Chinese pottery and porcelain; vol. 1. Pottery and early waresHobson, R. L. (Robert Lockhart)
History
Chinese pottery and porcelain; vol. 1. Pottery and early wares
Hobson, R. L. (Robert Lockhart)
Porcelain, Chinese; Pottery, Chinese
Another Kuangtung group consists chiefly of figures and objects modelled
in the round and coated with rich crimson red _flambé_ or pea green
celadon glazes, with a liberal display of dark brown or red biscuit.
Figures of the god of War and other deities are often represented, the
draperies heavily glazed and the flesh parts in unglazed biscuit, which
sometimes has the appearance of being browned by a dressing of ferruginous
clay. (See Plate 48.)
[Illustration: PLATE 47
Vase of buff stoneware with a scroll of rosette-like flowers in relief:
thick flocculent glaze of mottled blue with passages of dull green and a
substratum of brown. Kuangtung ware, seventeenth century.
Height 10¼ inches. _Benson Collection._
]
Brinkley[385] describes several additional types of Kuang yao, including
a buff stoneware with "creamy crackled glaze of t´u Ting type."[386] "The
characteristic type is a large vase or ewer[387] 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 Chün and Yüan wares, and sometimes the
colour is very beautiful, but the glaze has distinctive characteristics
(see Plate 48, Fig. 2). 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.[388] Midway between
these and the familiar mottled Canton stoneware come what are known in
China as the Fat-shan Chün.[389] Their obvious intention to imitate the
old Chün wares is declared by the appearance of numerals incised in
Chün Chou fashion under the base. A typical example (see Plate 51) is a
high-shouldered flower vase with short neck and small mouth (not a Sung
but a Ming form, be it noted), 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
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