The Ko ku yao lun describes the Imperial ware of this time as "thin in body and lustrous," and mentions "plain white pieces with contracted waist," adding that the specimens "with unglazed rim,"[334] though thin in body, white in colour, lustrous, and surpassingly beautiful, are lower in price than the Ting wares.
It is not too much to assume that some of this "Jao Chou jade" has survived to the present day, and we may look for it among the early translucent white porcelains, of which a considerable number have reached Europe during the last few years. Many of these have Sung forms and the Sung style, though, of course, plain white wares are always difficult to date. In the specimens to which I refer the glaze is usually of a warm ivory tone, tending to cream colour; it is hard and usually discontinued in the region of the base, both underneath and on the side, and the exposed body is rather rough to the touch. (See Plate 24, Fig. 1.)
It is not clear whether we are to infer from the comparison with Lung–ch´üan ware quoted above that the Ching–tê Chên potters produced a celadon in the Sung dynasty, but it is probable enough that they did so, and that the green or greenish white (ch´ing pai)[335] made in the Yüan period was a continuation of this. If we can believe the statement in the T´ao lu, they began early to copy the wares of other factories, imitating the Chün Chou ware at the end of the Sung period and the crackled Chi Chou ware in the Yüan.
It seems to me possible that the reference to the imitation of Chün ware may be explained by an interesting passage from a late twelfth–century[336] writer quoted in the T´ao lu, who says that in the Ta Kuan period (1107–1110) there were among the Ching–tê Chên wares "furnace transmutations" (yao pien) in colour red like cinnabar.[337] He is inclined to attribute this phenomenon to the fact that "when the planet Mars in the Zodiac approaches its greatest brightness, then things happen magically and contrary to the usual order." The potters were evidently disturbed by the appearance of the wares, and broke them. He tells us, further, that he stayed at Jao Chou and obtained a number of specimens (of the local ware), and after examining them he could say that, "compared with the red porcelain (hung tz´ŭ) of Ting Chou,[338] they were more fresh and brilliant in appearance." It will be remembered that an echo of this last sentence occurred in the Memoirs of Chiang.
A passage in the Po wu yao lan[339] might be taken to mean that blue–painted porcelain, "blue and white," was made at Ching–tê Chên prior to the Yüan period, but as the remainder of the sentence seems to be based on the Ko ku yao lun, and no evidence is given for the words in question, too much importance need not be attached to a phrase which may be a confusion arising from the ch´ing pai of earlier writers.
CHAPTER XIII
THE YÜAN
