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Sung dynasty, as already stated, officially manufactured porcelain was sent to the capital, where it supplied the needs of the palaces and great establishments. In the T?ai Ting period of the Y?an dynasty the porcelain factory came under the inspection of the Intendant of the Circuit, who supplied the required wares when orders had been received, and closed the factory if there were no orders .

Continuing into the Ming dynasty, the same authority gives details of the various administrative changes which may perhaps be "taken as read," one or two important facts only calling for mention. Thus in the thirty-fifth year of Hung Wu, we are told that the factories were opened, and that supplies of porcelain were sent to the Court. There seems to have been some difference of opinion about the building of the Imperial Ware Factory .

Though this great porcelain town has traded with the whole world for several centuries, "bringing great profit to the Empire and to itself great fame" , it seems to have been rarely visited by Europeans, and first-hand descriptions of it are few. We are fortunate, however, in possessing in the letters of P?re d'Entrecolles an intimate account of the place and its manufactures, written by a Jesuit missionary who was stationed in the town in the early years of the eighteenth century. These interesting letters are so well known that I shall not quote them extensively here. The picture they give of the enormous pottery town, with its population of a million souls and the three thousand furnaces which, directly or indirectly, provided a living for this host, and of the arresting spectacle of the town by night like a burning city spouting flames at a thousand points, a description which inspired the oft-quoted lines in Longfellow's "Keramos," shows us the place in the heyday of its prosperity.

"During the last forty-five years Ching-t? Ch?n has had time to recover, in a very large measure, from this last calamity, but it is said to be not so busy or so populous as before the T?ai p?ing rebellion.

"Everything in Ching-t? Ch?n either belongs to, or is altogether subordinate to, the porcelain and earthenware industry. The very houses are for the most part built of fragments of fireclay that were once part either of old kilns or of the fireclay covers in which porcelain is stacked during firing. The river bank is covered for miles with a deep stratum of broken chinaware and chips of fireclay, and, as far as one could judge, the greater part of the town and several square miles of the surrounding country are built over, or composed of, a similar deposit. A great industry, employing hundreds of thousands of hands, does not remain localised in a single spot for 900 years without giving to that spot a character of its own.

"This is perhaps what struck me most forcibly in Ching-t? Ch?n--that it is unlike anything else in China. The forms, the colour, the materials used in the buildings, the atmosphere, are somewhat reminiscent of the poorer parts of Manchester, but resemble no other large town that I have ever visited.

"At present there are 104 pottery kilns in the town, of which some thirty or so were actually in work at the time of my visit. The greater part of the kilns only work for a comparatively short season every-summer. During this busy season, when every kiln is perhaps employing an average of 100 to 200 men, the population of Ching-t? Ch?n rises to about 400,000, but of this nearly, if not quite, half are labourers drawn from a wide area of country, chiefly from the Tuch?ang district, who only come for the season, live in rows of barrack-like sheds, and do not bring their families with them."

It is interesting to compare this modern account with the Memoirs of Chiang, written in the Y?an dynasty, from which we see that the work was carried on in the same intermittent fashion, the potters receiving land to cultivate instead of payment, living round the master of the pottery, and being liable to be summoned to the kilns when required. The opening of the kilns in those days was in some measure dependent on the success of the harvest, and in any case the work depended on the season, as the paste would freeze in winter, and could not be worked.

The hills which surround Ching-t? Ch?n are rich in the materials required by the potters, china clay and china stone of various qualities, fireclay for the seggars , or for mixing in the coarser wares, and numerous other minerals. There was water-power which could be used in the mills for crushing and refining the minerals, and abundant wood for firing. Although coal is worked nowadays not many miles away, the potters still adhere to the wood, which has served their kilns from time immemorial. It should be added that at the present day--and no doubt for some time past--the local clays have been supplemented from various districts, supplies coming overland from Chi-m?n and by water from greater distances.

This description of Ching-t? Ch?n has led us far from the period with which we are at present concerned. In the Sung dynasty the place had already arrived at considerable importance, and the record of its 300 kilns implies a very large population. The excellence of its porcelain had already won for it the onerous privilege of supplying Imperial needs, and, as we have seen, it was consecrated under the new and Imperial name of Ching-t? Ch?n in the opening years of the eleventh century. The earliest existing record of its productions, the Memoirs of Chiang, written at the beginning of the fourteenth century, tells us that the Sung porcelains made at Ching-t? Ch?n were pure white and without a flaw, and were carried for sale to all parts under the proud name of "Jao Chou jade." It rivalled the "red porcelain" of Ch?n-ting Fu and the green of Lung-ch??an in beauty.

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.

FOOTNOTES:

THE Y?AN DYNASTY, 1280-1367 A.D.

We learn from the Memoirs of Chiang that a variety of porcelains were made to meet the tastes of the different regions of Southern China. The market in Northern China does not seem as yet to have been studied. Thus, while the kilns at Hu-t?ien, on the river bank opposite to Ching-t? Ch?n, supplied a brownish yellow ware which was popular in the province of Ch?kiang, the greenish white porcelain of Ching-t? Ch?n found a profitable market in Hunan and Hupeh, Szechuan, and Kuangtung. The inhabitants of Kiangsu and Anhui seem to have been less critical, for the inferior wares known as "yellow stuff" , which did not sell in Kiangsi, Kiangnan, Kuangtung, Fukien, and Ch?kiang, was foisted on them.

The finest porcelain was made of the stone from Chin-k?ng, while stone and earth from other neighbouring sites were used for mixing in the inferior wares and for making seggars and moulds. The glaze was made of "glaze earth" from Ling-pei mixed with the ashes of brushwood from the Yu-shan hills which had been burnt with lime and persimmon wood. I mention these technical details because their similarity with the description of the manufacture in the eighteenth century show that the method of porcelain making at both periods was essentially the same. The decoration was effected by stamping or pressing in moulds, by painting or by carving; and the ware was fired either upright or inverted.

Some idea of the forms and ornament of these wares may be gathered from another passage which would be far more illuminating if the fanciful names used were less difficult to understand. Bushell has boldly translated them according to his ideas, and I quote his renderings in inverted commas and in the pious hope that they may be correct, giving at the same time the original characters.

There were bowls , with high feet and with fish and water ornament; platters with "glazes shaded in different tones," sea eyes, and snow flowers; dishes of the horse hoof and betel-nut kinds, the latter suggesting a brownish red colour; large bowls with lotus ornament , or of "square form with indented corners"; bowls and platters with painted decoration, with silver designs, with "fluted sides," and with "encircling strings." Such wares as these had a profitable market in Ch?kiang, Kiangnan, Kiangsi and Fukien.

It is always difficult to determine the age of plain white wares, but among the archaic specimens of translucent porcelain with creamy white glaze and rough finish at the base which have come from China in recent years under the varying descriptions of Sung, Y?an and early Ming, there are, no doubt, several examples of the Y?an wares of Ching-t? Ch?n .

Among the causes to which was attributed the lack of prosperity at Ching-t? Ch?n in the Y?an period, the Memoirs of Chiang includes the uncertainty of the season on which the opening of the factory partly depended, the intolerable taxation and the exactions of officials, and the competition of the potteries at Lin-ch?uan, Nan-f?ng Hsien, and Chien-yang, all of which, as Bushell indicates, lay on the trade route between Ching-t? Ch?n and south-eastern coast towns.

From this passage it appears that "blue and white" may be added to the types of ware made in the Y?an period.

The third factory, at Chien-yang in Fukien, has already been discussed at some length. It was chiefly celebrated for the dark-coloured wares and the "hare's fur" and "partridge" tea bowls.

These names by no means exhaust the list of factories which were active in the Y?an period. Others have been incidentally mentioned elsewhere under the headings of Y?an-tz??, P??ng ware, Hsin Ting ware, etc.

FOOTNOTES:

KUANGTUNG WARES

Brinkley describes several additional types of Kuang yao, including a buff stoneware with "creamy crackled glaze of t?u Ting type." "The characteristic type is a large vase or ewer decorated with a scroll of lotus or peony in high relief and having paint-like, creamy glaze of varying lustre and uneven thickness, its buff colour often showing tinges of blue." Vases of similar make seem also to aim at copying the red-splashed lavender glazes of the Ch?n and Y?an wares, and sometimes the colour is very beautiful, but the glaze has distinctive characteristics . It is opaque, and lacks the translucent and flowing character of the originals, and the surface has a peculiar sticky lustre, and something of that silken sheen which distinguishes the Canton and Yi-hsing glazes of this class. The crackle, too, is more open and obvious. Some of these pieces have the appearance of considerable antiquity, and are reputed to date back to Sung times. Midway between these and the familiar mottled Canton stoneware come what are known in China as the Fat-shan Ch?n. Their obvious intention to imitate the old Ch?n wares is declared by the appearance of numerals incised in Ch?n Chou fashion under the base. A typical example is a high-shouldered flower vase with short neck and small mouth , with thick, rolling, crackled glaze of pinkish cream colour, shading into lavender and flushing deep red on the shoulders. In rare instances the crimson spreads over the greater part of the surface. The biscuit at the base is brownish grey if its light tint is not concealed by a wash of dark clay. The glaze, unlike that of the type described by Brinkley, is fairly fluescent, thin at the mouth, and running thick in the lower levels. Other examples of this class have heavily mottled grey or blue glazes nearer in style to the Canton stoneware. Indeed, they are clearly made at the same factory as the latter, for we have a connecting link between the two groups in a vase in the Eumorfopoulos Collection, a tall cylinder with streaky lavender blue glaze and the usual silken lustre, the base of buff colour washed with brown slip and marked with the square seal of Ko Ming-hsiang. Many of these "Fat-shan Ch?n" wares are exceedingly attractive, but by far the most beautiful are the rare dishes in which the glaze has been allowed to form in deep pools of glass in the centre. In these pieces all the changing tints of the surrounding glaze are concentrated in the cavity in a crystalline mass of vivid colour. Such wares are, I think, not older than the Ch?ing dynasty, though they have been erroneously described by some writers as Sung.

FOOTNOTES:

YI-HSING WARE

With these materials, and with their conspicuous skill in blending clays, it may well be imagined that the Yi-hsing potters were able to make innumerable varieties in their ware. The commonest shades, however, are deep and light red, chocolate brown, buff, drab and black brown; occasionally the clays are speckled--e.g. buff ware with blue specks--or powdered with minute particles of quartz, and frequently two or more clays are used in contrasting tints on the same piece. The body of the ware is sometimes soft enough to powder under the knife, but as a rule it is a very hard stoneware, capable of receiving a fine polish on the lapidary's wheel. The choicest teapots are unglazed, though often a sort of natural gloss has formed on the surface in the kiln.

But to continue the history of the factories as outlined in Brinkley's translation, we are told that the first maker of "choice utensils of pottery for tea-drinking purposes" was a priest of the Chin-sha temple about thirteen miles south-east of Yi-hsing, and that the first really great Yi-hsing potter was Kung Ch?un who flourished in the Ch?ng T? period . Though it would appear that Kung Ch?un, while attending his master Wu I-shan at the Chin-sha temple, surreptitiously learnt the secrets of the priest, his fame completely eclipsed that of his teacher, and he is usually venerated as the founder of the Yi-hsing potteries. His pots are described as being "hand made, and in most of them thumb-marks are faintly visible. Generally their colour is that of a chestnut, and they have a subdued lustre like oxidised gold. Their simplicity and accuracy of shape are inimitable; worthy to be ascribed to divine revelations."

Supernatural qualities form the only point in common between this description and that of the two teapots figured in Hsiang's Album, and confidently assigned to Kung Ch?un. One of these is a drab ware and of hexagonal shape, which appears to have been formed in a mould; the other is in the form of a wine ewer and of vermilion red; and both are stated to have the wonderful quality of changing colour when filled with tea. In fact, in the second illustration the artist has depicted this phenomenon, the pot being vermilion red above and green below the tea-line. The price of these two pots in the sixteenth century was no less than 500 taels or ounces of silver. Brinkley's translation gives a considerable list of Yi-hsing potters who made a reputation in the Ming dynasty, but as the characters are not added it does not always help us to identify the names, among the potter's marks, and in most cases the characteristics assigned to them are entirely vague. We learn, for instance, that one man's "forte was beauty of decoration," and that three others were "renowned for the excellence of their pottery." On the other hand, it is important to read that Tung Han in the Wan Li period was "the first potter who ornamented the surface of the Yi-hsing ware with elaborate designs in relief," and that many of the pieces designed by Ch??n Chung-mei, who had formerly been a porcelain maker, "such as perfume boxes, flower vases, paper weights, and so forth, show singularly fine moulding and chiselling. His vases were shaped in the form of flowers, leaves, and fruits, and were decorated with insects. His dragons sporting among storm-clouds, with outstretched claws and straining eyes; his statuettes of the goddess Kuanyin, her features at once majestic and benevolent--these are indeed wonderful productions, instinct with life." This passage shows, at any rate, that in the Ming period the Yi-hsing potters did not confine their attention to tea wares. Perhaps the most celebrated Yi-hsing potter was Shih Ta-pin, who followed in the footsteps of the great Kung Ch?un, and eventually surpassed him.

Brinkley's translation gives us very precise views of what the true form of the teapot should be. It should be small, so that the bouquet of the tea be not dispersed, and every guest should have a pot to himself. It should be shallow, with a cover which is convex inside; and it is very important that the spout should be straight. Crooked spouts were very liable to become obstructed by the tea leaves. "One drinks tea for pleasure, and one may justly feel irritated if the beverage declines to come out of the pot." The true form of teapot, we are told, began with Kung Ch?un, from which one infers that the tea bowls of the T?ang and Sung usage were in vogue up to his time. But the correct shape once established, the Yi-hsing potters soon began to take liberties with it, and to twist it into all manner of fanciful forms, such as fruits , the leaf or the seed-pod of the lotus, creature forms such as fish leaping from waves, a phoenix, and innumerable other quaint shapes, always skilfully modelled and often of high artistic merit.

In addition to these, certain less familiar styles of ornament are found on the smaller objects, such as the heads of opium pipes, which are beautifully made and tastefully decorated. The red ware is sometimes coated with a transparent glaze of yellowish tint, giving a surface of warm reddish brown, exactly similar to the eighteenth century Astbury ware of Staffordshire; or, again, it is polished on the lapidary's wheel like the B?ttger ware of Dresden. Inlaid designs in fine white clay and marbling are further varieties; and occasionally coloured glazes of great beauty occur. But these will be discussed presently.

There is no limit to the variety of articles made by the Yi-hsing potters, but they chiefly excelled in small and dainty articles for the writing-table, the toilet, and the tea-table, and personal ornaments. Their tea wares have always been highly prized in Japan, where they have been cleverly copied in Banko ware and by the Kioto potters. Similarly, when tea-drinking became an institution in Europe in the last half of the seventeenth century, and the East India companies set themselves to supply the necessary apparatus from China, the Yi-hsing red teapots became fashionable, and were immediately imitated by enterprising potters. The Dutch and English seem to have been the first to succeed in this new departure, and we read that Ary de Milde and W. van Eenhorn, of Delft, applied for a monopoly of the manufacture in Holland in 1679, while John Dwight, of Fulham, included the "Opacous, redd and Dark coloured Porcellane or China" in the patent taken out in London five years later. The brothers Elers, of Dutch extraction, started the industry in Staffordshire about 1693, and made red stoneware teapots scarcely distinguishable from the Chinese, and which sold for a guinea a piece.

The Yi-hsing wares in the celebrated Chinese ceramic collection formed by Augustus the Strong at Dresden supplied designs for the fine red stoneware made in the first years of the eighteenth century by B?ttger, who also discovered the secret of true porcelain in Europe and founded the famous Meissen porcelain factory.

Though the original glazed wares of Ou are probably rarer to-day than their Ch?n 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" 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 Ch?n types and the viscous, silken sheen of the Canton glazes which also imitate them. The colour and glaze are distinctly attractive, and have much in common with the old Ch?n 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 , 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 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.

FOOTNOTES:

MISCELLANEOUS POTTERIES

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."

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 , 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 encyclopaedia 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 encyclopaedia: "At Su Chou iron rust and other materials are used for the yellow wares. For the vessels with dragon and phoenix destined for Imperial use, a resinous substance and cobalt blue are used."

The large and important potteries at Po-shan Hsien 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, Y?an, 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, and it will be found from this book and from Marco Polo's accounts that Ch??an-chou Fu on the Fukien coast was a busy centre of foreign trade in the Sung and Y?an periods. Hirth has traced the probable route by which the Lung-ch??an 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 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 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 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. 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."

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." 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. 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.

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?? 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 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 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 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.

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