If, as this account seems to imply, the Tz´ŭ Chou factories were in low water at the end of the Yüan dynasty, like many other potteries at this time, they managed to retrieve their fortunes, for they still carry on an unbroken tradition to this day.[232] The ware is in general use among the common folk of Peking and Northern China,[233] and is still decorated (though coarsely) in the antique style with free and sketchy painted designs in dark brown and maroon slip, the body being greyish white, with creamy crackled glaze. This is, of course, only one kind out of many, but the traditions have been so closely preserved that from this type alone it is easy to identify many Tz´ŭ Chou specimens among the early wares which have lately come from excavations in China.
The quantity of pottery produced at Tz´ŭ Chou in the last nine or ten hundred years must have been enormous, but as the post–Sung wares do not seem to have appealed to Chinese connoisseurs, little has been heard of it until recent times, and the stray specimens which did find their way to Europe were either unclassified or grouped with Corean specimens in deference to a mistaken Japanese opinion.[234] Now, however, considerable interest has been taken in the ware by Western collectors, and a plentiful supply is forthcoming, so that it is possible to make a comparative study of the different types, and to appreciate the varied and clever decorative methods of the Tz´ŭ Chou potters. But the conservative nature of the wares will always make it extremely difficult for us to fix the exact period during the many centuries when any individual piece was made, and the early dates assigned indiscriminately, though perhaps excusable on account of the archaic character of the painted decoration, should be accepted with caution.
The plain white Tz´ŭ Chou wares of the Sung period, which favourably compared with the Ting porcelain, have been identified in a few instances only by peculiarities of shape. Indeed, it is unlikely that we shall have any other means of discriminating them from the latter ware. But by far the largest group of the Tz´ŭ Chou family consists of the painted wares. Like the rest of the Tz´ŭ Chou pottery which has so far been identified, these have a greyish buff body of porcellanous stoneware usually coated with a white clay slip and covered with a transparent glaze almost colourless, but with a creamy tinge. On this glaze, and sometimes under it, the painters executed rapid, bold, and rather impressionist designs in shades of brown, varying from black to a soft sepia colour. The earliest specimens seem to have been of this kind, and it is certain that this method of decoration was practised in the Sung period, if not earlier.[235] In a few cases the glaze seems to have been omitted, the brown painting appearing on a lustreless white slip; and where the brown or black colour was laid on in broad washes, details were often etched out with a pointed instrument. The black, moreover, when in considerable areas, sometimes developed passages of lustrous coffee brown[236] (due to the presence of iron), such as is seen in the "partridge cups" of Chien yao. It is probable that the Sung Tz´ŭ Chou ware, with its solid ivory white surface, often crackled, and its sketchy floral designs, may have served as a model to the Japanese for the Kenzan style of decoration and the ivory white Satsuma faience.
Another style of ornament, which may date from Sung times, and is certainly common on later wares, consists of a broad band of floral scrolls, with large lily or aster flowers, enclosed by smaller zones of floral pattern or formal designs. Next come the large panels of figure subjects, usually of Taoist sages, or birds and animals in foliage, enclosed by bands of formal ornament or floral scrolls. In some cases a beautiful pale blue glaze of turquoise tint covers this class of ornament (Plate 32, Fig. 1), strangely recalling the Persian and Syrian pottery with still black paintings under a turquoise glaze. Indeed, it was a common error a few years back to class the stray specimens of this type as Persian; but a comparison with the brown–painted Tz´ŭ Chou specimens shows their true origin, and the discovery of a small dish of this kind in a Sung tomb[237] proves the antiquity of this method of decoration in China.
The brown and black was supplemented, in the Ming period if not earlier, first by a maroon slip and later by iron red and green enamel.[238] A specimen with panelled decoration in these colours was described by Brinkley[239] as having been preserved in Japan since 1598, showing that this class of decoration was at any rate contemporary with the "red and green family" of porcelain. A specimen in the Benson Collection shows, further, that aubergine and green were sometimes used in combination with turquoise glaze, as in the Ming "three–colour porcelain." Under–glaze blue is also found on Tz´ŭ Chou wares, but we have no clue to the date when it was introduced.
The ordinary ware, made in quite modern times at Tz´ŭ Chou, is illustrated by a small flask and a figure obtained by Dr. Bushell, and now in the British Museum. Though decorated in the characteristic style with slight sketchy design in brown and maroon, they show a decided falling off when compared with the older specimens. The body is a hard, greyish white stoneware; there is no slip covering, and the glaze is yellowish, soft–looking, and freely crackled, without the solid qualities of the older ivory glaze on a white slip coating. I am inclined to think that this degenerate type of ware dates back no farther than the nineteenth century, and that the Tz´ŭ Chou pottery preserved its character up to and perhaps throughout the eighteenth century. There are several examples of pottery pillows, with body and glaze of good quality and finely painted in black and brown, with panelled designs sometimes containing floral motives, sometimes figure subjects. One of these, exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910,[240] was tentatively ascribed to the late Ming period. Since then the British Museum has acquired another, and I have heard of two more in private hands. The three last bear the mark of a potter named Chang,[241] and on some of them we find additional inscriptions containing the words ku hsiang (of old Hsiang) and hsiang ti (of the region of Hsiang). Hsiang, I find, is the old name of Chang–tê Fu, the prefecture in which Tz´ŭ Chou is situated, and this fact definitely connects the ware with the factories under discussion. At the same time the relatively large number of these pieces in our collections and the style of Chang's mark seem to indicate that they are of fairly recent date, probably not older than the seventeenth century.
Plate 29.—Vase of Porcellanous Stoneware.
With creamy white glaze and designs painted in black. Tz´ŭ Chou ware, Sung dynasty (960–1279 A. D.). Height 17 inches. In the Louvre.