Early wares found on the mixed sites, such as Kan Chou and Hsi Yung ch´êng, which were occupied down to Sung times but evidently visited later, include carved white porcelain and creamy white ware of the t´u Ting class, and several kinds of Tz´ŭ Chou wares, the graffiato, as well as the black painted. But evidence from excavations of this kind is always open to the objection that the ruins may have been visited later, and the broken pottery dropped by subsequent explorers. This objection, however, cannot reasonably be offered to more than a small proportion of the objects found, and these finds, though not in themselves conclusive, may be regarded, at any rate, as valuable corroboration of existing theories.
CHAPTER X
MIRABILIA
MANY strange things are recorded by the early Chinese writers in connection with pottery and porcelain, and the tales are solemnly repeated from book to book, though occasionally a less credulous author adds some such comment as "This may be true, or, on the other hand, it may not." It is difficult, however, entirely to discredit the serious and circumstantial account given by a provincial governor of a curious custom which prevailed in his district. Fan Ching–ta, who was appointed administrator in Kuang–si in 1172, tells[286] us that "the men of Nan (–ning Fu) practise nose–drinking. They have pottery vessels such as cups and bowls from the side of which stands up a small tube like the neck of a bottle. They apply the nose to this tube and draw up wine or hot fluids, and in the summer months they drink water. The vessels are called nose–drinking cups. They say that water taken through the nose and swallowed is indescribably delicious. The people of Yung Chou have already recorded the facts as I have done. They grow a special kind of gourd for the purpose." Another extract from the same writer's works alludes to "drums with contracted waist" made of pottery in the villages of Lin–kuei and Chih–t´ien. The village people made a speciality of the manufacture of this pottery (yao), and baked it to the correct musical tone. On the glaze, we are told, they painted red flower patterns by way of ornament. The allusion to painting in red on the glaze at this early period is interesting, but it is quite likely that the designs were only in some unfired pigment.
Some of the stories may be regarded merely as figurative descriptions of the superhuman skill of the artist in rendering "life–movement." Thus we are told[287] of "four old porcelain (tz´ŭ) bowls painted with coloured butterflies. When water was poured in, the butterflies floated on the surface of the water, fluttering about as if alive." It was an unnatural proceeding for butterflies in any case, and we can quite understand why "those who saw this, all maintained secrecy and did not divulge it."
A somewhat similar poetic licence is taken by the same author in another passage with reference to certain cups and bowls, apparently of the Sung dynasty, which were found in the K´ang Hsi period on the site of an old temple. "The bowls had a minute wave pattern which moved and undulated as in a picture by Wu Tao–tzŭ. As for the cups, when a little water was poured into them four fishes arose out of the sides and swam and dived."
But most curious of all were the Chinese views on the subject of "furnace transmutations" (yao pien) and the fables which sprang from them. At the present day the strange behaviour of metallic oxides, notably copper, under certain firing conditions, is well known and turned to good account. But in early times, when the unexpected happened, and a glaze which contained an infinitesimal quantity of copper oxide was accidentally subjected to an oxidising or reducing atmosphere in the kiln (by the admission of air or smoke at the critical moment), instead of coming out a uniform colour, was streaked and mottled all over with red, green and blue, or locally splashed with crimson or mixed colour, the potters saw in the phenomenon something supernatural. It was a terrifying portent, and on one occasion, we are told, they broke the wares immediately, and on another they even destroyed the kilns and fled to another place.
However, the irregular formation of the Chinese kilns greatly favoured these accidental effects, and in time they became comparatively common, so that these true "furnace transmutations" were taken for granted; and though they were not clearly understood before the end of the K´ang Hsi period, fairly rational explanations of them were offered by some of the late Ming writers. Thus the curious splashes of contrasting colour which appeared on the Kuan, Ko and Chün wares were attributed to the "fire's magical transmutation."