Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/384

 hold tea which were often changed in the furnace like this one. Its original colour is a light brown like felt, which changes to a bright green when the tea is put in, gradually reverting to its former colour, line by line, as the tea is poured out. This is only a curious accidental peculiarity, and yet modern virtuosi prize it most highly. This and the following tea-pot I saw at the capital in the collection of a prince, who had bought the two from Chang, a high officer of Nanking, for 500 taels. Height, 4½ inches.

Tea-pot of Ming dynasty Yi-hsing pottery, made by Kung-chun. Of vermilion red pâte, changing to bright green when tea is poured in, as described above. A wonderful transformation which I could not have believed had I not seen it with my own eyes. Height, 5 inches.

It is of course obvious that pottery covered with glaze could not change colour under the circumstances mentioned, and for the rest there is no doubt whatever that glaze was not employed in the manufacture of this ware. The price mentioned by H’siang—more than seven hundred dollars for two little pots, the one 4½, the other 5, inches high—attests the value placed on choice specimens of Yi-hsing-yao by Chinese connoisseurs at the close of the Mzng dynasty. In Japan the fancy was still more marked. There the ware has always been known as Shu-dei (vermilion pottery) or Haku-dei (white pottery), and a tea-pot of it forms an essential feature in every chajin's equipage. Owing to this high appreciation on the part of the Japanese tea-clubs, there has been preserved in Japan an exceptionally accurate Chinese record of the origin and manufacture of the Yi-hsing-yao. The account owes nothing to Japanese research, being merely transcribed from Chinese annals; a fact which suggests that if the story of the Yi-hsing-yao, a ware certainly not standing at the head of Chinese