Among the various Sung and Yüan wares with more or less opalescent glazes which have reached Europe in recent years, it is possible to differentiate a considerable group whose characteristics seem to point to the Kuan yao. Their body is usually of fine grain, whitish colour and porcellanous texture, but assuming a rusty brownish tint in the exposed parts. It is, in fact, very much finer than the Yüan wares, usually so called, and all but the choicest wares of Chün type (see ch. ix.). The glaze, too, though generally opalescent, shows marked differences from that of the Chün and Yüan pieces. It is smooth and even instead of being lumpy and irregular, and it ends close up to the foot rim in a comparatively regular line instead of ending short of the base in a thick roll or in heavy drops. And the base instead of being quite bare or covered with a brown glaze, has a patch of the surface glaze underneath. The colours of this glaze show wide variations from a deep brownish green, which suggest the ta lü, to pale dove grey (fên ch´ing) and pale lavender blue tints, which approximate to the Chinese t´ien ch´ing or sky blue, though perhaps not so closely as does the so–called "old turquoise." Some of these glazes, especially the pale lavender and dove greys, are broken by passages of red or crimson, which in turn shade off into green and brown tints. Although the expression tai fên hung in the Ko ku yao lun[128] has already been rendered in its most natural sense, "with a tinge of red," we should perhaps mention a possible alternative which might make it refer to these very passages of red colour; and the fact that they sometimes assume fantastic shapes will explain why the Chinese saw in them "butterflies, birds, fish, unicorns, and leopards."[129] On the other hand, it is clear that these passages of red are not always accidental, for they sometimes take symmetrical forms, and it is quite possible that even the bird and fish forms may have been roughly designed in the colouring medium.
Plate 17 will serve to illustrate this group of possible Kuan wares. Another example is a dish in the British Museum which has a whitish porcellanous body and a slightly crackled pale lavender grey glaze of singular beauty. Other specimens in the same collection include a small tea bowl with misty grey glaze of the fên ch´ing type, smooth and uncrackled, and a body which appears deep reddish brown at the foot; and a small bottle–shaped vase, with lobed body of melon shape, which, though of doubtful antiquity, answers closely to the Chinese descriptions. It has a dark–coloured but well levigated body, deep brown at the foot, and showing a brown tinge where the glaze has run thin at the lip, and the colour is a pale bluish grey with rosy tinges where the body colour is able to penetrate the semi–translucent glaze. Another doubtful specimen, with very similar characteristics, was figured by me in the Burlington Magazine some years ago.[130]
Since the genuine Sung specimens were sent to the Imperial factories to be closely copied (about 1730), it might be supposed that the relatively modern imitations would supply some clue to the original types. There are one or two examples of eighteenth–century copies of Kuan ware in the British Museum on which the glaze is definitely lavender blue in tint, with a crackle which in one case is wide and emphasised by blackened lines, and in the other of a finer mesh.[131] The natural tendency, however, of modern imitative wares is to exaggerate some characteristic which this or that potter might imagine to be specially important, and as it is impossible to say in many cases exactly when the piece in question was made, we cannot be sure how far the potters in each case may have strayed from the original type.[132] No doubt in time these imitations would become a mere convention. It should be said in passing that the modern copies have a white porcelain body, and to obtain the appearance of "brown mouth and iron foot" the potters had recourse to the expedient of colouring the parts concerned with brown ferruginous clay.
The Cho kêng lu[133] refers to three minor wares which were regarded as inferior to Kuan ware, and later writers have assumed that they belonged to the same category. These are the Hsü wares, Yü–hang wares, and wu–ni wares. The first[134] is so little known that its identity has been lost in variant readings, such as Hsün
in later writers, which is very near in appearance to tung
, a common form used for the Tung ware (see p. 82); and we can safely leave it until some clearer information is forthcoming. The second, according to the T´ao lu,[135] was a Sung ware made at Yü–hang Hsien, in the prefecture of Hang Chou. "Its colour was like Kuan porcelain without its crackle, its lustre (jung), and its unctuous richness (jun)." The wu–ni ware is dark–bodied earthenware, which is discussed on p. 133.
Plate 18.—Sung dynasty.