Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/374

 CHINA

— the typical Lung-chuan-yao— was without crackle, and from the remarks of some writers the inference may be drawn that the presence of crackle was re- garded as a mark of inferiority. But such a verdict must not be accepted too literally. In the finest type of céladon, the delicate greenish azure monochrome so highly esteemed in China and Japan, crackle did not appear. But the illustrations in H’siang’s Catalogue show that not alone all specimans of the Ko-yao, but many of the Kuan-yao, and even some of the ‘fu-yao, had crackle, and that in the case of the Ko-yao and the Kuan-yao the crackle was coloured with vermilion. Judging by the illustrations, it is plain that in the case of these wares the crackle, so far from being a defect, was distinctly an embellishment. Indeed, surviving specimens of Ko-yao, attributed by Chinese connoisseurs to the Sung factories, owe much of their beauty to the coloured net-work that covers their sur- face, spreading a multitude of tinted veins with ficecy edges over the brilliantly lustrous glaze. The Ko-yao became, in fact, the type of crackled porcelain to subsequent generations, and nowadays every fine specimen of buff, grey, or cé/adon monochrone having a strong crackled surface—— whether the crackle be coloured or plain—is spoken of as Fang-ko-yao. Choice pieces of old craque/é have always and justly en- joyed a high reputation. The author of the Tao-/u mentions incidentally that, in his time (1815), a first- class specimen of old crague/é commanded from a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars in Japan. It was natural that a good number of pieces found their way into Japanese collections, where they are still care- fully preserved. So expert did the Chinese keramist become in the management of crackle that he even

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