PORCELAIN DECORATED
appearance, more curious than beautiful. This criticism, however, must not be understood as applicable to specimens of earlier date than the end of the last century. The granulated glazes of the Ming and principal Tsing factories were both interesting and attractive. In the Tao-lu it is nevertheless stated that this Tsung-yen-yao, or ware à boutons d'Aralia, which is the Chinese term for strongly chagrined glaze, was classed among ordinary porcelains and did not rise to the dignity of a really choice production. It was, in fact, hard-paste porcelain.
Since Chinese connoisseurs place the Hsuan-tê era at the head of blue-and-white porcelain epochs, it might be expected that the names of some of its distinguished keramists would have been handed down to posterity. But one only is mentioned, an artist called Lo, whose specialty was the delineation of fights between grasshoppers. Fashionable folks of Lo's time are said to have amused themselves pitting these insects against each other.
The year-mark of the Hsuan-tê period is Hsuan-tê nien chi, "manufactured in the Hsuan-té" (era). Frequently in this, as in all the Ming periods, the year-mark was prefixed by the ideographs Ta-ming, signifying "Great Ming."
The three eras immediately following Hsuan-tê were Chang-tung, from 1436 to 1449; Chiang-tai, from 1450 to 1456, and Tien-shun, from 1457 to 1464. They produced nothing specially worthy of note, and their year-marks are rarely found upon keramic specimens. No reference is made in Chinese works to the manufactures of this interval of nearly thirty years, though the nine years (1426-1435) of Hsuan-tê's reign receive extended and enthusiastic
115
