In the best period the pure white undecorated Ting ware, with rich unctuous glaze, compared to "congealed fat" or "mutton fat," was most esteemed, though ornament was freely used, especially on the Southern Ting. Designs carved in low relief or etched with a point were considered best, the moulded and stamped ornament being rightly regarded as inferior. There is a remarkable, though sadly damaged, example of Northern Ting ware in the British Museum. It was found in a Manchurian tomb of the twelfth century, and bears out the current descriptions of the ware with its fine white body, rich ivory glaze, and "tear drops" on the reverse. The ornament, a lotus design in bold freehand carving, displays all the freshness and power of Sung craftsmanship. This dish has, moreover, a characteristic common to the Sung Ting bowls and dishes, viz. the mouth rim is bare of glaze. Many of the early wares were fired upside down, whence the bare mouth rim, which was usually hidden by a metal band.[191]
Favourite carved designs with the Ting potters seem to have been the mu–tan peony, the lily, and flying phœnixes. They are, at any rate, usually singled out for mention by Chinese writers.[192] Garlic and rushes are also incidentally mentioned as motives, and a few examples of a beautiful design of ducks on water are known in Western collections. The moulded ornament is generally more elaborate, dense peony scrolls with phœnixes flying through them, radiating panels of flowers, dragons in clouds, fishes among water plants and wave patterns, etc. To judge from Hsiang's Album, carved designs borrowed from ancient bronzes must have been highly prized.
Of the three kinds of ornament usually associated by Chinese writers with the Ting ware; the hua hua (carved decoration) and the yin hua (stamped or moulded decoration) have already been mentioned. The meaning of the third, hsiu hua,[193] is not so clear, as the phrase can bear two interpretations, viz. painted ornament or embroidered ornament. In the latter sense it would suggest a rich decoration like that of brocade without indicating the method by which it was applied. But in the former it was the usual Chinese expression for painted ornament, and it is difficult to imagine that it was intended to indicate anything else in the present context. On the other hand, no examples of painted Ting ware are known to exist either in actual fact or in Chinese descriptions. This anomaly, however, may perhaps be explained in one of two ways. A creamy white ware of t´u ting type, boldly painted with brown or black designs, is known to have been made at the not far distant factories of Tz´ŭ Chou[194] in the Sung dynasty, and it is possible that either the painted Ting ware has been grouped with the Tz´ŭ Chou ware in modern collections, or that Chinese writers mistook the Tz´ŭ Chou ware for painted Ting ware and added this third category to the Ting wares by mistake. In any case they regarded the painted ware as an inferior article.
The high estimation in which fine specimens of white Ting ware have always been held by Chinese connoisseurs is well illustrated by a passage in the Yün shih chai pi t´an.[195] It tells how Mr. Sun of the Wu–i river estate treasured in his mountain retreat Ting yao incense–burners, and among them one exquisite specimen of the Sung period. It was a round vessel with ear handles and three feet, and the inscription li hsi yai (
) was engraved in seal characters on the stand. During the Japanese raids in the Chia Ching period this vessel passed into the hands of one Chin Shang–pao, who sold it to T´ang, the President of Sacrifices (t´ai ch´ang), of P´i–ling. T´ang, whose residence bore the romantic but chilly name of Ning–an (Frozen Hut), is the celebrated collector mentioned in connection with another Ting vessel on p. 95. "Although T´ang had many wonderful porcelains," the story runs, "when this vessel arrived, they all, without exception, made way for it. And so throughout the land when men discuss porcelains, they give the first place to T´ang's white incense vase. T´ang, they say, did not readily allow it to be seen." And in this respect, if all accounts are true, T´ang was not unlike a good many Chinese collectors of the present day.
On the other hand, the Ting ware was often marred by certain blemishes which are not always easy to understand. The "awns" (mang), for instance, which degraded it at Court in favour of the Ju Chou ware in the early Sung period were probably flaws in the glaze. The "bamboo thread brush marks" mentioned in the Liu ch´ing jih cha[196] may perhaps be lines left in the glaze which was applied by means of a bamboo brush. Three other defects which rendered the ware comparatively worthless are named in the Ko ku yao lun,[197] viz. mao (thatch), mieh (bamboo splints), and ku ch´u (bare bones). The author fortunately explains that (1) to thatch (mao) means to cover over defects, (2) bamboo splints (mieh) is used of lines and recalls the brush marks mentioned above, and (3) bare bones (ku ch´u) are patches where the glaze is defective and the body shows through. Ku, in the sense of "body or biscuit," we are further informed, is a "curio–market expression." Modern collectors will probably not be so fastidious as the Chinese of the fourteenth century, and will welcome a Sung specimen of Ting porcelain, even though it suffer from mang and ku ch´u.
The pai ting and the t´u ting, the fine and coarse white varieties, alone have been identified in Western collections; but there are coloured Ting porcelains which are known to us by literary references. An apocryphal red Ting ware[198] (hung ting) is mentioned in two passages of ambiguous meaning which need not necessarily have implied a true red glaze. In any case it finds no place in the older works, such as the Ko ku yao lun and Ch´ing p´i tsang, which only speak of purple or brown (tzŭ) Ting, and black Ting. "There is purple[199] Ting," says the Ko ku yao lun, "the colour of which is purple; there is ink Ting, the colour of which is black, like lacquer. The body in every case is white, and the value of these is higher than that of white Ting."
Hsiang, who figured five specimens in his Album, compared them to the colour of ripe grapes and the skin of the aubergine fruit or brinjal, one specimen being tzŭ ts´ui (purple blue); and he further states that out of a hundred and more specimens of Ting ware he had only seen ten of purple and one of black colour.
The solitary specimen of black Ting, which appears in a very unconvincing illustration in Hsiang's Album,[200] is divided into two zones, one black, the other white, and Hsiang regards it as inestimably rare and precious. In this appreciation he follows the Ko ku yao lun, but other writers, such as the author of the Ch´ing pi ts´ang, take an entirely different view, holding neither the purple nor the black Ting ware of much account. With us at present the question is of academic interest only, as no examples of either kind worthy of notice have been identified in Western collections. The nearest approach to the description of the purple variety which I have seen is a small box from a tomb in Shansi, made of white porcellanous ware with a purplish black glaze on the cover. It is, however, a crude object, and of no particular merit. As for the black Ting, the nearest analogue to that which I can quote is the vases with black or brown black glaze belonging to the Tz´ŭ Chou class. Some of these (see Plate 30) have zones of black and white recalling Hsiang's description. It is, perhaps, worth noting in this connection that the black glaze on these wares was liable to shade off into lustrous brown, indicating the presence of iron oxide, and to resemble in this respect the so–called "hare's fur" or "partridge" glazes of the celebrated Chien yao tea bowls.[201] This fact may account for a passage in an early writer,[202] who says "the ancients favoured as tea bowls Ting ware with hare's fur marking, and these were used in the powdered–tea competitions," but the work deals with tea rather than ceramics, and it is probable that a confusion had arisen in the author's mind between the Chien yao tea bowls and Ting ware. On the other hand, it would appear that bowls with glaze which has some analogies with the "hare's fur" were made at an early date in Northern China. (See Fig. 1 of Plate 43 and p. 132.)