Chinese pottery and porcelain; vol. 1. Pottery and early wares

by R. L. Hobson

Though we hear nothing further of this Chien yao after the Yüan dynasty it is practically certain that the manufacture of pottery of some sort continued in the district. A small pot of buff stoneware with a translucent brown glaze (much thinner than that of the hare's fur bowls and without the purple tint or the golden brown markings) was found in a tomb near, Chien–ning Fu with an engraved slab dated 1560. The find was made by the Rev. H.S. Phillips, who presented the pot, with a rubbing of the inscription, to the British Museum.

In addition to the characteristic temmoku we have now quite a large family of bowls, dishes, jars, and vases with thick purplish black glazes more or less diversified by golden brown and tea–dust green, which are at present grouped with the Chien yao pending some more precise information as to their origin. They are, however, distinguished by a coarse porcellanous body of greyish white or buff colour, and I understand that many of the bowls have come from excavations in Honan; and there are features in the ornament and in the ware itself which suggest that they date back as far as the T´ang period. Fig. 3 of Plate 43, for instance, with its large brown mottling on a black glaze, is analogous in form and material to the white–glazed T´ang wares and in the mottling of the glaze to the typical T´ang polychrome. The bowls, which are usually small and shallow with straight sides, wide mouth, and very narrow foot, or with rounded sides slightly contracting at the mouth, have neither the weight of material nor smooth solidity of glaze which characterise the true Chien yao. On the other hand, they are more varied in the play of black and brown, and in some cases they have designs and patterns which are clearly intentional. The two extremes of colour are a monochrome black, usually of purplish tint but sometimes brownish, and a lustrous brown often decidedly reddish in tone. Between these come the black glazes which are more or less variegated with brown in the form of mottling, streaks, tears, irregular patches, and definite patterns. The glaze in these bowls usually extends to the foot rim, and sometimes reappears in a patch under the base. The ornament in some cases takes the form of rosettes or plum blossom designs in T´ang style incised through the glaze covering; in others, as in Fig. 1 of Plate 43, we find a leaf design (evidently stencilled from a real leaf) expressed in brown or dull tea green; and occasionally there are more ambitious designs, such as a hare or bird or foliage, incised. On a red brown bowl in the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst at Cologne there are traces of a floral pattern in a lustrous medium which resembles faded gilding.

Plate 43.—Three Examples of "Honan temmoku," probably T´ang dynasty.

Fig. 1.—Bowl with purplish black glaze, stencilled leaf in golden brown. Diameter 6 inches. Havemeyer Collection.

Fig. 2.—Ewer with black glaze. Height 4 ³/₄ inches. Alexander Collection.

Fig. 3.—Covered Bowl, black mottled with lustrous brown. Height 7 inches. Cologne Museum.

We have already noted how the purplish black glaze of the Tz´ŭ Chou ware breaks into lustrous brown; the black Ting ware and the debateable red Ting have been discussed; and if we add this family which may perhaps be provisionally described as Honan temmoku, it would appear that glazes analogous to those of the Chien yao "hare's fur" bowls were widely used in Northern China at an early date.

A word of explanation may appropriately be added here of the expression wu–ni yao,[283] which occurs in several passages in Chinese books on pottery. It means "black clay ware," and as a general term would naturally include the "hare's fur bowls." Indeed, one passage[284] actually speaks of the wu–ni yao of Chien–an, and the T´ao lu, which gives the ware a paragraph to itself, states that it was made at Chien–an, in Chien–ning Fu, beginning in the Sung dynasty, and that its clay was black. It further adds that the glaze is "dry and parched" and that it was sometimes green (ch´ing). It is clear from the above quotations that wu–ni yao was a general expression for the dark–bodied Chien ware; and there the matter would have ended had not early works, such as the Cho kêng lu and Ko ku yao lun, mentioned it in the category of Kuan and Ko wares, the former naming it with the Hsün and Yu–hang wares, which were inferior to the Kuan, and the latter adding to the passage dealing with Kuan wares the following note: "There are black wares which are called wu–ni yao, all of which were imitated at Lung–ch´üan. They have no crackle." The Po wu yao lan, however, explains that these wares "were admitted by confusion into the category of Kuan and Ko wares," and that the "error has been handed down to this day." Probably it was the green variety which caused the confusion, as there seems no reason why the black glazes should have been associated with the Kuan class, though the dark red clay of the Phœnix Hill from which the Hang Chou Kuan ware was made may have had some resemblance to the dark red brown body of the Chien yao. As for the Lung–ch´üan imitations, we can only imagine that the statement refers to the later Ko wares, which are said to have been made with material brought from Hang Chou,[285] and that their glaze, too, was of the green variety, as would be expected in the Lung–ch´üan district, the home of the green celadons. At the same time it will be remembered that wu–ni yao means simply "black clay ware," and might have been fairly applied to any dark–bodied ware wheresoever made.

As already mentioned, many fragments of pottery were included in the important finds made by Sir Aurel Stein in his excavations in Turfan. Unfortunately, many of the sites have little evidential value, because they have clearly been revisited at comparatively late periods; but there are a few localities which ceased to be inhabited as early as the Sung dynasty, and which furnished fragments of glazed pottery and porcellanous wares. I only mention those sites which, as far as these finds are concerned, were not vitiated by the occurrence of obviously recent wares. On one site named Ushaktal, supposed to have been abandoned in the Sung dynasty, if not before, were fragments of greenish brown celadon with combed ornament on the body, such as was certainly made in Corea and probably in China as well. The same site produced opalescent glazes of the Chün and Yüan type. The site of Vash–shahri, which was "occupied probably down to the eleventh or twelfth century," produced a number of interesting fragments (1) with buff and grey stoneware bodies and glazes of the opalescent Chün and Yüan kinds, (2) the same body with emerald green crackled glaze, (3) celadon glazes over carved ornament, (4) speckled olive brown glaze resembling the later "tea dust," (5) opaque dark brown glaze, (6) speckled dark purplish brown glazes, (7) thick greenish glaze evenly dappled with pale bluish grey spots.