in the extreme west of Shantung; Su Chou
in Kiangsu, on the east side of the lake T´ai–hu, and facing the potteries of Yi–hsing, which supplied tiles for the palaces and temples of Nanking; the neighbouring Ch´ang–chou Chên, and Yi–chên and Kua Chou in the Yang–chou Fu of the same province; Wu–Ch´ing Hsien
, in the district of Peking, where the potters asked for permission to make tiles for public use in 1574.
The tile works at Liu–li–chü (mentioned on p. [200]) date from the Yüan dynasty. They are also situated in the neighbourhood of Peking, but whether in the Wu–ch´ing Hsien or not, I have failed to discover.
When Peking became the capital of the Ch´ing emperors, no doubt the tile factories at Wu–ch´ing Hsien assumed still greater importance; and according to the catalogue of the exhibition in Paris in 1878,[445] the neighbourhood of Amoy was then celebrated for its bricks and tiles. This branch of the potter's industry is represented by a small collection of bricks, tiles, mouldings, and antefixal ornaments in the British Museum. It includes unglazed bricks from the Great Wall of China, which may date from 220 B. C., a few Han bricks and tile–ends with moulded ornament; white porcelain bricks and coloured pottery tiles and mouldings from the Nanking pagoda; and tiles from the Ming tombs near Nanking, which were built in 1400 A. D., and like the pagoda destroyed in the T´aip´ing rebellion in 1853. The Nanking tiles and mouldings are of hard buff pottery with translucent glazes of green and yellow colour, minutely crackled, additional colours being formed with red and creamy white slips. The tile–ends are ornamented with dragon medallions.
PLATE 57
Seated figure of Kuan Yü, the war–god of China, a deified warrior. Reddish buff pottery with blue, yellow and turquoise glazes, and a colourless glaze on the white parts. Sixteenth century.