CHINA
MONOCHROMATIC WARES
than a solitary quotation from an ancient memoir to support his dictum that red glazes were manufactured so far back. On the other hand, H’siang, himself a collector, apparently a keener connoisseur than the writer of the Tao-/u, and living, moreover, three cen- turies nearer the times of which he wrote, makes no mention of red Timg-yao, though he carefully enu- merates the varieties of that beautiful ware which were most highly esteemed in the sixteeenth century. The student must be content, therefore, to leave this point unelucidated so far as the Timg-yao is concerned. Turning, however, to the CAdén-yao of the Sung dynasty, it appears that whether pure red mono- chromes were produced or not, the use of red in the glaze was undoubtedly well understood. H’siang, speaking of this ware, says that “of the colours used in the decoration none excelled the vermilion red and the aubergine purple.’’ The typical CAzn-yao, familiar to modern collectors from genuine Sung specimens or later, though not inferior, imitations made at Ching-té-chén, had a glaze of exceedingly delicate red, finely flecked with c/air-de-/une, and can- not, therefore, be strictly classed among monochromes. In a variety of the same ware, made at Ching-té-chén during the present dynasty, and supposed to have had its prototype in the Sung Chiin-yao, there is a glaze called Haz-tung-hung, in consequence of its resem- blance to the colour of the Pyrus ‘faponica blossom. None of the original Sung pieces, so far as is known, could properly have been described by such a name.
During the Yuan dynasty (1260-1367) red in the glaze seems to have been used only as an auxiliary. It is found associated, in the form of splashes or
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