Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/104

 In order to complete this important branch of the subject, it will be advisable at once to carry the history of céladon down to modern times. In addition to the Lung-chuan-yao manufactured at Ch'u-chou-fu in Chêkiang, up to the middle of the sixteenth century, and the imitations of Ko-yao and Kuan-yao made by Hu-kung and Ngeu about the close of that century and the beginning of the next, céladons were also produced during the Ming dynasty at the Imperial Keramic Factory of Ching-tê-chên, in the province of Kiang-si. This factory's early history will presently be given. Here it is enough to say that, under the Ming emperors, its experts had become incomparably the most renowned in the Middle Kingdom. They produced many varieties of ware showing the highest technical skill and artistic excellence, and among these céladons were undoubtedly numbered. It is recorded that, in the year 1430, some twenty-five kilns, established at the beginning of the dynasty (1368) for the manufacture of large fish-bowls ornamented with dragons, were converted into céladon (Ching-yao) kilns, and that the ware produced at them, being intended for the use of the Court, was termed Kuan-yao. That these céladons, in name identical with, and in appearance closely resembling, the original Kuan-yao of the Sung dynasty, may often have been mistaken for the latter by connoisseurs of later times, is easily conceivable. They were, at any rate, beautiful examples of their class, and there can be no doubt that some of the most prized specimens of céladon now extant came from the hands of the Ching-tê-chên experts. How then are these Ching-tê-chên pieces to be distinguished from similar wares of earlier date and different place of manufacture?