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 CHINA

Chapter XII CHINESE POTTERY

ROM what has been written in preceding chapters, it will be gathered that the dis- tinction between pottery and porcelain in Chinese wares is not always so clearly

marked as the amateur might anticipate. Between the extremes of hard-paste translucid porcelain and genuine pottery there are many varieties of soft-paste and stone-ware. In fact the keramist varied the composition of his pate to suit the glaze he desired to apply to it. Even at an epoch when the processes of manufacturing hard-paste porcelain were thoroughly familiar to him, he preferred soft pate, and sometimes stone-ware, as a ground for his choicest glazes or most delicate decoration. But though translucency and timbre were not points of special excellence in his estimation, he regarded pottery proper as a de- cidedly inferior product. Dr. Bushell writes thus : —<‘* Tsu is defined in the older dictionaries as a fine, compact Zao, pottery. It is distinguished from earthenware (wa) by the clear musical tone it gives when struck sharply with the finger nail. The term pottery, as with us, includes porcelain and earthen- ware, both glazed (/u--wa) and plain. Prince

Kung, one day, admired a glazed Buddha from the 348