Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/101

 originals. Unfortunately, no accurate information is obtainable as to the time when the factory at Ch'u-chou-fu ceased to be active. The date may, however, be approximately fixed at the early part of the sixteenth century. Up to that time the characteristic iron-red pâte and thick, lustrous glaze of the Lung-chuan-yao were produced without much difficulty. A little later, during the Wan-li era (1573-1619), there flourished an expert nicknamed Hu-kung (Mr. Pots), or Hu-yin-tao-jên (the Taoist hidden in a pot), whose reproductions of the Kuan-yao and Ko-yao céladons of the Sung dynasty enjoyed considerable reputation. He appears to have shown some want of strength in respect of crackle, but his work was sufficiently excellent to make his name remembered, a fact from which it may safely be inferred that the manufacture of céladons of the old type had ceased to be carried on successfully before his time. Tradition says that he marked his pieces Hu-yin-tao-jên, but if this be so they must have been at once distinguishable from their prototypes.

Contemporaneous with, or perhaps a little earlier than, Hu-kung, an artist named Ngeu, who worked at the factory of Yi-hsing (a place situated on the western shore of the Tai-wu Lake, some few miles inland from Shanghai), is recorded as having imitated the ancient Ko-yao and Kuan-yao céladons. His ware was known as Ngeu-yao.

Neither of these manufactures possesses much practical interest except as showing that, at the close of the sixteenth century, céladons of the recognised class had become so difficult of production that skilled artists acquired permanent fame by imitating them. It is not to be supposed, of