CHINA
clay gives green ware. A clay called Mi-keu (literally, “closed mouth” or “secret opening”) produces light red pottery, and a mixture of “pear-skin” clay with white sand gives pottery the colour of a light shade of Indian ink. The spirit of the mountain is said to create several other varieties of colour when its clays are baked. A clay found at the hill T'wan-shan produces pottery with white spots like pearls; and the same clay mixed with azure-blue and stone-yellow clays give a rust colour of dark or light shade. White clay is obtained principally from a hill called Pai-shishan (white-stone hill), in Chiang-yin. An ancient writer says that in these hills there are caves capable of holding thirty or forty persons, and that from their roofs hang stalactites of various colours. In these caves clays of fine quality are found. The position of the caves changes, however, from time to time, according to the will of the spirit of the mountain. Doubtless if excavation sufficiently deep—two or three hundred feet—were made, good clay would be found everywhere.
The clay, having been carefully selected, is pounded, sifted, and then stored in covered holes to season. In mixing and preparing, the workmen employ various processes which are kept strictly secret. After the pots have been shaped, they too are seasoned for a long time, and ultimately five or six are placed in a carefully closed vessel within the kiln. Great pains and skill are necessary in stoving, excess or deficiency of temperature being alike fatal to the appearance of the finished piece. To make a really choice vase for holding water or tea demands an almost superhuman endowment of taste and dexterity. Not one potter among ten thousand is capable of the achievement. A pot for tea should be small, not large; shallow, not deep; its cover should be concave inside, not flat. Pots for storing tea, for washing tea, for holding hot water, and so forth, all have special characteristics with which the potter must be intimately acquainted.
From the time of Kung-chun down to that of Shi Ta-pin the pâte of good pottery was always distinguished by its fine texture. Some specimens had silvery spots; others had wrinkles, or faintly projecting dots. The longer one of
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