of the Corean celadons are of unimpeachable thinness, and as they were contemporary with the Sung porcelains and were almost certainly copied from them, there seems no real ground to withhold belief entirely from the Chinese statements with regard to the thinness of certain coloured Sung wares. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 88: _Jade_, op. cit., p. 17.] [Footnote 89: See L. Binyon, _Painting in the Far East_, chap. ix.] [Footnote 90: _Porcelain, A Sketch of its Nature, Art and Manufacture_, p. 56.] [Footnote 91: This colour is quite distinct from the turquoise of the _demi-grand feu_, a more lightly fired colour familiar on the later porcelains.] [Footnote 92: Mr. Burton's practical experiments and the beautiful results obtained by following out his conceptions of Chinese methods are well known to all admirers of the Lancastrian pottery.] [Footnote 93: A late sixteenth-century work, published with translations by Dr. S.W. Bushell, 1908, under the title of _Porcelain of Different Dynasties_.] [Footnote 94: I have already had occasion to criticise the inconsistencies in the colouring, etc. of this work. See _Burlington Magazine_, April, 1909, p. 23.] CHAPTER V JU, KUAN, AND KO WARES _Ju yao_ [Chinese] THOUGH no authenticated example of Ju ware is known in Europe, it is impossible to ignore a factory whose productions were unanimously acclaimed by Chinese writers as the cream of the Sung wares. Its place of origin, Ju Chou, in the province of Honan, lies in the very district which was celebrated in a previous reign for the Ch´ai pottery, and it is probable that the Ju factories continued the traditions of this mysterious ware. Nothing, however, is known of them until they received the Imperial command to supply a _ch´ing_ (blue or green) porcelain to take the place of the white Ting Chou porcelain which had fallen into temporary disfavour on account of certain blemishes. This event, which took place towards the end of the Northern Sung period (960-1127 A.D.), implies that whatever had been their past history, the Ju Chou factories were at this period pre-eminent for the beauty of their _ch´ing_ porcelain. It would appear from the _Ch´ing po tsa chih_,[95] which was written in 1193, that the Ju Chou potters were set to work in the "forbidden precincts of the Palace," and that selected pieces only were offered for Imperial use, the rejected specimens being offered for sale. Even at the end of the twelfth century we are assured that it was very difficult to obtain examples of the ware.