Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/333

 MONOCHROMATIC WARES

side of the specimen has designs, more or less elabor- ate, in coloured enamels of the Famille Rose type. The choicest pieces of all have designs incised in the pate, with or without addition of coloured enamels. These porcelains belong to the “Imperial class.” Their extreme thinness and delicacy, as: well as their great cost, must have precluded their use except by persons of large means.

YELLOW.

There is unanimity among Oriental and Occiden- tal connoisseurs alike in assigning the first place among monochromes to the grand reds of the Chiang- tou-hung, the Pin-kwo-ts’ing, the Lang-yao, and the Fan-hung glazes. But concerning the porcelain to be ranked second, differences of opinion will of course be found. Judging from the T[lustrated Catalogue of H’siang, the honour lay between yellow and purple at the end of the sixteenth century. Of the two, yellow is the more uncommon.

Yellow glazes were manufactured in times as re- mote as the Zang dynasty (618-907), but they did not attain any reputation. The ware in which they were employed — Sheu-yao— was produced in the province of Kiang-nan. Subsequently, under the Yuan dynasty (1260-1368), a stone-ware called Hu- tien-yao, manufactured at a village of the same name in the neighbourhood of Ching-té-chén, had impure yellow glaze run over archaic designs deeply incised in the péfe. Surviving pieces of this ware indicate that it belonged to a low grade, not suffering com- parison with many other porcelains by contempo- rary potters, which are said to have shown the grace and elegance of fine Sug manufactures.

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