Another important group of Yi-hsing wares presents an entirely different aspect, and indeed it is little understood in Europe, though it is probably bought by unwary collectors for the Sung types which it purports to imitate. This is the Yi-hsing Chün, to which allusion has already been made in discussing the imitation Chün wares. The traditions of this manufacture go back to the Ming dynasty, when a potter named Ou [Chinese] 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.