, in which the Ch´ing dynasty porcelains are seen at their best: besides the collection formed by the Museum itself and many smaller bequests, gifts, and loans, in which all periods are represented. The Franks Collection in the British Museum is one of the best collections for the student because of its catholic and representative nature.

Birmingham and Edinburgh have important collections in their art galleries, and most of the large towns have some Chinese wares in their museums.

Paris.—The Grandidier Collection in the Louvre is one of the largest in the world. The Cernuschi Museum contains many interesting examples, especially of the early celadons, and the Musée Guimet and the Sèvres Museum have important collections.

Berlin.—The Kunstgewerbe Museum has a small collection containing some important specimens. The Hohenzollern Museum and the Palace of Charlottenburg have historic collections formed chiefly at the end of the seventeenth century.

Dresden.—The famous and historic collection, formed principally by Augustus the Strong, is exhibited in the Johanneum, and is especially important for the study of the K´ang Hsi porcelains. The Stübel Collection in the Kunstgewerbe Museum, too, is of interest.

Gotha.—The Herzögliches Museum contains an important series of the Sung and Yüan wares formed by Professor Hirth.

Cologne.—An important and peculiarly well–arranged museum of Far–Eastern art, formed by the late Dr. Adolf Fischer and his wife, is attached to the Kunstgewerbe Museum.

New York.—The Metropolitan Museum is particularly rich in Ming and Ch´ing porcelains. It is fortunate in having the splendid Pierpont Morgan Collection and the Avery Collection, and when the Altmann Collection is duly installed in its galleries it will be unrivalled in the wares of the last dynasty. The Natural History Museum has a good series of Han pottery.

Chicago.—The Field Museum of Natural History has probably the largest collection of Han pottery and T´ang figurines in the world. It has also an interesting series of later Chinese pottery, including specimens from certain modern factories which are important for comparative study. These collections were formed by Dr. Laufer in China. There is also a small collection of the later porcelains in the Art Institute.

Boston.—The Museum of Fine Arts has a considerable collection of Chinese porcelain, in which the earlier periods are specially well represented. The American collections, both public and private, are especially strong in monochrome porcelains, and in this department they are much in advance of the European.

To acknowledge individually all the kind attentions I have received from those in charge of the various museums would make a long story. They will perhaps forgive me if I thank them collectively. The private collectors to whom I must express my gratitude are scarcely less numerous. They have given me every facility for the study of their collections, and in many cases, as will be seen in tile list of plates, they have freely assisted with the illustrations. I am specially indebted to Mr. Eumorfopoulos, Mr. Alexander, Mr. R. H. Benson, Mr. S. T. Peters, and Mr. C. L. Freer, who have done so much for the study of the early wares in England and America. Without the unstinted help of these enthusiastic collectors it would have been impossible to produce the first volume of this book. What I owe to Mr. Eumorfopoulos can be partly guessed from the list of plates. His collection is an education in itself, and he has allowed me to draw freely on it and on his own wide experience. Of the many other collectors who have similarly assisted in various parts of the work, I have to thank Sir Hercules Read, Mr. S. E. Kennedy, Dr. A. E. Cumberbatch, Mr. C. L. Rothenstein, Dr. Breuer, Dr. C. Seligmann, M. R. Koechlin, Mr. O. Raphael, Mr. A. E. Hippisley, Hon. Evan Charteris, Lady Wantage, Mr. Burdett–Coutts, the late Dr. A. Fischer, Mr. L. C. Messel, Mr. W. Burton, Col. Goff, Mrs. Halsey, Mrs. Havemeyer, Rev. G. A. Schneider, and Mrs. Coltart. A portion of the proofs has been read by Mr. W. Burton. Mr. L. C. Hopkins has given me frequent help with Chinese texts, and especially in the reading of seal characters; and my colleague, Dr. Lionel Giles, in addition to invaluable assistance with the translations, has consented to look through the proofs of these volumes with a special view to errors in the Chinese characters. Finally, I have to thank my chief, Sir Hercules Read, not only for all possible facilities in the British Museum, but for his sympathetic guidance in the study of a subject of which he has long been a master.

R. L. HOBSON.

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EITEL, E. J., "China Review," Vol. X., p. 308, "Notes on Chinese Porcelain."

GROENEVELDT, W. P., Notes on the Malay Archipelago, Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, Deel. xxxix.

HIPPISLEY, A. E., Catalogue of the Hippisley Collection of Chinese Porcelains, Smithsonian Institute. Second Edition. Washington, 1900.

HOBSON, R. L., Catalogue of a Collection of Early Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, Burlington Fine Arts Club. 1910.

HOBSON, R. L., Catalogue of Chinese, Corean and Japanese Potteries. New York Japan Society, 1914.

HOBSON, R. L., Burlington Magazine, Wares of the Sung and Yüan Dynasties, in six articles, April, May, June, August, and November, 1909, and January, 1910.

HOBSON, R. L., "On Some Old Chinese Pottery," Burlington Magazine. August, 1911.

HOBSON, R. L., AND O. BRACKETT, Catalogue of the Porcelain and Works of Art in the Collection of the Lady Wantage.

KERSHAW, F. S., Note in Inscribed Han Pottery, Burlington Magazine, December, 1913.

LAFFAN, W., Catalogue of the Pierpont Morgan Collection in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

MARTIN, DR., Note on a Sassanian Ewer, Burlington Magazine, September, 1912.

MEYER, A. B., "On the Celadon Question," Oesterreichische Monatsschrift, January, 1885, etc.

MORGAN, J. P., Catalogue of the Morgan Collection of Chinese Porcelains, by S.W. Bushell and W.M. Laffan. New York, 1907.

PARIS, Exposition universelle de 1878, Catalogue spécial de la Collection Chinoise.

PERZYNSKI, F., "Towards a Grouping of Chinese Porcelain," Burlington Magazine, October and December, 1910, etc.

PERZYNSKI, F., "Jagd auf Götter," in the Neue Rundschau, October, 1913.

PERZYNSKI, F., on T´ang Forgeries, Ostasiatischer Zeitschrift, January, 1914.

READ, C. H., in Man, 1901, No. 15, "On a T´ang Vase and Two Mirrors from a Tomb in Shensi."

REINAUD, M., "Relation des Voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans l'Inde et à la Chine dans la IX⚭ siècle de l'ére chrétienne." Paris, 1845.

SOLON, L., "The Noble Buccaros," North Staffordshire Literary and Philosophic Society, October 23rd, 1896.

TORRANCE, REV. TH., "Burial Customs in Szechuan," Journal of the N. China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. XLI., 1910, p. 58.

VORETZSCH, E. A., Hamburgisches Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Führer durch eine Ausstellung Chinesischer Kunst, 1913.

WILLIAMS, MRS. R. S., Introductory Note to the Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of Chinese, Corean, and Japanese Potteries held by the Japan Society of New York, 1914.

ZIMMERMANN, E., "Wann ist das Chinesische Porzellan erfunden und wer war sein Erfinder?" Orientalisches Archiv. Sonderabdruck.

CHINESE POTTERY AND PORCELAIN

CHAPTER I

THE PRIMITIVE PERIODS

POTTERY, as one of the first necessities of mankind, is among the earliest of human inventions. In a rude form it is found with the implements of the late Stone Age, before there is any evidence of the use of metals, and all attempts to reconstruct the first stages of its discovery are based on conjecture alone.

We have no knowledge of a Stone Age in China, but it may be safely assumed that pottery there, as elsewhere, goes back far into prehistoric times. Its invention is ascribed to the mythical Shên–nung, the Triptolemus of China, who is supposed to have initiated the people in the cultivation of the soil and other necessary arts of life. Huang Ti, the semi–legendary yellow emperor, in whose reign the cyclical system of chronology began (2697 B. C.), is said to have appointed "a superintendent of pottery, K´un–wu, who made pottery," and it was a commonplace in the oldest Chinese literature[6] that the great and good emperor Yü Ti Shun (2317–2208 B. C.) "highly esteemed pottery." Indeed, the Han historian Ssŭ–ma Ch´ien (163–85 B. C.) assures us that Shun himself, before ascending the throne, "fashioned pottery at Ho–pin," and, needless to say, the vessels made at Ho–pin were "without flaw."

According to the description given in the T´ao shuo, the evolution of the potter's art in China took the usual course. The first articles made were cooking vessels; then, "coming to the time of Yü (i.e. Yü Ti Shun), the different kinds of wine vessels are distinguished by name, and the sacrificial vessels are gradually becoming complete."[7]

I should add that the author of the T´ao shuo, after accepting the earlier references to the art, inconsistently concludes: "I humbly suggest that the origin of pottery should strictly be placed in the reign of Yü Ti Shun, and its completion in the Chou dynasty" (1122–256 B. C.).

Unfortunately, none of the writers can throw any light on the first use of the potter's wheel in China. It is true that, like several other nations, the Chinese claim for themselves the invention of that essential implement, but there is no real evidence to illuminate the question, and even if the wheel was independently discovered in China, the priority of invention undoubtedly rests with the Near Eastern nations. Palpable evidence of its use can be seen on Minoan pottery found in Crete and dating about 3000 B. C., and on Egyptian pottery of the twelfth dynasty (about 2200 B. C.); while it is practically certain that it was used in the making of the Egyptian pottery of the fourth dynasty (about 3200 B. C.).

So far, the Chinese have nothing tangible to oppose to these facts earlier than the Chou writings, in which workers with the wheel (t´ao jên) are distinguished from workers with moulds (fang jên), the former making cauldrons, basins, colanders, boilers, and vessels (yü), and the latter moulding the sacrificial vessels named kuei and tou. We learn that at this time the Chinese potters also used the compasses and the polishing wheel or lathe. With this outfit they were able, according to the T´ao shuo, to effect the "completion" of pottery.

Whatever the truth of this pious statement may be, reflecting as it does the true Chinese veneration of antiquity, it is certain, at any rate, that the potter was not without honour at this time: for we read in the Tso Chuan[8] that "O–fu of Yü was the best potter at the beginning of the Chou dynasty. Wu Wang relied on his skill for the vessels which he used. He wedded him to a descendant of his imperial ancestors, and appointed him feudal prince of Ch´ên."

Examples of these early potteries have been unearthed from ancient burials from time to time, and the T´ao shuo describes numerous types from literary sources. But neither the originals, as far as we know them, nor the verbal descriptions of them, have anything but an antiquarian interest.

The art of the Chou dynasty, as expressed in bronze and jade, is fairly well known from illustrated Chinese and Western works. It reflects a priestly culture in its hieratic forms and symbolical ornament. It is majestic and stern, severely disdainful of sentiment and sensuous appeal. Of the pottery we know little, but that little shows us a purely utilitarian ware of simple form, unglazed and almost devoid of ornament.

On Plate 1 are two types which may perhaps be regarded as favourable examples of Chou pottery. A tripod vessel, almost exactly similar to Fig. 1, was published by Berthold Laufer,[9] who shows by analogy with bronzes of the period good reasons for its Chou attribution, which he states is confirmed by Chinese antiquarians. His example was of hard "gray clay, which on the surface has assumed a black colour," and it had the surface ornamented with a hatched pattern similar to that of our illustration. It has been assumed that this hatched pattern is a sure sign of Chou origin, and I have no doubt that it was a common decoration at the time. But its use continued after the Chou period, and it is found on pottery from a Han tomb in Szechuan, which is now in the British Museum. It is, in fact, practically the same as the "mat marking" on the Japanese and Corean pottery taken from the dolmens which were built over a long period extending from the second century B. C. to the eighth century A. D.

The taste of the time is reflected in a sentence which occurs in the Kuan–tzŭ, a work of the fifth century B. C.: "Ornamentation detracts from the merit of pottery."[10] The words used for ornamentation are wên ts´ai

(lit. pattern, bright colours), and they seem to imply a knowledge of some means of colouring the ware. As there is no evidence of the use of glaze before the Han period, and enamelling in the ordinary ceramic sense is out of the question, we may perhaps assume that some of the pottery of the Chou period was painted with unfired pigments, a method certainly in use in the Han dynasty. There is a vase in the British Museum of unglazed ware with painted designs in black, red and white pigments, which has been regarded as of Han period, but may possibly be earlier (Plate 2, Fig. 3).

In addition to the Chou tripod, Laufer[11] illustrates five specimens of pre–Han pottery, excavated by Mr. Frank H. Chalfant "on the soil of the ancient city of Lin–tzŭ in Ch´ing–chou Fu, Shantung," a district which was noted for its pottery as late as the Ming period.[12] This find included two pitchers, a deep, round bowl, a tazza or round dish on a high stem, and a brick stamped with the character Ch´i, all unglazed and of grey earthenware. From this last piece, and from the fact that Lin–tzŭ, until it was destroyed in 221 B. C., was the capital of the feudal kingdom of Ch´i, Laufer concluded that these wares belonged to a period before the Han dynasty (206 B. C. to 220 A. D.).

Plate 1.—Chou Pottery.

Fig. 1.—Tripod Food Vessel. Height 6 ¹/₈ inches.

Fig. 2.—Jar with deeply cut lozenge pattern. Height 6 ³/₄ inches.

Eumorfopoulos Collection.

CHAPTER II

THE HAN

DYNASTY, 206 B. C. TO 220 A. D.

TWO centuries of internecine strife between the great feudal princes culminated in the destruction of the Chou dynasty and the consolidation of the Chinese states under the powerful Ch´in emperor Chêng. If this ambitious tyrant is famous in history for beating back the Hiung–nu Turks, the wild nomads of the north who had threatened to overrun the Chou states, and for building the Great Wall of China as a rampart against these dreaded invaders, he is far more infamous for the disastrous attempt to burn all existing books and records, by which, in his overweening pride, he hoped to wipe out past history and make good to posterity his arrogant title of Shih Huang Ti or First Emperor. His reign, however, was short, and his dynasty ended in 206 B. C. when his grandson gave himself up to Liu Pang, of the house of Han, and was assassinated within a few days of his surrender.

The Han dynasty, which began in 206 B. C. and continued till 220 A. D., united the states of China in a great and prosperous empire with widely extended boundaries. During this period the Chinese, who had already come into commercial contact with the kingdoms of Western Asia, sent expeditions, some peaceful and others warlike, to Turkestan, Fergana, Bactria, Sogdiana, and Parthia. They even contemplated an embassy to Rome, but the envoys who reached the Persian Gulf turned back in fear of the long sea journey round Arabia, the length and danger of which seem to have been vividly impressed upon them by persons interested, it is thought, in preventing their farther progress.[13] A considerable trade, chiefly in silks, had been opened up between China and the Roman provinces, and the Parthians who acted as middlemen had no desire to bring the two principals into direct communication.

Needless to say, China was not uninfluenced by this contact with the West. The merchants brought back Syrian glass, the celebrated envoy Chang Ch´ien in the second century B. C. introduced the culture of the vine from Fergana and the pomegranate from Parthia, and some years later an armed expedition to Fergana returned with horses of the famous Nisæan breed. But from the artistic standpoint the most important event was the official introduction of Buddhism in 67 A. D. at the desire of the Emperor Ming Ti and the arrival of two Indian monks with the sacred books and images of Buddha at Lo–yang. The Buddhist art of India, which had met and mingled with the Greek on the north–west frontiers since Alexander's conquests, now obtained a foothold in China and began to exert an influence which spread like a wave over the empire and rolled on to Japan. But this influence had hardly time to develop before the end of the Han period, and in the meanwhile we must return to the conditions which existed in China at the beginning of the dynasty.

The hieratic culture of the Chou, and the traditions of Chou art with its rigid symbolism and formalised designs, had been broken in the long struggles which terminated the dynasty and banned by the iconoclastic aspirations of the tyrant Chêng, and though partially revived by Han enthusiasts, they were essentially modified by the new spirit of the age. Berthold Laufer,[14] in discussing the jade ornaments of the Chou and Han periods, speaks of the "impersonal and ethnical character of the art of that age"—viz. the Chou. "It was," he continues, "general and communistic; it applied to everybody in the community in the same form; it did not spring up from an individual thought, but presented an ethnical element, a national type. Sentiments move on manifold lines, and pendulate between numerous degrees of variations. When sentiment demanded its right and conquered its place in the art of the Han, the natural consequence was that at the same time when the individual keynote was sounded in the art motives, also variations of motives sprang into existence in proportion to the variations of sentiments. This implies the two new great factors which characterise the spirit of the Han time—individualism and variability—in poetry, in art, in culture, and life in general. The personal spirit in taste gradually awakens; it was now possible for everyone to choose a girdle ornament according to his liking. For the first time we hear of names of artists under the Han—six painters under the Western Han, and nine under the Eastern Han; also of workers in bronze and other craftsmen.[15] The typical, traditional objects of antiquity now received a tinge of personality, or even gave way to new forms; these dissolved into numerous variations, to express correspondingly numerous shades of sentiment and to answer the demands of customers of various minds."

Religion has always exerted a powerful influence on art, especially among primitive peoples, and the religions of China at the beginning of the Han dynasty were headed by two great schools of thought—Confucianism and Taoism. These had absorbed and, to a great extent, already superseded the elements of primitive nature worship, which never entirely disappear. Confucianism, however, being rather a philosophy than a religion, and discouraging belief in the mystic and supernatural, had comparatively little influence on art. Taoism, on the other hand, with its worship of Longevity and its constant questing for the secrets of Immortality, supplied a host of legends and myths, spirits and demons, sages and fairies which provided endless motives for poetry, painting and the decorative arts. The Han emperor Wu Ti was a Taoist adept, and the story of the visit which he received from Hsi Wang Mu, the Queen Mother of the West, and of the expeditions which he sent to find Mount P´êng Lai, one of the sea–girt hills of the Immortals, have furnished numerous themes for artists and craftsmen.

It is not yet easy for people in this country to study the monuments of Han art, but facilities are increasing, and a good impression of one phase at least may be obtained from reproductions of the stone carvings in Shantung, executed about the middle of the Han dynasty, which have been published from rubbings by Professor E. Chavannes.[16] On these monuments historical and mythological subjects are portrayed in a curious mixture of imagination and realism.

But these general considerations are leading us rather far afield, and it remains to see how much or how little of them is reflected in the pottery of the time.

As far as our present knowledge of the subject permits us to see, there is nothing in the pre–Han pottery to attract the collector. It will only interest him remotely and for antiquarian reasons, and he will prefer to look at it in museum cases rather than allow it to cumber his own cabinets. With the Han pottery it is otherwise. The antiquarian interest, which is by no means to be underestimated, is now supplemented by æsthetic attractions caught from the general artistic impetus which stirred the arts of this period of national greatness. Not that we must expect to find all the refinements of Han art mirrored in the pottery of the time. Chinese ceramic art was not yet capable of adequately expressing the refinements of the painter, jade carver, and bronze worker. But even with the somewhat coarse material at his disposal the Han potter was able to show his appreciation of majestic forms and appropriate ornament, and to translate, when called upon, even the commonplace objects of daily use into shapes pleasant to the eye. In a word, the ornamental possibilities of pottery were now realised, and the elements of an exquisite art may be said to have made their appearance. From a technical point of view, the most significant advance was made in the use of glaze. Though supported by negative evidence only, the theory that the Chinese first made use of glaze in the Han period is exceedingly plausible.[17] In the scanty references to earlier wares in ancient texts no mention of glaze appears, and, indeed, the severe simplicity of the older pottery is so emphatically urged that such an embellishment as glaze would seem to have been almost undesirable. The idea of glazing earthenware, if not evolved before, would now be naturally suggested to the Chinese by the pottery of the Western peoples with whom they first made contact about the beginning of the Han dynasty. Glazes had been used from high antiquity in Egypt, they are found in the Persian bricks at Susa and on the Parthian coffins, and they must have been commonplace on the pottery of Western Asia two hundred years before our era.

Plate 2.—Han Pottery.

Fig. 1.—Vase, green glazed. Height 14 inches. Boston Museum.

Fig. 2.—Vase with black surface and incised designs. Height 16 inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Fig. 3.—Vase with designs in red, white and black pigments. Height 11 ¹/₂ inches. British Museum.

Fig. 4.—"Granary urn," green glazed. Height 12 inches. Peters Collection.

It is possible, of course, that evidence may yet be forthcoming to carry back the use of glaze in China beyond the limits at present prescribed, but all we can state with certainty to–day is that the oldest known objects on which it appears are those which for full and sufficient reasons can be assigned to the Han period. To explain all these reasons would necessitate a long excursion into archæology which would be out of place here. Many of them can be found in Berthold Laufer's[18] excellent work on the subject, and others will in due course be set out in the catalogue of the British Museum collections. But it would be unfair to ask the reader to take these conclusions entirely on trust, and some idea of the evidence is certainly his due.

There are a few specimens of Han pottery inscribed with dates, such as the vase (Plate 2, Fig. 1) from the Dana Collection, which is now in the Boston Museum; but in almost every case the inscriptions have proved to be posthumous and must be regarded at best as recording the pious opinion of a subsequent owner. It will be safer, then, to leave inscriptions out of consideration and to rely on the close analogies which exist between the pottery and the bronze vessels of the Han period and between the decorative designs on the pottery and the Han stone sculptures, and, where possible, on the circumstances in which the vessels have been found. Unfortunately, the bulk of the Han pottery which has reached Europe in recent years has passed through traders' hands, and no records have been kept of its discovery. But there are exceptional cases in which we have first–hand evidence of Han tombs explored by Europeans, and in two instances their contents have been brought direct to the British Museum. Both these hauls are from the rock–tombs in Szechuan, the one made by the ill–fated Lieutenant Brooke, who was murdered by the Lolos, the other by the Rev. Thomas Torrance, to whom I shall refer again. The evidence of both finds is mutually corroborative; it is supported by Han coins found in the tombs, by inscriptions carved on their doorways, and by the rare passages of decoration on the objects themselves, which correspond closely to designs on stone carvings published by Chavannes. In this way a whole chain of unassailable evidence has been welded together until, in spite of the remoteness of the period, we are able to speak with greater confidence about the Han pottery than about the productions of far more recent times.

The Han pottery is usually of red or slaty grey colour, varying in hardness from a soft earthenware to something approaching stoneware, and in texture from that of a brick to the fineness of delft. These variations are due to the nature of the clay in different localities and to the degree of heat in which the ware was fired. No chronological significance can be attached to the variations of colour, and to place the grey ware earlier than the red is both, unscientific and patently incorrect. Most of the Szechuan ware is grey and comparatively soft, while of the specimens sent from Northern China the majority seem to be of the red clay. Some of the ware from both parts is unglazed, and in certain cases it has been washed over with a white clay and even painted with unfired pigment, chiefly red and black. The bulk of it, however, is glazed, the typical Han glaze being a translucent greenish yellow, which, over the red body, produces a colour varying from leaf green to olive brown, according to the thickness of the glaze and the extent to which the colour of the underlying body appears through it. Age and burial have wonderfully affected this green glaze, and in many cases the surface is encrusted in the process of decay with iridescent layers of beautiful gold and silver lustre. In other cases the decay has gone too far, and the glaze has scaled and flaked off. Another feature which it shares with many of the later glazes is a minute and almost imperceptible crackle. This feature is almost universal on the softer Chinese pottery glazes, and has nothing to do[19] with the deliberate and pronounced crackle of later Chinese porcelain, being purely accidental in its formation.

The colour of the glaze shows considerable variations, being sometimes brownish yellow, sometimes deep brown, and occasionally mottled like that of our mediæval pottery. A passage in the T´ao shuo[20] seems to imply the existence of a black glaze as well, but it is a solitary literary reference, and it is not perfectly clear whether a black earthenware or a black glaze is meant. It was thought at one time that the fine white ware with pale straw–coloured or greenish glaze, of which much of the T´ang mortuary pottery is made, was in use as early as the Han period, but I am now convinced that this is a later development, and cannot be included in the ware of the Han dynasty.

Among the technical peculiarities of Han pottery, the marks—usually three in number—of small, oblong rectangular kiln supports will often be noticed under the base or on the mouth of the wares. These so–called "spur–marks" were made by the supports or rests on which the ware was placed when in the kiln. In many cases, too, large drops of glaze have formed on the mouth of the piece, proving that the vessel was fired in an inverted position, which directed the down flow of the glaze as it melted towards the mouth. This is by no means universal. Indeed, the glaze drops on other pieces are found on the base even when the "spur–marks" appear on the mouth. The explanation of these apparently contradictory phenomena is that to economise space one piece was sometimes placed on top of another in the kiln.

The ornamentation of Han pottery was accomplished in several ways: by pressing the ware in moulds with incuse designs, which produced a low relief on the surface of the pottery; by the use of stamps or dies[21]; and more especially by applying strips of ornament which had been separately formed in moulds. All these ornaments were covered by the glaze when glaze was used. Laufer has made an exhaustive study of Han decoration in his book, and it will be sufficient here to give a few typical examples.

On Plate 2, Fig. 1 is a green–glazed vase of typical Han form with two handles representing rings attached to tiger masks which are borrowed, like the general form of the piece, from a contemporary bronze. This vase, formerly in the Dana Collection and now in the Fine Arts Museum at Boston, has a posthumous date[22] incised on the neck corresponding to the year 133 B. C.

Fig. 2 is a rare specimen with reddish body and polished black surface in which are incised designs of birds, dragons and fish, and bands of vandykes, lozenges and pointed quatrefoil ornaments. It has the usual mask handles, and stands 16 inches high.

On Plate 3, Fig. 1, is a "hill jar" with brown glaze, standing on three feet which are moulded with bear forms. On the side is a frieze in strong relief with hunting scenes of animals, such as the tiger, boar, monkey, deer, hydra and demon figures, spaced out by conventional waves. This kind of frieze is frequently found ornamenting the shoulders of vases such as Fig. 1 of Plate 2, and the animals are usually represented in vigorous movement, often with fore and hind legs outstretched in a "flying gallop." The cover is moulded to suggest mountains rising from sea waves (the sea–girt isles of the Taoist Immortals), peopled with animals.

Fig. 2 is a green–glazed box or covered bowl of elegant form, the cover moulded in low relief with a quatrefoil design surrounded by a frieze of animals.

Fig. 3 is an incense burner of rare form derived from a bronze. It is a variation of the more usual "hill censer" (po shan lu) which has the same body with a cover in the form of hills as on Fig. 1. In this case the cover suggests a lotus flower in bud, and is surmounted by a duck. The whole is coated with an iridescent green glaze.

A few choice specimens of green–glazed Han pottery in the S.T. Peters Collection includes a well–modelled duck, a handsome vase with mask handles and hexagonal base, and a good example of the "granary urn." The last is a grain jar which derives its form from a granary tower. In some instances the tiled roof of the tower is represented by tile–mouldings on the shoulder; but in this instance the form is entirely conventionalised into a cylindrical vase supported by three bear–shaped feet. The bear, an emblem of strength, is commonly employed in this capacity in Han art. Another ornamental form borrowed from a homely object is the model of a well–head, of cylindrical shape, with arched superstructure, in the centre of which a pulley–wheel is represented. The well bucket is usually added, resting on the edge of the well.

Plate 3.—Han Pottery.

Fig. 1.—"Hill Jar" with brown glaze. Height 9 ¹/₂ inches inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Fig. 2.—Box, green glazed. Height 5 ¹/₂ inches inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Fig. 3.—"Lotus Censer" green glazed. Height 10 ¹/₂ inches inches. Rothenstein Collection.

Plate 4.—Model of a "Fowling Tower."

Han pottery with iridescent green glaze. Height 30 inches.

Freer Collection.

Plate 4 illustrates a remarkable structure which seems to represent a fowling tower. Models of houses and shrines have been found frequently in Han tombs, showing most of the elements which are combined in this complex ornament. The structure of wooden beams and galleries and the roofs with their tubular tile–ridges, the formal ox–heads supporting the angles of the lower gallery, the ornamentation of combed lines, are all features which occur in architectural tomb ornaments of the Han period. Here we have apparently a sporting tower, with persons engaged in shooting with crossbows at the pigeons which tamely perch on the roof. The dead birds have fallen into the saucer–like stand below. This rare and curious specimen is made of green–glazed pottery, and measures about 30 inches in height.

As already indicated, our knowledge of Han pottery is mainly derived from the articles disinterred from the tombs of the period, and this will explain the curious fact that Han pottery was almost unknown until quite recent times, and that information on the subject in Chinese ceramic literature is of the most meagre and least satisfying description. The ancestor–worshipping Chinese have always been averse to the systematic exploration of graves. Whatever their practice may have been when the opportunity occurred of rifling a grave unobserved, this at any rate has been the avowed principle. The result is that though China must be honeycombed with graves and tombs, they have not been overtly disturbed in any numbers until recent years, when extensive railway cuttings have opened up the ground. To the progress of railway engineering the sudden appearance of considerable quantities of mortuary pottery is chiefly due.

On the other hand, one of our most interesting finds was made away from the railway in Szechuan. Here, in the neighbourhood of Ch´êng–tu and along the banks of the Min, the soft sandstone hills which line the river had in ancient times been extensively tunnelled with elaborate chambers protected by small entrance doors. Whether these were ever used as dwellings is uncertain, but they certainly became eventually the tenements of the dead. The deposits of ages have covered over the entrances to these tombs, but from time to time torrential rain or some other cause exposed their approaches to the country folk, who invariably pillaged them for coins and smashed and scattered their less marketable contents. The Rev. Thomas Torrance, when stationed at Ch´êng–tu, had the opportunity of exploring some of these caverns, and even succeeded in discovering some unrifled tombs, part of the contents of which he brought over and presented to the British Museum. The funeral furniture of these tombs varied according to the wealth and status of the owner. In the poor man's tomb were unprotected skeletons, small images in a niche, an iron cooking pot, and a few coins. In the rich man's were terra cotta coffins, encased in ornamented slabs, images apparently of the members of his household, a quantity of crockery, and a perfect menagerie of domestic animals and birds. To quote Mr. Torrance's own words:[23] "Standing with your reflector in the midst of a large cave, it seems verily an imitation Noah's Ark."

The practice of burying with the dead the objects which surrounded him in life has never entirely ceased in any country. Among primitive peoples it has taken the revolting form of immolating, or even burying alive, the household of a dead chieftain. Instances of this practice in China occur as late as the third century b.c., and voluntary acts of sacrifice at the tomb are recorded much later in China as in India. When humaner counsels prevailed figures of wood, straw and clay were substituted, straw images being suggested for the purpose by Confucius himself. In the Han dynasty the tomb of the well–to–do was furnished with models of his house, his shrine, his farmyard, threshing floor, rice–pounder, his cattle, sheep, dogs, and poultry, besides his retainers and certain half–human creatures which may have been his guardian spirits; it was provided with vases for wine and grain, models of the stove and kitchen range with cooking pots and implements—the last merely indicated in low relief on the kitchen range—besides the more stately sacrificial vessels for wine and incense.[24] All these were modelled in pottery, and must have fostered a flourishing potter's trade, and given a tremendous impetus to the growth of modelling and design. The underlying idea of all this was, no doubt, to provide the spirit of the dead with the means of pursuing the habits of his lifetime, and the modern practice of supplying his needs by means of paper models which are transmitted to the spirit world through the medium of fire serves the same purpose in a more economical fashion. But a fuller note on the grave furniture of the Han and T´ang periods will be given in the next chapter.

Little or nothing is at present known of the potteries in which the Han wares were made, but we may fairly assume that the manufacture was very general and that local potteries supplied local demands. An incidental reference in the T´ao lu gives us one solitary name, Nan Shan, where the potteries of the Emperor Wu Ti (140–85 B. C.) were situated;[25] and there is a mention of potteries in Kiangsi in the place which was afterwards the site of the celebrated porcelain centre, Ching–tê Chên.

The interval between the Han and T´ang periods, from 221 to 618 A. D., is marked by a rapid succession of short–lived dynasties, an age of conflict and division, in which China was again split up into warring states. The conditions were not favourable to the steady development of the ceramic industry, and little is known of the pottery of this period. From the few references in Chinese literature, however, we infer that new kinds of pottery appeared from time to time, and it is certain that the evolution which culminated in porcelain made sensible advances. This latter fact is proved by the scientific analysis of some vases obtained by Dr. Laufer near Hsi–an Fu in Shensi. There is a similar vase in the British Museum with ovoid body strongly marked with wheel–ridges, short neck and wide cup–shaped mouth, and loop handles on the shoulders. The ware is in appearance a reddish stoneware, and the glaze which covers the upper part is translucent greenish brown with signs of crackle. Dr. Laufer's vases are in the Field Museum at Chicago, where the body and glaze have been analysed by Mr. Nicholls, the results showing that the body is composed of a kaolin–like material (probably a kind of decomposed pegmatite) and is, in fact, an incipient porcelain, lacking a sufficient grinding of the material. The glaze is composed of the same material softened with powdered limestone and coloured with iron oxide. An iron cooking stove found with these vases has an inscription indicating by its style a date in the Han dynasty or shortly after it; and the nature of the pottery, in spite of its coarse grain and dark colour, which is probably due in part to the presence of iron in the clay, seems to show that the manufacture of porcelain was not far distant.

Meanwhile, there is little doubt that the Han traditions were kept alive, and the discovery of green glazed ware of Han type in the ruins of Bazaklik, in Turfan,[26] a site which from other indications appears to belong to the T´ang civilisation, shows that this type, at any rate, was long–lived. Two vases from a grave on the Black Rock Hill in Fu Chou, and now in the British Museum, which are proved to belong to a period anterior to the seventh century, seem to combine Han and T´ang characteristics. They are of dark grey stoneware with a mottled greenish brown glaze, ending considerably above the base in a wavy line, which is a common feature of T´ang wares.

It is highly probable that some of the tomb pottery discussed in the next chapter belongs to the later part of this intermediate period. Indeed among the pottery figures of this class there are specimens with slender, graceful bodies and elaborate details of costume (see Plate 7) which closely resemble the stone statues of the Northern Wei and the Sui dynasties; but with our present imperfect information on the tomb finds, it will be more convenient to treat these nearly related figures as one group.

Turning to Chinese literature, in default of other and more tangible evidence, we read in the T´ao shuo[27] of pottery dishes and wine vessels in the Wei dynasty (220–264 A. D.), and in the T´ao lu of pottery made at Kuan Chung, in the district of Hsi–an Fu, and at Lo–yang for Imperial use. The poet P´an Yo, of the Chin dynasty (265–419 A. D.), speaks of "cups of green ware." The actual words used are p´iao tz´ŭ,[28] of which the former is elsewhere used to describe "the bright tint of distant, well–wooded mountains," and as a synonym for lü (green), though, like the common colour word ch´ing, it is capable of meaning both blue and green. The ceramic glaze which most closely corresponds to the description p´iao is the bluish green celadon best known from Corean wares, but we have not yet sufficient grounds for assuming the existence of this particular type at such an early date.

Another poet[29] of the same period bids his countrymen, when selecting cups for tea–drinking, to choose the ware of Eastern Ou, a place in the Yüeh territory, and apparently in the neighbourhood of, if not identical with, the Yüeh Chou, which was celebrated for its wares in the T´ang dynasty. The period of the "Northern and Southern Dynasties" provides but two references, to a kind of wine vessel known as "crane cups" but otherwise unexplained, and to chün–ch´ih of fine and coarse ware,[30] which appear to have been Buddhist water vases for ceremonial washing, or Kundikâ, which the Chinese have transcribed in the form Chün–ch´ih–ka.

Buddhism was making great strides in China at this time. It was proclaimed the state religion of the Toba Tartars or Northern Wei, who ruled the north from 386 to 549 A. D., and Buddhist thought and the canons of Buddhist art were now firmly imposed upon the Chinese. The rock sculptures of this period visited and photographed by Chavannes show unmistakable traces of the Græco–Buddhist art of Gandhara; and in one remarkable instance among the figures which were sculptured round the entrance of a Buddhist grotto were deities with a thyrsus like that of Dionysus and a trident like Poseidon's.

In the annals of the brief Sui dynasty (581–617 A. D.), we find that a man named Ho Ch´ou succeeded in exactly imitating a glassy material called liu li by means of green ware. The exact meaning of this interesting passage is discussed elsewhere (p. 144), but it is difficult to imagine any but a porcellanous ware which could satisfy the conditions implied. Under the circumstance it is not surprising if theorists see in this green ware (lü tz´ŭ) something in the nature of the later celadon porcelain.

NOTE ON THE EARLY CHINESE TOMB WARES

With reference to the figures of men and animals and the other objects which were placed in the ancient tombs of China, much information will be found in Dr. J.J.M. de Groot's Religious System of China. The fundamental idea underlying these burial practices seems to have been that the soul of the dead was the actual tenant of the grave; but it is not clear in every case whether the sepulchral furniture was provided in expectation of a bodily resurrection, or in the belief that it would minister to the wants of the dead in his spiritual existence. Both ideas appear to have obtained in early times, though it is certain that the second alone explains the more modern custom of burning either the objects themselves or paper counterfeits of them at the tomb, and thus transmitting them through the medium of fire direct to the spirit world.

The older custom of burying with the dead all that was necessary for the continuation of the pursuits of his lifetime, dates back to the farthest limits of history, so that we read without surprise that in the Chou dynasty (1122–255 B. C.) there were placed in the tomb "three earthen pots with pickled meat, preserved meat, and sliced food; two earthen jars with must and spirits,"[31] besides "clothes, mirrors, weapons, jade and food pots." It became customary to hold a preliminary exhibition of the funeral articles at the dead man's house before removing them to the tomb, and this, as we may well imagine in a country of ancestor–worshippers, led to ostentation and extravagance which legislators of various periods vainly endeavoured to curtail.

The magnificent burials of the Chin and early Han emperors, the vast mausolea built by forced labour and stocked with costly furniture and treasure, chariots and live animals, and even human victims, must have been an intolerable burden to the community. There is no lack of instances of the immolation, voluntary or otherwise, of relatives and retainers at the tombs of great personages in ancient China, though the practice never seems to have been general, and was strongly reprobated by Confucius (551–479 B. C.). The sage even went so far as to condemn the substitution of wooden puppets, "for was there not a danger of their leading to the use of living victims?"[32] Images of straw were all that he would permit.

When humaner influences prevailed, the ladies of the harem, and the military guards, instead of following their Imperial master to the spirit world, were condemned to reside within the precincts of the mausoleum; and doubtless the clay figures of women and warriors placed in the graves of more enlightened times were intended to relieve their human prototypes of this irksome duty. The earliest recorded allusion[33] to clay substitutes appears to be the words of Kuang Wu (in the first century A. D.), that "anciently, at every burial of an emperor or king, human images of stoneware (t´ao jên), implements of earthenware (wa ch´i), wooden cars, and straw horses were used."

De Groot[34] quotes a long list of objects supplied for an Imperial burial of the Later Han (25–220 A. D.), including "eight hampers of various grains and pease; three earthen pots of three pints, holding respectively pickled meat, preserved meat, and sliced food; two earthen liquor jars of three pints, filled with must and spirits; ... one candlestick of earthenware; ... eight goblets, tureens, pots, square baskets, wine jars; one wash–basin with a ewer; bells, ... musical instruments, ... arms; nine carriages, and thirty–six straw images of men and horses; two cooking stoves, two kettles, one rice strainer, and twelve caldrons of five pints, all of earthenware; ... ten rice dishes of earthenware, two wine pots of earthenware holding five pints." The use of earthenware substitutes for the actual belongings of the dead was due in part to the spirit of economy preached by certain rulers at this time, and in part to the feeling that graves containing valueless objects would be safe from the desecration of the robber.

In addition to the general precepts of economy, we learn that definite regulations were issued prescribing the number and even the nature of the articles to be used by the various ranks of the nobility and by the proletariat. Thus in 682 A. D. Kao Tsung rebuked the competitive extravagance of the people in burial equipments, which even the ravages of famine had failed to diminish; and in the K´ai Yüan period an Imperial decree[35] of the year 741 A. D. reduced the number of implements allowed to the various ranks in burial, officers of the first, second, and third classes of nobility being allowed seventy, forty, and twenty implements in place of ninety, seventy, and forty respectively; while for the common people fifteen only were permitted. Moreover, all such implements were to be of plain earthenware (ssŭ wa), wood, gold, silver, copper, and tin being forbidden.

It is clear that at an early date wood was regarded as preferable to pottery as a material for sepulchral furniture, for the Yin–yang tsa tsu,[36] written in the eighth century, states that "houses and sheds, cars and horses, male and female slaves, horned cattle, and so forth, are made of wood." Indeed, the decree of 741 notwithstanding, wood seems to have become the standard material for grave implements from this time onward. Thus, Chu Hsi of the Sung dynasty taught in his Ritual of Family Life "the custom of burying the dead with a good many wooden servants, followers, and female attendants, all holding in their hands articles for use and food"; and the contents of the Ming graves included "a furnace–kettle and a furnace, both of wood, saucer with stand, pot, or vase, an earthen wine–pot, a spittoon, a water basin, an incense burner, two candlesticks, an incense box, a tea–cup, a tea–saucer, two chopsticks, two spoons, etc., two wooden bowls, twelve wooden platters, various articles of furniture, including bed, screen, chest, and couch, all of wood; sixteen musicians, twenty–four armed lifeguards, six bearers, ten female attendants; the spirits known as the Azure Dragon, the White Tiger, the Red Bird, and the Black Warrior; the two Spirits of the Doorway and ten warriors—all made of wood and one foot high." These were among the implements permitted in the tombs of grandees; the regulations of 1372 allowed only one kind of implement in the tombs of the common folk.

From the foregoing passages it may be inferred that wood superseded pottery to a very great extent in the funeral furniture of the Sung and Ming periods, and consequently that the tombs in which a full pottery equipment has been found are most probably not later than the first half of the T´ang dynasty. Needless to say, the wooden paraphernalia rapidly perished under the ground, and while the pottery implements have preserved their original form and appearance, the wooden objects have mostly disintegrated.

An amusing fragment of folklore, translated by de Groot[37] from the Kuang i chi, "a work probably written in the tenth century," will form a fitting conclusion to this note, revealing as it does the thought of the Chinese of this period with regard to the burial customs which we have discussed:—

"During one of the last generations there lived a man, who used to travel the country as an itinerant trader in the environs of the place where his family was settled. Having been accompanied on one of his excursions for several days by a certain man, the latter unexpectedly said, 'I am a ghost. Every day and every night I am obliged to fight and quarrel with the objects buried in my tomb for the use of my manes, because they oppose my will. I hope you will not refuse to speak a few words for me, to help me out of this calamitous state of disorder. What will you do in this case?' 'If a good result be attainable,' replied the trader, 'I dare undertake anything.' About twilight they came to a large tomb, located on the left side of the road. Pointing to it, the ghost said: 'This is my grave. Stand in front of it and exclaim, "By Imperial Order, behead thy gold and silver subjects, and all will be over." Hereupon the ghost entered the grave. The pedlar shouted out the order, and during some moments he heard a noise like that produced by an executioner's sword. After a while the ghost came forth from the tomb, his hands filled with several decapitated men and horses of gold and silver. 'Accept these things,' he said; 'they will sufficiently ensure your felicity for the whole of your life; take them as a reward for what you have done for me.' When our pedlar reached the Western metropolis he was denounced to the prefect of the district by a detective from Ch´ang–ngan city, who held that such antique objects could only have been obtained from a grave broken open. The man gave the prefect a veracious account of what had happened, and this magistrate reported the matter to the higher authorities, who sent it on to the Throne. Some persons were dispatched to the grave with the pedlar. They opened the grave, and found therein hundreds of gold and silver images of men and horses with their heads severed from their bodies."

In the present day[38] at important sacrifices to ancestors (and presumably at the funeral itself), it is customary to burn counterfeits of all kinds of furniture and objects which might be useful in the spirit–world. In general these counterfeits take the form of small square sheets of cheap paper adorned with pictures, stamped with a rudely carved wooden die, and representing houses, chairs, implements for cooking, writing and the toilette, carts and horses, sedan chairs, attendants and servants, slaves (male and female), cattle, etc. It is not clear when this custom first came into being, but it evidently replaced an earlier practice of burning real furniture, clothing, etc., at the tomb; and de Groot implies, at any rate, that the two practices existed side by side in the eleventh century. "Bonfires of genuine articles," he says,[39] "and valuables continued for a long time to hold a place side by side with bonfires of counterfeits. We read e.g. that at the demise of the Emperor Shêng Tsung of the Liao dynasty (1030 A. D.) the departure of the cortège of death from the palace was marked by a sacrifice, at which they took clothes, bows and arrows, saddles, bridles, pictures of horses, of camels, lifeguards, and similar things, which were all committed to the flames." Marco Polo,[40] in describing the city of Kinsai, relates that the inhabitants burnt their dead, and "threw into the flames many pieces of cotton paper upon which were painted representations of male and female servants, horses, camels, silk wrought with gold, as well as gold and silver money."

CHAPTER III

THE T´ANG

DYNASTY, 618–906 A. D.

THE Chinese Empire, reunited by the Sui emperors, reached the zenith of its power under the world–famed dynasty of the T´ang (618-906 A. D.). A Chinese general penetrated into Central India and took the capital, Magadha, in 648. Chinese junks sailed into the Persian Gulf, and the northern boundaries of the empire extended into Turkestan, where traces of a flourishing civilisation have been discovered in the sand–buried cities in the regions of Turfan and Khotan, recently explored by Sir Aurel Stein and by a German expedition under Professor Grünwedel. In return, we read of Arab settlers in Yunnan and in Canton and the coast towns, and the last of the Sassanids appealed to China for help. A host of foreign influences must have penetrated the Middle Kingdom at this time, including those of the Indian, Persian, and Byzantine arts. Proof of this, if proof were needed, is seen in the wonderful treasures preserved in the Shoso–in at Nara in Japan, a temple museum stocked in the eighth century chiefly with the personal belongings of the Emperor Shomu, most of which had been sent over from China. Indeed, the Nara treasure is, in many respects, the most comprehensive exhibition of T´ang craftsmanship which exists to-day.

The long period of prosperity enjoyed by China under the T´ang is famed in history as the golden age of literature and art. The age which produced the poet Li Po, the painter Wu Tao–tzŭ, and the poet–painter Wang Wei, whose "poems were pictures and his pictures poems," was indeed an age of giants. It is certain that the potter's art shared in no small measure the progress of the period, though at this distance of time we can hardly expect that many monuments of this fragile art should have survived. Indeed, it has been the custom of writers in the past to dismiss the T´ang pottery in a few words, or to disregard it entirely as an unknown quantity Here, however, we have again been well served by the ancient burial customs of the Chinese, which still held good for part, at least, of the T´ang period.

The T´ang mortuary wares are similar in intention to those of the Han, but bespeak a much maturer art. The modelling of the tomb figures, which have been aptly compared with the Tanagra statuettes of ancient Greece, displays greater skill, spirit, and delicacy, and the materials used are more refined and varied. The body of the ware, which is usually fine as pipeclay, varies in hardness from soft earthenware, easily scratchable with a knife, to a hard porcellanous stoneware, and in colour from light grey and pale rosy buff to white, like plaster–of–Paris. The usual covering is a thin, finely crackled glaze of pale straw colour or light transparent green, and sometimes the surface has a wash of white clay between the body and the glaze. Some of the figures, however, are more richly coated in amber brown and leaf green glazes with occasional splashes of blue, while on others are found traces of unfired red and black pigments.

But as the mortuary pottery[41] comprises the largest and most important group of T´ang wares at present identified, we cannot do better than consider it first and as a separate class, setting forth at once the reasons for assigning it to this particular period. As will be seen in the note to the previous chapter (p. 17), earthenware appears to have been to a great extent superseded by wood as the fashionable material for sepulchral furniture towards the end of the T´ang period. This in itself is strong primâ facie evidence that the tombs furnished throughout with pottery are not later than the T´ang dynasty. Another argument of an ethnographical nature is supplied by the figures of ladies with feet of normal size. The fashion of cramping the feet, though it may have begun before the T´ang period, was certainly not universal until the end of this long dynasty.[42]

But there are other cogent reasons which will appeal more directly to the student of ceramics. Among the few specimens of pottery in the Nara Collection,[43] there are several bowls and a dish, accorded in the official catalogue the meagre description "China ware," which have a peculiar glaze of creamy yellow with large, green mottling, and there is besides a drum–shaped vase, "green with yellowish patches." This type of glaze is found on many of the tomb wares, some of which have amber brown and violet blue splashes in addition. From these data it is possible to identify a series of T´ang glazes, including creamy white, straw yellow, faint green, leaf green, amber and violet blue, all soft and more or less transparent with minutely crackled texture and closely analogous to the coloured lead glazes used on our own "Whieldon" pottery of Staffordshire in the eighteenth century. Three years ago a Parisian dealer was offering for sale the contents of an important tomb. For once in a way, the chief articles of the find had been kept together; at least so it was positively asserted, and there was nothing improbable in the circumstance. They included two splendidly modelled figures and a saddled horse in the typical T´ang ware, with bold washes of green and brown glazes, and with them was a stone slab engraved with an inscription. I was able to examine a photograph and a rubbing of this stone, in which excellent judges could find no sign of spurious work. The inscription was long and difficult to translate, but the main facts were clear. It commemorated a princely personage of the name of Wên, whose style was Shou–ch´êng, a man of Lo–yang in Honan, who died at Ho–yang Hsien on the 16th day of the first month of the second year of Yung Shun, viz. 683 A. D.

Among the T´ang figurines the horse is conspicuous not only in its comparative frequency, but for the spirit and character with which it is portrayed. The men of T´ang were clearly great horse lovers. Their pictorial artists excelled in painting the noble beast, and the "Hundred Colts" by the celebrated painter Han Kan is a classic of horse painting. Among the precious fragments of T´ang pictures on silk which Sir Aurel Stein brought back from his first expedition in the Taklamakan Desert there were several with scenes in which horsemen figured. I have compared these with the tomb figures and found them to tally with wonderful exactitude, not only in pose and style and in the characteristic rendering of the head and neck, but also in the details of the harness, the saddle with high arched front and shelving back support, the square stirrups, bridle and bit and tassel–like pendant under the mouth.

A complete set of grave goods from a tomb opened by the Lao–tung railway near Lao Yang in the Honan Fu have been acquired by the British Museum through a railway engineer on the spot. They may be taken as a typical and, I believe, quite reliable, example of the grave furniture of a T'ang personage of importance. They include six covered jars of graceful oval form, made of hard white ware and coated with thin glaze of pale yellowish or faint green tint, which ends in the characteristic T'ang fashion in a wavy line several inches above the base. They measure about thirteen inches in height. These are presumed to have held the six kinds of grain. Next comes a graceful vase, probably for wine, with ovoid body, tall, slender neck, with two horizontal bands, a cup–shaped mouth, and two high, elegantly carved handles with serpent heads which bite on to the rim (Plate 14, Fig. 2). The only other vessels were a circular tray, on which stood a small, squat vase, with trilobe sides, small mouth, and three rudimentary feet, surrounded by seven shallow cups. Like the wine vase and covered jars, these have flat bases, in most cases carefully smoothed and lightly bevelled at the edge.[44] The retinue consisted of a charming figure of a lady on a horse, eight other ladies (probably of the harem) with high, peaked head–dress, low–necked dresses with high waists, and a shawl over the shoulders and falling down from the arms like two long sleeves; natural feet are indicated in every case. With these were two figures of priestly appearance, with long cloaks and hoods, three other men in distinctive costumes, eleven retainers in civil costume with peaked head–gear, long coats with lappets open at the neck, waist belts, and high boots, their right hands held across the breast and their left at the side. One of these figures is remarkable for his foreign features, with exaggerated and pointed nose, suggesting a Western Asiatic origin. There are, besides, four men, apparently in armour, and two tall figures who seem to wear cap helmets with camail falling down the neck and breast armour, recalling in many ways our own mediæval men–at–arms. The supernatural element is represented by two strange, squatting quadrupeds with legs like a bull, human heads with large ears and a single horn which are called by the Chinese t'u kuai or "earth–spirits." Finally, in addition to man and super–man, the animal world was represented by two saddled horses, two dromedaries, two pigs, two sheep, a beautifully modelled dog, and a goose. What more could a man desire in the underworld? All these figures are of the usual white plaster–like body, with the pale, straw–coloured or greenish glazes which long burial has dissolved into iridescence where it has not actually caused it to flake away. Some of them stand on flat, plain bases; others on their own feet and robes. The latter kind are all hollow beneath, and the quadrupeds have a large cavity under the belly, a feature common to the T'ang and Han animals, and one which I have noticed on bronzes of the same periods. Needless to add, these figures were made in moulds, the seams of which are still visible.[45]

Plate 5.—T'ang Sepulchral Figures. In the Benson Collection.

Fig. 1.—A Lokapala or Guardian of one of the Quarters, unglazed.

Fig. 2.—A Horse, with coloured glazes. Height 27 inches.

Fig. 3.—An Actor, unglazed.

Plate 6.—T'ang Sepulchral Figures, unglazed.

Figs. 1, 2 and 4.—Female Musicians.

Fig. 3.—Attendant with dish of food. Height 9 ¹/₂ inches.

Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Plate 7.—T'ang Sepulchral Pottery.

Fig. 1.—Figure of a Lady in elaborate costume, unglazed. Height 14 ¹/₂. Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Fig. 2.—Vase, white pottery with traces of blue mottling: the glaze has perished. Height 8 ¹/₂ inches. Breuer Collection.

Fig. 3.—Sphinx–like Monster, green and yellow glazes. Height 25 inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection.

A few examples of the tomb figures are illustrated in the adjoining plates. The tall, slender figure on Plate 7, Fig. 1, seems to represent a lady of distinction. The elaborate head–dress and costume, the necklace and pendant and the belt are all carefully modelled; and the Elizabethan appearance of the collar is curious and interesting. The ware is soft and white like pipeclay, though still caked with the reddish loess clay from which it was exhumed. The style of this figure with its slender proportions is analogous to that of the graceful stone sculptures of the Northern Wei period. The genial monster in white clay and splashed green and yellow glazes illustrated on Plate 7 is one of the many sphinx–like creatures found in the tombs over which they were supposed to exercise a beneficial influence. Sometimes they have human heads on the bull body, and they are then described as t'u kuai or earth–spirits. In the present example we have a form which strongly resembles certain Persian or Sassanian monsters in bronze; and it is highly probable that the idea of this creature came from a western Asiatic source.

Plate 5 shows a fine example of a horse in coloured glazes, a fierce figure in warrior's guise, who is, no doubt, one of the Lokapalas or Guardians of the Four Quarters in the Buddhist theogony, and a figure of an actor. The amusements, as well as the serious occupations of the dead, were provided for in the furniture of the tombs. A whole troop of mimes in quaint costumes and dramatic poses is shown in the Field Museum at Chicago, and Plate 6 illustrates three seated figures of musicians as well as a standing figure holding a dish of fruit.

A study of the salient features of these and other authenticated specimens leads naturally to the identification of fresh types, and so the series grows. For instance, the type of wine vase with serpent handles is found in glazes of various colours, till of the mottled T'ang kind, and with slight additions, such as the palmette–like ornaments in applied relief on a large example in the British Museum. These ornaments in their turn appear on bowls and incense vases often of globular form, like the well–known Buddhist begging bowl, but fitted with three legs. Splashed, streaked and mottled glazes further declare these to be T'ang, and the varying colour and hardness of their body material give us a deeper insight into the T'ang ware. All of these show the marks of the wheel, and many are neatly finished with simple wheel–made lines and ridges; stamped ornaments in applied relief are their commonest form of decoration.

A fine specimen in the British Museum will serve to illustrate this type of bowl. It has a hard, white body, of typical globular form, with slightly constricted mouth, three legs with strongly modelled lion masks on the upper part, and between them pads of applied relief with lion mask ornaments. The glaze is not of the mottled kind, but is rather streaked; it is deep, cucumber green and minutely crackled, and has run down into drops under the bowl. This fluidity is also the cause of the streakiness of the colour, which was evidently a characteristic feature of the T'ang pottery, for it appears unmistakably indicated in a T'ang painting figured by Sir Aurel Stein.[46] This painting, a silk banner of the T'ang period, was found in a walled–up library at Tun–huang, and depicts a standing Buddhist figure carrying a begging bowl with boldly streaked exterior.

PLATE 8.

Three examples of T'ang ware with coloured glazes: in the Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Fig. 1.—Tripod Incense Vase with ribbed sides; white pottery with deep blue glaze outside encrusted with iridescence. Height 4 ⁵/₈ inches.

Fig. 2.—Amphora of light coloured pottery with splashed glaze. Mark incised Ma Chên–shih tsao ("made by Ma Chên–shih"). Height 8 ¹/₄ inches.

Fig. 3.—Ewer of hard white porcellanous ware with deep purple glaze. Height 4 ³/₄ inches.

In addition to the mottled glazes—which, by the way, are the forerunners of the so–called "tiger–skin" porcelains of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—and the single colours already mentioned, instances have been identified on the principles already indicated of wares with a full yellow glaze and a streaky, brownish yellow. An interesting piece (Plate 8) in the Eumorfopoulos Collection is covered with a deep violet blue glaze on a fine white body. Others, again, have a dark chocolate brown glaze on a reddish buff body, and a rare ewer in the British Museum is distinguished by a deep olive brown glaze flecked with tea green, which seems to anticipate by a thousand years the "tea dust" glazes of the Ch'ien Lung period.[47]

Another variety of T'ang glaze, of which I have seen one example, was an olive brown with large splashes of a light colour, a greyish white, but with surface so frosted over by decay that its original intention remained in doubt. One might say that this was the father of the Japanese Takatori glazes with deep brown under–colour and large patches of frothy white. We may mention here three remarkable specimens found in a grave with a T'ang mirror and described in Man in 1901,[48] which are in the British Museum. One is an oblate ovoid vase, with small neck and mouth, of hard, light buff body, coated with a dull greenish black glaze with minute specks of lighter colour. The others are tea bowls of hard buff ware with dull brick–red glaze, not far removed in colour from the Samian ware of Roman times. No exact Chinese parallel has yet been found to these three pieces, though something approaching them is seen in certain bowls in the Eumorfopoulos collection which have a reddish brown glaze breaking into black, being apparently of the type associated with the name of Chien yao,[49] and which are known in Japan as kaki temmoku. This early kind of temmoku, which was probably made in Honan, has a hard whitish body, and the glaze is sometimes flecked with tea green as well as with golden brown. In some cases, too, a floral design or a leaf has been impressed or stencilled on the black glaze and appears in the brown or green colour (Plate 43, Fig. 1). It is said that a somewhat similar brown temmoku ware was made in Corea as well.

The survival of the leaf green glaze of Han type has already been noted. It occurs in Plates 12 and 13.

A pale bluish green glaze, somewhat akin to a later variety of celadon, appears on a few small bowls and jars which have the characteristic T'ang finish: I have seen several figures of lions with a crackled light greenish brown glaze; and a considerable class of bowls and melon–shaped vases have been found in Shansi with a hard buff stoneware body, coated with white slip under a transparent and almost colourless glaze, the combination producing a solid white or ivory colour (Plate 11, Fig. 3). These bowls have been considered by some Chinese authorities to be a production of the Ta Yi[50] kilns in Szechuan, but as there were factories in Shansi,[51] where wares of this type are reputed to have been made in T'ang times, it seems more probable that they are of local make. It should be added that the brown, tea dust, black, celadon and white glazes are high–fired and essentially different from the soft, crackled lead glazes previously described.

Apart from modelling in the round, an art in which we have seen that the T'ang potters excelled, the decorative ornament of the pottery hitherto discussed has been confined to applied reliefs. The processes of carving and engraving come early in the evolution of the potter's art in China, and we should expect to find in the T'ang wares some indications of the skill in these methods for which the Sung potters were so celebrated. Plate 12, Fig. 2, illustrates the use of engraved ornament under a green glaze, and the piece is remarkable not only for its elegant design, but for the beautiful lines of its simple form. A few years ago I saw for the first time one or two stands and boxes with patterns intricate as brocade work, floral scrolls, and geometrical designs, engraved with a point, and the spaces filled in with coloured glazes. They were reputed to be of T'ang date, and though no further evidence existed to prove that objects of such advanced technique and mature design really belonged to this remote period the proposition did not seem an impossible one. The textiles, inlaid woodwork, and painted lacquer in the Nara collections have just such designs which at first sight fill one with amazement at their modern feeling. A piece of brocade of undoubted T'ang origin, figured by Sir Aurel Stein,[52] with floral scrolls worked in silk, looks like a piece of late Persian embroidery. And is not the art of the T´ang painters essentially modern in the directness of its appeal?

Plate 9.—T'ang Pottery.

Fig. 1.—Ewer of Sassanian form with splashed glazes; panels of relief ornament, in one a mounted archer. Height 13 inches. Alexander Collection. Fig. 2.—Vase with mottled glaze, green and orange. Height 3 ⁵/₈ inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection. Fig. 3.—Ewer with dragon spout and handle; wave and cloud reliefs; brownish yellow glaze streaked with green. Height 11 ⁵/₈ inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Plate 10.—T'ang Pottery. Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Fig. 1.—Dish with mirror pattern incised and coloured blue, green, etc.; inner border of ju–i cloud scrolls on a mottled yellow ground, outer border of mottled green; pale green glaze underneath and three tusk–shaped feet. Diameter 15 inches. Fig. 2.—Ewer with serpent handle and trilobed mouth; applied rosette ornaments and mottled glaze, green, yellow and white. Height 10 ⁵/₈ inches.

Plate 11.—T´ang Wares.

Fig. 1.—Cup with bands of impressed circles, brownish yellow glaze outside, green within. Height 2 ⁵/₈ inches. Seligmann Collection. Fig. 2.—Cup of hard white ware with greenish white glaze. Height 2 ³/₈ inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection. Fig. 3.—Melon–shaped Vase, greyish stoneware with white slip and smooth ivory glaze. Height 4 inches. Breuer Collection. Fig. 4.—Cup of porcellanous stoneware, white slip and crackled creamy white glaze, spur marks inside. Height 3 ¹/₄ inches. Breuer Collection.

The truth is, our knowledge of T´ang pottery has only just begun, and now that the ware is esteemed in Europe at its proper worth, the choicer specimens which have been treasured in China are finding their way westward. Every fresh arrival tells us something new and surprising, and it only wanted such a piece as Fig. 1, Plate 10, to establish the identity of the specimens whose T´ang origin we had before only ventured to conjecture. Here we have a form of dish which is found among the tomb wares of the T´ang period, made of the typical T´ang white–body and finished in characteristic fashion and decorated with engraved designs of the most advanced type, filled in with coloured glazes, in addition to bands of mottling in green and white, and yellow and white. There are, besides, other specimens of similar make but with simpler, though scarcely less interesting, design of a mirror–shaped panel formed of radiating lotus leaves engraved in the centre with a stork in white and green, all in a deep violet blue ground. The coloured glazes used in the T´ang polychrome pottery are light and translucent lead glazes of the kind which reappears on the Ming and Ch´ing pottery and porcelain, and, as on the later wares, they are covered with minute accidental crackle. In their splashed and mottled varieties they have, as already noted, a resemblance to the glazes of the eighteenth–century Whieldon ware of Staffordshire, and it is interesting to note that the T´ang potters also used another form of decoration which was much fancied in Staffordshire about a thousand years later. This is the marbling of the ware, not merely by mottling the glaze as in Fig. 2 of Plate 9, or by marbling the surface, but by blending dark and light clays in the body as in the "solid agate" ware of Staffordshire. It only remains to prove that painting with a brush was practised by the T´ang potters, and though one is loath to accept such a revolutionary idea without positive proof, there is very good reason to think that such pieces[53] as Fig. 3, Plate 12, belong to the T´ang period. They have a white pottery body, painted in bold floral scroll designs in black under a beautiful green glaze. We are getting used to surprises in connection with T´ang pottery, and probably in a year's time painted T´ang wares, which are now only accepted with reserve, will be an established fact which passes without comment.

Stamped patterns are not uncommon, and we often find small rings or concentric circles, singly, as in Fig. 1 of Plate 11, or stamped in clusters of five or seven, forming rosettes[54]; or, again, impressed key fret, as in Fig. 1 of Plate 12, which has a deep leaf green glaze.

The influence of the Western Asiatic civilisations has been already mentioned in casual hints, but it appears in concrete form in the peculiar shape of the ewer on Plate 9. The bird–headed vessel is found in Persian pottery of an early date, one example of which may be seen in the British Museum. Another remarkable instance of this form was illustrated and discussed by Dr. Martin in the Burlington Magazine, September, 1912.[55] It had, in addition, applied relief ornaments of a kind which we have already noticed, and Dr. Martin expressed his opinion that both the form and the ornaments are nearly related to Sassanian metal work. The fact that the last Sassanid king sought help from China[56] points to intercourse between the two realms, and in any case the northern trade route through Turkestan into Western Asia gave ample opportunity for the traffic in Persian and Sassanian wares. But more remarkable still is the classical spirit displayed in the piping boy and dancing girl[57] on a wonderful flask in the Eumorfopoulos Collection (Plate 18, Fig. 2). The Græeco–Buddhist influence on early Chinese sculpture has already been remarked, and several classical designs are commonly pointed out on the T´ang metal mirrors; but here we have in pottery a figure which might have been taken from a Herculaneum fresco, surrounded by scroll–work worthy of the finest T´ang mirror. The body of the ware is whitish pottery, and the beautifully moulded surface is covered with a brownish green glaze, which, like that of Fig. 1, Plate 12, is clearly a survival of the Han glaze. Other instances might be quoted of Græco–Roman influences reflected in T´ang wares. There are obvious traces of the "egg and tongue" and "honeysuckle" patterns in border designs, and the shapes of vases and ewers often betray a feeling which is more Greek than Chinese.

Reverting to the engraved T´ang ornament, there is a little oblong box in the Kunstgewerbe Museum at Berlin with incised rosettes of prunus blossom form, glazed white and yellow in a green ground and finished almost with the neatness of Ch´ien Lung porcelain, but of undoubtedly T´ang origin. The same prunus design occurs on a typical T´ang bowl, in the Eumorfopoulos Collection, stencilled white in a green ground. I have postponed reference to these pieces because of the bearing of the latter on the decoration of the wonderful figure illustrated in the frontispiece, which will make a fitting climax to our series of T´ang specimens.

This figure, with its stand, measures 50 inches in height, and represents one of sixteen Lohan or Arhats, the Buddhist apostles. Its provenance has been kept discreetly concealed,[58] but we may infer that it was taken from a temple or mausoleum, and we know that there were others with it, two of which were exhibited at the Musée Cernuschi, in Paris, in June, 1913. This one, however, has the advantage over the others of being complete with its pottery stand. The ware is white and comparatively hard; the colourless glaze on the fleshy parts has acquired a brown stain from the dripping of the cave moisture, and developed a minute crackle, both of which features are observable on some of the glazed vases from T'ang tombs; the pupils of the eyes are black. The draperies, of which the flowing folds are worthy of the finest classic sculpture, are glazed with mottled green, the upper robe with brownish yellow, both of T'ang type, and the latter is patched (in true Buddhist fashion) with green–edged bands with white designs resembling divided prunus blossoms in a yellow ground, in style recalling the decoration of the bowl previously mentioned. The technique, then, is that of the T'ang wares, but instead of being made in a mould like the grave statuettes, this monumental figure is modelled in the round by an artist worthy to rank with the masters of sculpture and painting who made the T'ang period famous.

When one looks at the powerful modelling of the head, the strong features composed in deep contemplation, and the restful pose of the seated form, one realises that here, at last, we have the great art which inspired the early Buddhist sculptors of Japan. It is no conventional deity which sits before us. The features are so human as to suggest an actual portrait, but for the supernatural enlargement of the ears in Buddhist fashion. The contracted brows bespeak deep concentration; the eyes, dreamy yet awake, look through and past us into the infinite; the nostrils are dilated in deep breathing; the lips compressed in firm yet compassionate lines. It is the embodiment of the Buddhist idea of abstraction and aloofness; yet it lives in every line, the personification of mental energy in repose. But so rare are examples of this style, that, unless we turn to painted pictures or frescoes such as have been brought back by the recent expeditions in Turfan, we must look in the temples of Japan, not, indeed, for similar Chinese work, but for the Japanese masterpieces in bronze, wood and lacquer, of the same period, which avowedly followed the Chinese art. The Yuima in the Hokkeji nunnery, ascribed to the middle of the eighth century; the portrait figure of the priest Ryoben (✝ 773) in the Todaiji monastery, and the portrait figure of Chisho Daishi (✝ 891) in the Onjoji monastery,[59] are all conceived in the same grand style, and bespeak a kindred art.

But high as this figure ranks as sculpture, it is far more remarkable as pottery. To fire such a mass of material without subsidence or cracking would tax the capabilities of the best equipped modern pottery, while the skill displayed in the modelling is probably unequalled in any known example of ceramic sculpture. The contemporary grave figures hold a high place in ceramic modelling, but this statue is as far above the best of them as Dwight's stoneware bust of Prince Rupert towers above the Staffordshire figurines. Dwight's masterpiece has long been an object of wonder and admiration in the ceramic ante–room in the British Museum, and, with the help of the National Art Collections Fund and of several munificent individuals, the British Museum has been able to acquire this wonderful Chinese figure, which is now exhibited in the King Edward VII. galleries.

It is too early yet to attempt seriously the classification of the T´ang wares under their respective factories. Before this is possible the meagre allusions in Chinese literature must be supplemented by far fuller information. At present our knowledge of the T´ang factories is chiefly drawn from casual references in Chinese poetry and in the Chinese Classic on Tea, the Ch´a Ching, written by Lu Yü in the middle of the eighth century. From this we gather that the Yüeh Chou[60] kilns enjoyed a high reputation. An early allusion to this factory in reference to the "bowls of Eastern Ou" in the Chin dynasty has already been recorded.[61] The author of the Tea Classic tells us that among tea–drinkers the Yüeh bowls were considered the best, though there were some who ranked those of Hsing Chou[62] above them. Lu Yü, however, thought the judgment of the latter connoisseurs was wrong, because the Hsing Chou bowls resembled silver while the Yüeh bowls were like jade, because the Hsing bowls were like snow, the Yüeh like ice, and because the Hsing ware, being white, made the tea appear red, while the Yüeh ware, being green (ch´ing), imparted a green (lü) tint to the tea. The T´ang poet, Lu Kuei–mêng, further tells us that the Yüeh bowls "despoiled the thousand peaks of their blue green[63] colour." Yüeh Chou is the modern Shao–hsing Fu in the province of Chêkiang. It was celebrated in the tenth century for a special ware made exclusively for the princes of Wu and Yüeh, of the Ch´ien family, who reigned at Hung Chou from 907 to 976. This was the pi sê or "secret colour" ware which was made at Yüeh Chou until the Southern Sung period (1127–1279), when the manufacture was removed to Yü–yao.[64] The pi sê[65] ware has caused endless mystification among writers on Chinese porcelain. The name—which means literally "secret colour"—has been taken by some to imply that the colour was produced by a secret process (the most natural but not the generally accepted meaning), and by others that it was a forbidden colour, i.e. only permitted to be used by the princely patrons of the house of Ch´ien.[66] The author of the Ching–tê Chen t´ao lu[67] states that "it resembled the Yüeh ware in form, but surpassed it in purity and brilliance." This is, however, only the opinion of a nineteenth–century writer who does not claim to have seen a specimen of either. A tenth–century writer[68] makes use of the vague expression, "the secret colour preserves the note of the green (ch´ing) ware (tz´ŭ)," which apparently means that the secret–colour glaze did not rob the ware of the musical quality of usual ch´ing ware, implying a difference of some kind between the pi sê and the ch´ing glaze.

Literary references of this kind are open to so many inferences that their value is slight without some tangible specimen to help us to realise their import. This difficulty is greatly increased in dealing with Chinese descriptions because of the ambiguity of Chinese colour words, which is discussed elsewhere. But in the case of Yüeh Chou ware, or at any rate of one kind of it, we have an important clue in another Chinese work. Hsü Ching, who accompanied the Chinese Ambassador to Corea in 1125, in a description of the Corean wares, makes the remark that "the rest of them have a general likeness to the old pi sê ware of Yüeh Chou and the new Ju Chou ware."[69] Fortunately, we can speak with considerable confidence of the Corean wares of this time, many examples of which have been taken from the tombs of the period. The British Museum has a fair number of examples, quite enough to show the typical Corean glaze, a soft grey green celadon of decidedly bluish tint, a thick smooth glaze often of great delicacy and beauty of tone.

In view of this the colour of the Yüeh bowls, the blue–green of the hills, is easily visualised. But China boasts so many makes of celadon[70] that he would be a bold man who would single out any one piece and say this is Yüeh ware. Among the numerous specimens of celadon which have reached Europe from various sources it is far from improbable that some were baked in the Yüeh kilns, but at present, alas, we are impotent to identify them.

The author of the Ching–tê Chên t´ao lu[71] places the Hsing Chou factory at the modern Hsing–t´ai Hsien, a dependency of Shun–tê Fu, in Chihli. Little else is recorded about the white Hsing ware beyond a general statement in the annals of the T´ang dynasty[72] that the "white ware (tz´ŭ) cups of Nei Ch´iu were used by rich and poor throughout the empire." Nei Ch´iu, it should be explained, is identified as a township in the Hsing Chou. We may add that the ware of both Yüeh Chou and Hsing Chou was used for "musical cups" by Kuo Tao–yüan.[73] One of the criteria which the Chinese recognise in distinguishing ordinary pottery from the finer wares of a porcellanous nature is the note emitted by the ware when smartly tapped with the finger, and we may fairly infer that any bowls which were suitable for use as musical chimes would be of a sonorous, hard fired material if not actually porcelain.

The Ch´a Ching enumerates five other T´ang factories which supplied tea bowls, all of them inferior in reputation to the Yüeh Chou kilns. Ting Chou

in the Hsi–an Fu,[74] in Shensi; Wu Chou

in the Chin–hua Fu, in Chêkiang; Yo Chou

in Hunan; Shou Chou

in Kiangnan; and Hung Chou

, the modern Nan–ch´ang Fu, in Kiangsi, the district in which is Ching–tê Chên, afterwards the ceramic metropolis of China. Of these wares we have only the meagre information that the Yo Chou ware was of green (ch´ing) colour; the Shou Chou ware, yellow; and that the Hung Chou ware was a brownish colour,[75] and made the tea appear black. The Hung Chou factory is also named in the Ko ku yao lun,[76] which tells us that "vessels made at Hung Chou in Kiangsi are yellowish black in colour." A sixth factory, apparently of some reputation though not mentioned in the Ch´a Ching, is named in a poem by Tu Fu, president of the Board of Works,[77] in the T´ang dynasty, who says: "The ware (tz´ŭ) baked at Ta–yi is light but strong. It gives out, when struck, a sound like the plaintive note of the Chin–ch´êng jade. The white bowls of your Excellency surpass the frost and snow. In pity hasten to send one to the pavilion of my studies." Ta–yi was in the department of Ch´iung Chou, in Szechuan.

The five brief dynasties which fill the interval between the T´ang and Sung periods are only known to ceramic history for two wares, the identity of which remains a matter of conjecture. The first is the pi sê ware of Yüeh Chou, which has already been discussed; and the second is the celebrated but intangible Ch´ai ware. Chinese writers wax poetical over the Ch´ai ware. "Men of old," says a late Ming writer,[78] "described Ch´ai ware as blue like the sky, brilliant like a mirror, thin like paper, and resonant like a musical stone." An earlier and less hyperbolical description of it given in the Ko ku yao lun[79] states that it was made at Chêng Chou, in Honan, and named ch´ai by Shin Tsung (of the Posterior Chou dynasty, who reigned for five years from 954 to 959); that its colour was sky blue; that it was "rich, refined, and unctuous," and had fine crackle–lines; that in many cases there was coarse yellow clay on the foot of the wares; and that it was rarely seen in the writer's time. Elsewhere[80] we read that, according to tradition, Shih Tsung, on being asked what kind of ware he would require for palace use, commanded that its colour for the future should be "the blue of the sky after rain as seen in the rifts of the clouds."[81] As early as the sixteenth century the Ch´ai ware had virtually ceased to exist, and a writer[82] of that time tells us "Ch´ai ware is no longer to be found. I once saw a fragment of a broken piece mounted in a girdle–buckle. Its colour was brilliant, and answered to the usual description of the ware, but the ware itself was thick." A century afterwards the ware was nothing more than a tradition, and later it developed a legendary character. Fragments of it were said to dazzle the eyes, and when worn on armour to turn aside missiles in battle.[83]

Plate 12.—T´ang Pottery with green glaze.

Fig. 1.—Bottle with impressed key–fret. Height 7 ¹/₂ inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection. Fig. 2.—Ewer with incised foliage scrolls. Height 4 ¹/₄ inches. Alexander Collection. Fig. 3.—Vase with foliage scrolls, painted in black under the glaze, incised border on the shoulder. Height 4 ¹/₄ inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Plate 13.—T´ang Pottery.

Fig. 1.—Pilgrim Bottle with lily palmette and raised rosettes, green glaze. Height 7 ¹/₂ inches. Koechlin Collection. Fig. 2.—Pilgrim Bottle (neck wanting), Hellenistic figures of piping boy and dancing girl in relief among floral scrolls, brownish green glaze. Height 8 ¹/₂ inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Plate 14.—T´ang Wares.

Fig. 1.—Incense Vase, lotus–shaped, with lion on the cover, hexagonal stand with moulded ornament; green, yellow and brown glazes. Height 19 ³/₄ inches. Rothenstein Collection. Fig. 2.—Sepulchral Amphora, hard white ware with greenish white glaze, serpent handles. Height 19 ¹/₄ inches. Schneider Collection. Fig. 3.—Ewer with large foliage and lotus border in carved relief, green glaze. Height 6 ¹/₂ inches. Koechlin Collection. Fig. 4.—Sepulchral Vase, grey stoneware with opaque greenish grey glaze. Incised scrolls on the body, applied reliefs of dragons, figures, etc., on neck and shoulder. (?) T´ang. Height 20 inches. Benson Collection.

Chinese writers have been troubled by the apparent inconsistency of the descriptions, "thin as paper" and "having coarse yellow clay on the foot." The latter may, however, merely refer to patches of coarse clay or sand which had served to support the ware in the kiln, and which had partially adhered to the base, a thing not uncommon in the earlier manufactures. The expression has, however, led some later writers[84] to identify the Ch´ai ware with a fairly well–known type of comparatively soft buff pottery, coated with a luscious turquoise or pale lavender blue glaze, which we shall have occasion to discuss later.[85] Needless to say, there is no probability of this type being the real Ch´ai. Its comparative commonness alone puts the supposition out of court, but the suggestion serves to show that some Chinese thinkers, at any rate, see the Ch´ai colour in just such glazes as the pale lavender blue of Plate 88, Fig. 2, which undoubtedly satisfies in many respects the description "blue of the sky after rain."

On the other hand, the celebrated Ju Chou ware of the Sung dynasty, which aspired to equal the Ch´ai in colour, was evidently of the grey green celadon type, with perhaps a tinge of blue like the early Corean wares.[86] We have, then, two theories on the nature of the Ch´ai glaze: (1) that it was an opalescent, turquoise glaze, such as is seen on the Chün type of wares; and (2) that it belonged to the smooth grey green celadon class, with the bluish tint strongly developed. There may be other theories[87] besides, but it matters little, as no authentic specimen is known to exist. In fact, the discussion under the circumstances would have but little interest were it not for its bearing on some of the Sung wares, which will be discussed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV

THE SUNG

DYNASTY, 960–1279 A. D.

WITH the Sung dynasty firmly established in 960 A. D., the Chinese Empire entered upon a long period of prosperity rendered glorious by the cultivation of the arts of peace. It is true that the boundaries of the Empire were contracted and the Tartar tribes on the north–west had made good their independence and remained a constant menace to the frontiers of China. In 1127 the dam was broken and the desert warriors, no longer to be kept in check by diplomacy or force, burst upon Northern China and drove the peace–loving Sung from their capital, the modern K´ai–fêng Fu in Honan. The Emperor Kao Tsung and his Court fled across the Yangtze to their new capital at Hang Chou, where the dynasty continued under the name of the Southern Sung until 1279. The description given by Marco Polo of Hang Chou, which he considered, even in 1280, to be "beyond dispute the finest and the noblest city in the world," presents a wonderful picture of the refinement and luxury of the Sung civilisation. The great city had its network of canals and its twelve thousand stone bridges, its flourishing guilds of craftsmen, its merchant princes who lived "nicely and delicately as kings," its three hundred public baths of hot water, its ten principal markets, its great lake lined with houseboats and barges, and its streets thronged with carriages. The citizens themselves were peaceful and orderly, neither wearing arms nor keeping them in their homes, and their cordiality to foreigners was hardly less than the good will and friendliness which marked their relations to one another.

The conditions which produced such a community as this were ideal for the development of literature and art, and the Sung dynasty has been described as a prolonged Augustan age for poets, painters, and art workers of every persuasion. It was, moreover, an age of connoisseurs and collectors. Treatises were written on artistic subjects, encyclopædias were published, and illustrated catalogues issued by the order of the Emperor and his followers. Among the best known of these last publications are the Hsüan Ho po ku t´u lu, "Illustrated discussion of the antiquities in the palace of Hsüan Ho," and the Ku yü t´u p´u, "Illustrated description of ancient jade." It is true that modern criticism has seriously impugned the archæological value of both these classic works. It is said that ingenious conjectures and reconstructions, based on the reading of earlier literature, too often take the place of practical archæology and first–hand knowledge of the art of the Shang and Chou dynasties. Sung archæology, in fact, appears to have been in much the same theoretical condition as the Homeric criticism in Europe before the days of Schliemann. But for us these works must always have great interest, if only for the records they preserve of T´ang and Sung ideas. An excellent, if extreme, instance of the inherent weakness of Sung archæology is given by Laufer.[88] In describing certain objects of the Chou dynasty early writers had been in the habit of speaking of "grain pattern" and "rush pattern," assuming a knowledge in their readers which subsequent ages did not possess. In the Sung period the current ideas with regard to these patterns were expressed by the illustrator of the Sung edition of the Li Chi by ornamenting jade discs, in the one case with ears of wheat and in the other with a clump of rushes. Modern archæologists have identified the patterns in question on objects found in Chou burials, the grain pattern being symbolically rendered by a number of small raised discs, representing either grains of corn or heaps of grain, and the rush pattern by a kind of matting diaper, geometrically drawn. This instance serves to illustrate the salient differences between the Chou and Sung art, the two extremes; the Chou art is symbolical and geometrical, the Sung impressionist and naturalistic. The Sung poets and painters[89] communed with Nature in the wilds and threw into their verse or on to their silks vivid impressions and ideal conceptions of the natural phenomena. The Chinese art of after years owes many of its noblest inspirations to Sung masters, but nowhere are these ideas developed with the same freshness and power as in the Sung originals.

The Sung dynasty was an age of achievement for the potter. The ceramic art now took rank beside that of the bronze worker and jade carver, and it received a great impetus from regular Imperial patronage. The Ting Chou and Ju Chou factories in the north worked under Imperial mandate. In the south the pottery centre in the Ch´ang–nan district received a new name from the nien hao of the Emperor Ching Tê (1004–1007), and developed into the world–famed Ching–tê Chên. In the succeeding century the Imperial factories at Hang Chou were celebrated for the Kuan yao or royal ware; and numerous kilns were opened in the eighteen provinces, successfully following the lead of the Imperial potteries.

Subsequent ages have never ceased to venerate the Sung as the classic period of Chinese ceramic art, and in the eighteenth century the Emperor Yung Cheng sent down selected Sung specimens from the palace collection to be imitated by the Imperial potters at Ching–tê Chên. The same sentiment pervades Chinese ceramic literature. It harks back perpetually to the Sung wares as the ideal, collectors rave about them, and eulogy of the Ju, Kuan, Ko, Ting, and Lung–ch´üan wares has been almost an obsession with later Chinese writers.

Until recent years the European student has been almost entirely dependent for his knowledge of the subject on these literary appreciations or on relatively modern reproductions of the wares. Latterly, however, the interest aroused among Western collectors in the earlier wares and their consequently enhanced value have lured many authentic specimens from China, and our information on the Sung potteries has considerably expanded. But the difficulties of classification are still only in part surmounted. Many important problems remain unsolved, and for the understanding of several celebrated groups we are still at the mercy of Chinese textbooks and encyclopædias. Obscurity of phrase, ambiguity of colour words, quotations from early authorities passed on from writer to writer with diminishing accuracy, are among the many stumbling–blocks which the student of these books must surmount at every turn. Many of the treatises occur in small encyclopædias and miscellanies on works of art, which are each merely a corpus of quotations from similar works of the past. Moreover, an accurate first–hand knowledge of the wares themselves does not seem to have been held essential for the Chinese compiler. It is true that the same might be said of many of our own art–manuals, and with less excuse, for the Chinese can at any rate plead the veneration for the writers of the past in an ancestor–worshipping people, whereas our own shortcomings in this matter are due mainly to commercial reasons. But if the Chinese manuals are often misleading and obscure, they are at least brief—too brief, in many cases, and assuming a power to read between the lines which no European student can be expected to possess. The result is that where we have no actual specimens to help us, there is unlimited scope for conflicting theories on the meaning of the original text. However, as our collections grow and guiding specimens arrive, more of the Chinese descriptions are explained, and working back from the known to the unknown we are able to penetrate farther into the obscurities of the subject.

To take a single instance. The well–known celadon ware, with strongly built greyish white body, and beautiful smooth, translucent sea–green glaze, has been identified beyond all doubt with the Lung–ch´üan ware of Chinese books. When we read of the green porcelain (ch´ing tz´ŭ) bowls with fishes in relief inside or on the bottom, our thoughts at once turn with confidence to such specimens as Fig. 3, Plate 21, and we realise that for once we are certain of the meaning of the elusive colour word ch´ing. In the same way other phrases here and there can be run to earth; and when we meet the same descriptive words in other contexts, the key to their meaning is already in our hands. In this way no little profit can even now be got from the study of Chinese works, and it tends to increase steadily, though, of course, one living example is more instructive than a host of descriptions.

The Sung wares are true children of the potter's craft, made as they are by the simplest processes, and in the main decorated only by genuine potter methods. The adventitious aid of the painter's brush was, it is true, invoked in a few cases, but even then the pigments used were almost entirely of an earthy nature, and it is very doubtful if painting in enamels had yet been thought of. Two years ago enamel–painting on Sung porcelain would have been denied in the most uncompromising terms. But the claims of certain specimens of the Tz´ŭ Chou type, with brick–red and leaf–green enamel on the glaze, to belong to the Sung period have been so persistently urged that they cannot be entirely ignored. At present I am unconvinced of their Sung origin; but our knowledge of T´ang wares has developed with such surprising rapidity that we must be prepared for similar surprises in connection with the Sung. Meanwhile it would be well to suspend judgment on this interesting point.

The bulk of the Sung wares, at any rate, and among these the best of them, were either wholly undecorated—that is, wholly dependent on form and glaze, or else ornamented by such methods as moulding, stamping, application of clay reliefs, carving, or etching with a fine point. All these processes were applied while the clay was still unfixed, and the glaze was afterwards added and the ware finished once and for all in a single firing. It follows, then, that the glaze must be capable of standing the fierce heat required to bake the body, and as the Sung bodies are mostly of a high–fired porcellanous nature, the glazes used on them were limited to the refractory kinds composed largely of petuntse or porcelain stone. It follows also that any impurity, any particle of iron, for instance, in the clay would make its presence felt in the glaze and influence the colour of the latter, locally at any rate.

There is a striking contrast between the characteristic coloured glazes of the Sung and the T'ang periods. The latter are, as a rule, comparatively soft lead glazes, resembling in their colour, texture, and their minute crazing the latter glazes on Ming pottery. The former are thick and hard, and the crackle where it exists is positive and well defined.

Mr. W. Burton[90] makes some interesting comments on these high–fired glazes: "There are certain technical points of great interest to be drawn from a study of the Sung productions. In the first place, they prove that the Chinese, from a very early period, had learnt to fire their pottery at a much higher temperature than the contemporary potters of the West were using.... A third point of even greater interest, which seems to have escaped the notice of every previous writer, is that the method of firing used by the Chinese naturally produced glazes in which the oxide of iron and oxide of copper were present in the lowest state of oxidisation; and this is the explanation of the seeming paradox that the green glazes, known to us as celadon, and the copper–red glazes, were amongst the earliest productions of the Chinese porcelain–makers, while in Europe they have been among the latest secrets to be acquired."

The most important feature of the Sung wares lies in their glaze, which holds la qualité maîtresse de la céramique, as an enthusiastic French writer has expressed it. Its richness, thickness, lustre, translucency, and its colour and crackle are the main criteria of the wares in the eyes of Chinese connoisseurs. Tzŭ jun (rich and unctuous), hsi ni (fine and glossy), jung (lustrous), t´ung jung (lustrous throughout or transparent) are among the phrases most constantly met in their appreciations. A word, too, is usually added on colour of the body material, which in many cases would appear to have been of a red or brown tint, iron–coloured or copper–coloured. Not that it is necessary to infer that in every instance the ware was red or brown throughout. It is a matter of observation that in many of the early wares the exposed places (usually confined to the edge of the foot rim or the unglazed base) have assumed a rusty red colour in the firing, while a flake broken from the glaze elsewhere reveals a white or greyish white porcelain body within. This will often explain the seeming inconsistency of the Chinese descriptions in which the word porcelain is applied to an apparently dark–coloured material. At the same time, it is well to remember that the Chinese words which we translate as porcelain were far more comprehensive than our own term.

Our speculations on the nature of the Ch´ai ware in a previous chapter brought us face to face with two main types of glaze, the thick opalescent glaze of pale lavender or turquoise tint, and the smooth translucent celadon glaze in which green is the dominant colour. These types are prominent on the Sung wares, and almost all the varieties of coloured Sung glazes—with such obvious exceptions as black and chocolate brown—have more or less affinity to these two. So that if we place the old turquoise[91] glaze at one end of the series and the green celadon at the other, the rest will find an intermediate place, with leanings, of course, towards one or other of the extremes. One of the puzzling features in the study of the Sung wares is the interrelation of the various makes, such as the Ju, Kuan, Ko, Lung–ch´üan, Tung ch´ing and Chün, which all appear to have had points of mutual resemblance, although the descriptions of individual specimens differ over a wide range. If, however, it can be assumed that the same fundamental principles of manufacture were observed in all these factories, and that the divergences in the wares arose from local conditions, such as variety of clays, different conditions of firing and slight variations in the composition of the glaze, a formula is established which will cover most of our difficulties. I am assured by no less an authority on glazes than Mr. W. Burton[92] that this assumption is perfectly justifiable, and that one and the same glaze might emerge from the kiln as a celadon green, a grey green, dove grey, lavender grey, or lavender turquoise under slightly varying conditions of firing, and according to the presence or absence of an infinitesimal proportion of iron or copper oxide in the body or glaze. Even with their empirical methods the old Chinese potters must have soon discovered the conditions which favoured certain results, but in the meantime quite a number of apparently different wares would have emerged from the same factory, and yet, in spite of local peculiarities, a general relationship might be observed in productions of different districts. So that when one Chinese writer compares the Ju ware to the Ch´ai, another the Kuan to the Ju, another the Ko to the Kuan, and another the Lung–ch´üan to the Ko, it is not necessary to assume that these porcelains were all grass–green celadons because we happen to know that that colour was the prevailing tint of the Lung–ch´üan ware. The Ch´ai and the Lung–ch´üan may have been as far apart as lavender and celadon green, and the chain of relationship linked up by the Chinese writers still hold firm.

Plate 15.—Sung Wares.

Fig. 1.—Peach–shaped Water Vessel, dark–coloured biscuit, smooth greenish grey glaze. (?) Ju or Kuan ware. Length 5 ¹/₄ inches. Eumorfopoulos Collection.

Figs. 2 and 3.—Shallow Cup with flanged handle, and covered box, opalescent grey glaze. Kuan or Chün wares. Length of cup 7 ¹/₂ inches. Diameter of box 6 ¹/₁₆ inches.

Rothenstein Collection.

No one but an experienced potter can speak with confidence of the methods by which the varying colour effects in the Sung glazes were obtained, but it is quite certain that the Sung potters were not ignorant of the value of such colouring agents as the oxides of iron, copper, cobalt, and perhaps even of antimony. Green, blue, yellow, and brown glazes, which owed their tint to these minerals, had appeared some centuries before on the T´ang wares. But to what extent the men of Sung made deliberate use of these oxides is another question. It is certain, for instance, that the green celadon owed its colour to the presence of iron oxide, but whether that was a natural element in the clay of certain districts, or whether it was introduced in the glaze by the admixture of ferruginous clay, is not always clear. Again, those bursts of contrasting colour, usually red, which enrich the opalescent grey and lavender glazes, are most readily explained by the local presence of copper or iron oxide in an appreciable quantity. No doubt these effects were at first accidental, but it is certain that observation and experiment eventually taught the potters to produce them systematically. Otherwise, how explain the appearance of these colours in symmetrical splashes? The flambé glazes of the eighteenth century are known to have been produced by means of copper oxide, and it is not unreasonable to infer its presence in similar effects at an early date. But it is equally certain that many of the changing tints in the thick, uneven, bubbly glazes of the Sung and Yüan wares are due to opalescence alone. This has been proved to demonstration by Mr. Burton, who has produced from his kilns a porcelain glaze with passages of pale lavender, and even flushes of warm red, by using nothing but a thick, opalescent glaze entirely innocent of any colouring oxide.

Finally, a word of explanation is needed with regard to the frequent references to thinly potted specimens among the principal Sung wares. Almost all of the existing examples are of a thick and rather heavy type. Not that we would have them thinner, for much of their charm is due to the massive opulence of the thick opalescent glaze with its prismatic depths and changing hues. But the Chinese writers constantly refer to a thinner ware as well as the thick. Where are these thin and elegant pieces? The suggestion that, being more fragile, they have by now all perished has been coldly received as an obvious and easy answer to a difficult question. But it is reasonable enough, after all, when one remembers that upwards of a thousand years have passed since their manufacture. The alternative that they existed only in the poetical imagination of later Chinese writers is far less probable, though doubtless account must be taken of the exaggerations indulged in by men who were describing the ideal wares of a classic period. "Thin as paper," for instance, must have been a poetic licence as applied to the Ch´ai ware. I shall not cite the illustrations in the Album of Hsiang Yüan–p´ien[93] as proof of the fineness and trim regularity of the best Sung specimens. Whatever the value of this manuscript may originally have been, no reliance can be placed on the illustrations as reproduced in Porcelain of Different Dynasties.[94] The original was unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1888, and what we have now is, at best, the reproduction of a copy, and probably that of a copy of a copy. It is quite possible that the thinner Sung wares are still represented in Chinese collections, rare though they must of necessity be. But I believe that even our own collections are capable of supplying proof that, making reasonable allowance for verbal exaggeration, the Sung potters did make wares which could fairly be described as thin. Many of the white Ting wares are thin enough to be translucent; no one questions the correctness of the description as applied to them. It only wants one specimen to prove the case for the celadon glazes, and that may be seen in the beautiful bowl in Mr. Alexander's loan collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum (Plate 16). As for the Ju and Kuan ware, it is useless to consider their case until we are quite satisfied that we have established their identity; and in the nature of things the opalescent glazes and those described as "thick as massed lard" by the Chinese can only have accompanied a relatively thin body. On the other hand, many of the Corean celadons are of unimpeachable thinness, and as they were contemporary with the Sung porcelains and were almost certainly copied from them, there seems no real ground to withhold belief entirely from the Chinese statements with regard to the thinness of certain coloured Sung wares.

CHAPTER V

JU, KUAN, AND KO WARES

Ju yao

THOUGH no authenticated example of Ju ware is known in Europe, it is impossible to ignore a factory whose productions were unanimously acclaimed by Chinese writers as the cream of the Sung wares. Its place of origin, Ju Chou, in the province of Honan, lies in the very district which was celebrated in a previous reign for the Ch´ai pottery, and it is probable that the Ju factories continued the traditions of this mysterious ware. Nothing, however, is known of them until they received the Imperial command to supply a ch´ing (blue or green) porcelain to take the place of the white Ting Chou porcelain which had fallen into temporary disfavour on account of certain blemishes. This event, which took place towards the end of the Northern Sung period (960–1127 A. D.), implies that whatever had been their past history, the Ju Chou factories were at this period pre–eminent for the beauty of their ch´ing porcelain. It would appear from the Ch´ing po tsa chih,[95] which was written in 1193, that the Ju Chou potters were set to work in the "forbidden precincts of the Palace," and that selected pieces only were offered for Imperial use, the rejected specimens being offered for sale. Even at the end of the twelfth century we are assured that it was very difficult to obtain examples of the ware.

From the various accounts on which we have to depend for our conception of the ware, it is clear that the body was of a dark colour.[96] The glaze was thick and of a colour variously described as "approaching the blue of the sky after rain" (i.e. like the Ch´ai ware), pale blue or green,[97] and "egg white"[98] which seems to imply a white ware with a faint greenish tinge. The author of the Ch'ing pi tsang,[99] a work of considerable repute published in 1595, gives a first–hand description of the ware: "Ju yao I have seen. Its colour is 'egg white' and its glaze is lustrous and thick like massed lard. In the glaze appear faint 'palm eye' markings like crabs' claws.[100] Specimens with sesamum designs (lit. flowers), finely and minutely engraved on the bottom, are genuine. As compared with Kuan yao in material and make, it is more rich and unctuous (tzŭ jun)." Two mysterious peculiarities have been attributed to the Ju ware, viz. that powdered cornaline was mixed with the glaze, and that a row of nail heads was sometimes found under the base. The first has been taken as merely an imaginative explanation of the lustre of the glaze, but it is certain that some kind of pulverised quartz–like stone was used in the composition of later glazes, such as the "ruby red" (see vol. ii., p. 123). The second, which has been seriously interpreted to mean that actual metal nails were found protruding from the glaze (a physical impossibility, as the metal would inevitably have melted in the kiln), is probably due to a misunderstanding of a difficult Chinese phrase, chêng ting,[101] which may mean "engraved with a point" or "cut nails." The former seems to satisfy the requirements of the case, though it would be possible to render the sentence, "having sesamum flowers on the bottom and fine small nails," referring to the little projections often found on the bottom of dishes which have been supported in the kiln on pointed rests or "spurs."

In the list of porcelains made at the Imperial potteries about the year 1730[102] we read of imitations of Ju ware from specimens sent down from the Imperial collections. These imitations had in one case an uncrackled glaze on a copper–coloured body, and in the other a glaze with crackle like fish roe; and we may fairly infer that the originals had the same peculiarities. A reputed specimen[103] of modern Ju glaze[104] has a pale greyish green tint, with just a suspicion of blue, and would answer fairly well to the description tan ch´ing or fên ch´ing.

But probably our safest clue to the appearance of Ju ware is to be found in the important passage already mentioned,[105] in which a Sung writer describes the Corean wares as in general appearance like the old pi–sê ware of Yüeh Chou and the new Ju Chou ware. The typical Corean wares of this time are not uncommon, and their glaze—a soft grey green or greenish grey, with a more or less obvious tinge of blue—would satisfy the Chinese phrases, tan ch´ing and fên ch´ing, and in the bluer specimens might, by a stretch of poetic phrase, even be likened to the sky after rain. The "egg white," however, must have been a somewhat paler tint if the expression can be taken in any literal sense.