Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/152

 The next two periods, Lung-ching (1567-1573) and Wan-li (1573-1620), may be conveniently classed together as to their blue-and-white porcelains. In the Tao-lu their wares are called Lung-wan-yao, as though no distinction existed between the two reigns. The important points to be noted with regard to these wares are that Mohammedan blue was no longer procurable and that the materials for manufacturing the porcelain mass had become in part exhausted and in part inferior. It is exceedingly probable, though the fact cannot be asserted with absolute confidence, that from 1570, approximately, until the end of the Ming dynasty (1644), very little soft-paste blue-and-white porcelain was manufactured at Ching-tê-chên. A principal ingredient for its biscuit was taken, as has been already stated, from the bed of the river on which the city stood, and this source of supply came to an end or ceased to be available during the Lung-ching era. On the other hand, large quantities of hard-paste porcelain were made. Numerous surviving examples may be seen. In all of them the biscuit is dense and heavy. Small pieces show excellent technique, but the larger are more or less clumsy and roughly finished. Their bottoms, instead of being turned on the wheel as was the case with preceding wares of the better class, generally exhibit marks of the knife used to remove superfluous clay. Often, too, the bottom is not depressed, but filled up level with the rim. In such specimens the year mark is written either on the outside of the piece—usually round the upper or lower edge—or in a rectangular space cut in the centre of the under surface and glazed. The type of blue-and-white Lung-wan-yao is essen-