gained a great reputation for his glazes, which "copied the Ko ware in crackle and the Kuan and Chün wares in colour."[405] This is, no doubt, the manufacture mentioned in the Po wu yao lan in the passage dealing with Chün yao: "At the present time (i.e. 1621–1627), among the recent manufactures this kind of ware is all made with the sandy clay (sha t´u) of Yi–hsing as body; the glaze is rather like the original, and in some cases beautiful, but it does not wear well."
Though the original glazed wares of Ou are probably rarer to–day than their Chün Chou prototypes, there is no reason to suppose that Ou´s successors have not kept up the continuity of the manufacture. It is certainly very much alive to–day, and an early eighteenth century reference to "the applied glaze of Yi–hsing"[406] seems to imply its existence at that time. I have before me as I write a tripod incense burner of archaic form, the body a light buff stoneware and the glaze a deep lavender, breaking into blue. It is a thick and rather opaque glaze, sufficiently flowing to have left the upper edges almost bare and formed thickly on the flatter and lower levels; the colour is broken by streaks and clouding, which mark the downward flow of the glaze; the surface has a barely perceptible crackle, which will no doubt become more marked with age, and a subdued lustre between the brilliancy of the old opalescent Chün types and the viscous, silken sheen of the Canton glazes[407] which also imitate them. The colour and glaze are distinctly attractive, and have much in common with the old Chün glazes, and though this is a frankly modern piece, it shows the potentialities of the ware. Similar specimens made, say, a hundred or two hundred years ago, and proportionately aged by time and usage, might well cause trouble to the collector.
There are, besides, quantities of common glazed pottery made at Yi–hsing in the present day, and probably for a considerable time back, which has no mission to imitate the antique. Many of the modern ginger pots are said to come from this locality, and their glazes—some with clear colours (yellow, green, or purple), others opaque and clouded, often covering moulded ornament in low relief—may help us to identify kindred types of glaze on pieces which are more ornamental and perhaps much older. But pottery, as distinct from porcelain and the finer stonewares, has never commanded much interest in China, and it has never been systematically collected and studied. The result is that it is extremely difficult to place the various types which appear from time to time except in large and ill–defined groups. A series of typical pieces of modern Yi–hsing pottery, for instance, would no doubt be of the greatest value in identifying the rather older wares made in the same place under similar traditions, but no one in Europe[408] has thought it worth their while to form one.
I have noticed that a certain type of glazed pottery is distinguished by a concave base which serves instead of the usual hollowed–out foot and foot rim, and by a glaze which stops a little short of the base in an even, regular line which is quite distinct from the wavy glaze line of the Yuan and earlier wares. A jar of this type in the British Museum has a typical Yi–hsing glaze, and though this is not perhaps sufficient ground for generalising, I would suggest that this peculiar finish is an indication of Yi–hsing manufacture.
CHAPTER XVI
MISCELLANEOUS POTTERIES
IN addition to the factories which have received individual notice, there are numerous others which are only names to us; and, on the other hand, there is a host of nameless wares which have reached Europe at various times and through divers channels, and are now awaiting classification with very little chance of being definitely located. A consideration, however, suggested by the Chinese Commercial Guide[409] may help towards the grouping of these miscellaneous wares. We are told that the charges for freight forbid the wares to be carried far in the ordinary way of internal trade, and that manufactures of pottery are numerous, supplying the local needs. Now the number of ports open to foreign trade in China is limited, and in the past the sea trade was of far smaller volume, and was concentrated in a few of the southern coast towns. Consequently, in dealing with pottery which we may assume to have been brought by the export trade to Europe, it will be necessary for general purposes to take account only of the factories in the neighbourhood of the seaports in question. These will be found to be almost entirely in the southern half of China.