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.

Thus, starting from the south and following the coast line, we come first to the potteries which supplied Pak-hoi and Canton, and we may assume that Hongkong and Kowloon would be supplied from the neighbourhood of Canton. These have already been discussed, and we can pass on to Swatow, which would draw supplies from the Ch´ao-chou Fu potteries. This neighbourhood furnished an exhibit to the Paris Exhibition of 1878, consisting of "tea jars, tobacco jars, braziers and pots, lamps, tiles, flower pots, fruit jars, spoons, vases of various sorts, figures, dishes, cups and saucers, and spittoons."

[Illustration: PLATE 52

Wine Jar with Cover and Stand. Fine stoneware with ornament in relief glazed green and yellow in a deep violet blue ground. Four-clawed dragons ascending and descending among cloud-scrolls in pursuit of flaming pearls; band of sea-waves below and formal borders including a _ju-i_ pattern on the shoulder. Cover with foliate edges and jewel pattern, surmounted by a seated figure of Shou Lao, God of Longevity. About 1500 A.D.

Height 22½ inches. _Grandidier Collection, Louvre._ ]

At the same exhibition, Amoy, to which we come next, was represented by "dishes, rice bowls, wine cups, saucers and spoons, preserve jars, wine bottles, etc., in common porcelain," besides tiles of various kinds, which implies the manufacture of pottery as well. These wares, we are informed in the catalogue, are largely exported to Saigon, Siam, Manilla, etc.; a statement confirmed by the _Chinese Commercial Guide_,[410] which adds India, the Archipelago, and the southern provinces. This is interesting in view of the quantities of coarse china, blue and white[411] and coloured, which is brought from these parts by collectors who take its crude appearance as evidence of age. The factories are located at Pa-kwoh, a village near Shih-ma, which lies between Amoy and Chang-chou Fu. Tung-an Hsien in the same neighbourhood is also named as a pottery centre.

There are several important factories within easy reach of Shanghai. Those at Yi-hsing have been discussed at some length, but there is another large centre of the industry on the east side of the Lake T´ai-hu opposite to Yi-hsing. This is Su Chou [Chinese], which, according to the catalogue of the Paris Exhibition, was still celebrated for its pottery in 1878. But the reputation of Su Chou does not rest on its modern achievements. Its name occurs frequently in the pottery section of the great encyclopædia (compiled by order of the Emperor K´ang Hsi) as one of the prominent pottery centres in the Ming dynasty. Tiles for the palaces and temples of Nanking were made there, and vases and wine vessels for the Imperial Court. The nature of these last can be guessed from a hint given in one passage of the encyclopædia[412]: "At Su Chou iron rust (_hsiu_) and other materials are used for the yellow wares. For the vessels with dragon and phœnix destined for Imperial use, a resinous substance[413] and cobalt blue[414] are used."

In the Hsüan Tê period (1426-1435), Su Chou was noted for the manufacture of artistic pots for holding fighting crickets. In reference to these we are informed in the _T´ao shuo_ (see Bushell, op. cit., p. 140) that "those fabricated at Su Chou by the two makers named Lu [Chinese] and Tsou [Chinese] were beautifully moulded, and artistically carved and engraved, and the pots made by the Elder and the Younger Hsiu [Chinese], two daughters of Tsou, were the finest of all. At this time fighting crickets was a favourite pastime, and hundreds and thousands of cash were staked upon the event, so that they did not grudge spending large sums upon the pots, which were decorated in this elaborate way, and consequently far surpassed the ordinary porcelain of the period."

The large and important potteries at Po-shan Hsien [Chinese] in the Ch´ing-chou Fu, in Shantung, were represented only by a small exhibit at the Paris Exhibition of 1878, consisting of "a bottle of glazed pottery, three tea jars in red ware, ten specimens of glazed pottery, a brazier in terra cotta, and seven crucibles." Laufer tells us that these potteries date back to Sung times, and have preserved the old traditions of manufacture. The district is also noted for its glass, enamels and glazing materials, but it is situated inland, and not conveniently near any of the treaty ports.

In the early days of the European trading companies, pottery, as distinct from porcelain, does not seem to have received much attention from the merchants, and we may fairly assume that most of the earthenwares which reached Europe before the last century hailed from the neighbourhood of Canton or from Yi-hsing and the Shanghai district. But long before the first European vessels reached the coasts of China, Arab and Chinese merchantmen had carried cargoes of pottery and coarse porcelain to the Philippines, the East Indian Archipelago, the Malay Peninsula, Siam, Ceylon, and India. The Arabs had a trading station in Canton in the eighth century, and Chinese junks sailed from Canton and the Fukien ports in the Sung, Yüan, and Ming dynasties. A Chinese account of the sea trade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries may be read in the work of Chao Ju-kua,[415] and it will be found from this book and from Marco Polo's accounts that Ch´üan-chou Fu on the Fukien coast was a busy centre of foreign trade in the Sung and Yüan periods. Hirth[416] has traced the probable route by which the Lung-ch´üan celadons reached this port for shipment, and doubtless the other wares, including coarse white porcelain, stonewares and pottery, which are found in the Philippines and Borneo (to name only two of many localities) were largely supplied from the Fukien potteries. Many of these wares are of undoubted antiquity, and some of the types are unknown in China to-day. They may have been made solely for export, but in any case their disappearance in China is quite intelligible. For even in the eighth century the merchants were forbidden[417] to export "precious and rare articles," and most of these trade goods are of coarse make and unlikely to be preserved by the Chinese at home.

On the other hand, the natives of the Philippines and the Dyaks of Borneo have preserved these old potteries with scrupulous care. The various types of jars have been christened with special names[418] alluding to their form or decoration; they have been credited with supernatural powers; and numerous legends have grown endowing them with life and movement, power of speech, and influences malevolent or benign.

A good collection of these pots would be of considerable interest, but the value attached to them by their native owners is out of all proportion to their intrinsic worth, and makes them difficult to procure. An important series, however, of the Philippine jars has been formed by the Field Museum at Chicago, and they are described with full illustration in one of the excellent publications of that institution.[419] Among other things we are told that "every wild tribe encountered by the writer in the interior of Luzon, Palawan, and Mindanao possesses these jars, which enter intimately into the life of the people. Among many the price paid by the bridegroom for his bride is wholly or in part in jars. When a Tinguian youth is to take his bride, he goes to her house at night, carrying with him a Chinese jar which he presents to his father-in-law. The liquor served at ceremonies and festivals is sometimes contained in these jars, while small porcelain dishes contain the food offered to the spirits."[420]

A general similarity in form is noticeable in the Philippine jars, an ovoid body more or less elongated being common to all, while the neck varies a little in its height and width. A series of loop handles or pierced masks on the shoulder, to hold a cord for suspension, is a constant feature. The older types, which are said to date back to a period ranging from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, are frequently decorated with one or two large dragons coiling round the sides, and either modelled in low relief or incised in the body. Others are quite plain, and the glazes include black, brown, dark green, and a brownish yellow of varying depth. A later group, not older than the end of the Ming dynasty, is without ornament, but coated with single-colour or variegated glazes of the Canton and Yi-hsing types--e.g. speckled blue with green flecks, green with blue streaks and lines, blue and green mottled and crackled, light bluish green--the glaze often ending short of the base in an even line, which is, perhaps, characteristic of Yi-hsing.

The British Museum has a small series from Borneo, which includes, among the older types of pottery, a jar with black-brown glaze and bands of cloud design and stiff leaves deeply incised, and an ovoid jar with many loop handles on the shoulders, two dragons in relief, and a ground of incised wave pattern all covered with a yellowish brown glaze which ends in a regularly waved line some way short of the-base. Of later make is a jar with translucent purplish brown glaze, and four circular panels with figure ornament in low relief glazed green, a type described by the Japanese as "Old Kochi."[421] There are, besides, a jar with roughly painted blue dragon designs under a crackled white glaze, the ware being a coarse porcellanous stoneware; another with enamel colours in addition to the underglaze blue including the rose pink which is not older than the eighteenth century; and another type with rough stoneware or earthen body covered with a crackled, greyish white enamel of putty-like surface on which enamel colours are coarsely painted. The typical jar which the island natives so highly prize is of the ovoid form with a number of loop handles on the shoulder and dragons in relief.[422] An unusually ornate example is shown on Plate 49. It has a cloudy green crackled glaze with dragons of both the ordinary and the archaic kind, besides storks and a bat in low relief, and there are touches of dark blue and yellow, white and brown in the glaze. It is probably of Canton make and not older than the seventeenth century. In modern times jars are made in Borneo itself by the Chinese in the coast towns.

[Illustration: PLATE 53

Vase with chrysanthemum handles: buff stoneware with chrysanthemum design outlined in low relief and coloured with turquoise, green and pale yellow glazes in a dark purple ground. About 1500 A.D.

Height 19½ inches. _Eumorfopoulos Collection._ ]

A certain amount of Chinese pottery found its way, like the celadon porcelains in early times, by the caravan routes into Turkestan, India, Persia, and Western Asia. Such wares would be more naturally drawn from the potteries in Honan, Chihli, and the north-western provinces, and it is not surprising that the fragment found by Sir Aurel Stein in the buried cities of Turkestan should have included the brown painted wares of Tz´ŭ Chou.

But the greatest difficulties in classification are presented by the miscellaneous pottery which collectors have picked up from time to time in China, or antique dealers have sent over to supply the demand created by the increasing interest taken in Chinese pottery by Western amateurs. These come, as a rule, without any hint as to their place of origin, and in most cases it is quite impossible to locate them. There are, however, certain well-defined groups which come together naturally.

One of these is represented by the Tradescant jar in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. It was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1910, and described in the catalogue[423] as "Jar with globular body, short neck, and wide mouth; five loop handles; stoneware covered with a bright green glaze; the ornament consists of floral scrolls in yellow with touches of brown and is in low relief; round the base a formal design. Height, 12 inches." A similar jar is shown on Plate 56, and in the Goff collection in the Brighton Museum is another of the same make, but with the design incised with a point instead of applied in relief. The Tradescant Collection was given to Elias Ashmole in 1659 by John Tradescant. It was formed by the father of the donor, who died in 1627, so that at the lowest computation the antiquity of these wares is fixed in the late Ming period. Another group is represented by Plate 58, Fig. 2. Its characteristics are a comparatively thin buff earthenware body, soft enough to powder under the knife, and a sparing use of brownish yellow, bright turquoise, green[424] and aubergine glazes of the usual crackled type applied direct to the body. The specimens are generally vases or incense burners of curious and archaic forms, with ornament moulded in low relief, the whole bearing the unmistakable signs of a ware which has been pressed in a mould. The inside and bottom of the incense burners are usually unglazed. The colours, as a rule, are pleasing and soft, and it is the common practice to label them indiscriminately Ming. As nothing definite is known of their place of origin, this chronology can only be based on their archaistic appearance, or on the fact that they have the usual "on biscuit" glazes, which seems to be the accepted signal for a Ming attribution. Needless to say, the use of this method of colouring survived the demise of the last Ming emperor, and it is improbable that wares which must be comparatively common in China (judging from the handsome way in which the quite recently created demand for them has been answered) should have a minimum antiquity of two hundred and seventy years.

The fact is that dating of these glazed potteries is as difficult as that of the cognate glazed tiles, and it is as unreasonable to exclude a Ch´ing origin as it would be to exclude a Ming. The balance of probabilities, at any rate, is in favour of the bulk of them being no older than the eighteenth century.

[Illustration: PLATE 54

Vase with lotus handles: buff stoneware with lotus design modelled in low relief and coloured with aubergine, green and pale yellow glazes in a deep turquoise ground. About 1500 A.D.

Height 18 inches. _Grandidier Collection, Louvre._ ]

A third group is also consistently labelled Ming, but with better reason, though even here a little more elasticity in the dating is advisable. It has an exact parallel in porcelains of undoubted Ming origin, viz. those represented by Plate 61, etc., which usually take the form of jars and vases with designs outlined in fillets of clay, or channelled or even pierced _à jour_. The spaces between the outlines are filled with coloured glazes which are fired, in the case of porcelain, in the cooler parts of the biscuit kiln. These are the glazes _de demi-grand feu_, according to the French definition, and they consist of turquoise and aubergine purple or violet and green (the three colours or _san ts´ai_, all minutely crackled), supplemented by a white formed by slip and a thin brownish yellow. Occasionally the purple is so deep as to appear almost black; and the details of the designs are often etched in the paste with a fine point. Precisely similar wares are found with an earthenware body; and they are, no doubt, contemporary with the analogous porcelains, though how long the traditions of this type of ware continued has never been precisely determined. The porcelain on which washes of turquoise and aubergine glaze are