Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/279

 a pâte as fine as pipe-clay, as tender as vellum, and withal so elastic that good specimens appear to spring under pressure. The Catalogue of H’siang shows that the potters of the Sung dynasty generally took ancient bronzes as models for white Ting-yao, and that they accurately copied not only the shapes of these but also their decorative designs, incised or in relief. Such models were naturally best adapted to vases, censers, libation-cups, and so forth. When there was question of bowls or plates the potter chose ordinary shapes and ornamented them internally with sprays of leaves and blossoms, floral scrolls, or two fishes, incised or in relief, leaving the exterior plain. The glaze was not crackled in Ting-yao proper, but in the Tu-Ting-yao, or Ting-yao pottery, an inferior and comparitively clumsy production, crackle of medium size always appeared. It need scarcely be said that genuine specimens of Ting-yao dating from the Sung dynasty are virtually unprocurable.

It has been shown that the production of northern Ting-yao, or Pai-ting, ceased in the year 1126, and that the ware was thenceforth represented by the Southern Ting-yao, or Nan-ting, manufactured at Nan-chang in Kiang-si. Nan-chang and Ching-tê-chên were virtually synonymous. The keramic industry in this, its metropolitan, district progressed steadily without much reference to changes of dynasty, and when the Yuan Mongols became masters of the whole empire, the production of Ting-yao at Ching-tê-chên went on as before. Thenceforth, however, the porcelain was called Shu-fu-yao, or "imperial ware," to mark the fact that its chief destination was the Court. The materials employed in the manufacture of this Yuan Shu-fu-yao being identical with