CHINESE POTTERY
mens were not manufactured in Kwang-tung but at Ching-té-chén.
The faiences spoken of above are the only notable wares of their class in China. But when the student comes to consider pottery, he is confronted by an important ware, the Y%-Asing-yao, known to Western collectors as boccaro. Yi-hsing lies near the Western shore of the Tai-wu Lake, a few miles from Shanghai, up the Yang-tsze-kiang. It is still celebrated for its terra cotta pottery, immense quantities of which are used by the Chinese for tea-pots. (The modern pro- ductions, however, are coarse and clumsy as compared with those that commanded the admiration of tea- drinkers, especially in Japan, during the past three centuries. The pate of the latter is as fine as pipe- clay and almost as hard as porcelain. Prized essen- tially for the colour and quality of the biscuit, it was not glazed, the keramist, depending for decorative effect upon quaint conceits of shape and delicately moulded ornaments incised or in relief. It would be nearly as difficult to detail all the colours of the Yi-hsing péte as to catalogue the innumerable forms of tiny tea-pots to the manufacture of which the factories devoted their chief attention. In the Illustrated Catalogue of H’siang two specimens are depicted, but the painter, by an unskilful use of pigments, has suggested the false idea that the pieces are glazed. Hi’siang, as translated by Dr. Bushell, describes them thus : —
Tea-pot of Yi-hsing pottery of the Ming dynasty. Of plain form with hexagonal section. The pottery of 27-Asing dates from the Ching-té era (1506-1521) of our own dy- nasty, during which a celebrated potter named Kung-chun, a native of the district, fashioned vessels of earthenware to
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