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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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