WARES OF "SUNG" DYNASTY
a hare, are especially lauded. Examples certainly exist in Chinese collections, but the ware seems to be virtually unknown to the ordinary experts of the Middle Kingdom, and is perhaps more difficult to find there than any of the products of the Sung kilns. In Japan, on the contrary, it has always been so much prized and so carefully preserved as to be familiar to connoisseurs and generally present in good collections. During the period of art decay and social confusion that immediately followed the fall of feudalism, a few pieces found their way into the market, but the opportunity thus offered to collectors did not long continue.
A point worthy of note with respect to the Chien-yao is that it was one of the very few esteemed wares of ancient times which the potters of Ching-tê-chên do not appear to have imitated either in the Ming or Tsing dynasties. To what circumstance this distinction is attributable, it is difficult to surmise. The Tao-lu shows that the Chien-yang factory was in a flourishing condition at the beginning of the Yuan dynasty (1260), but of its subsequent fate nothing is known except that it had ceased to produce ware of the above type before the end of the fourteenth century.
The Chien-yao presents two varieties of pâte. Both are stone-ware, but while the one is dark and coarse, with a dull timbre, the other is of somewhat lighter colour, tolerably close in texture, and almost as hard as porcelain. The former should properly be distinguished as U-ni-yao, or "raven-clay ware." Manufactured in the same district of Chien-ning-fu, in Fuhkien province, it was nevertheless a product greatly inferior to the finer varieties of Chien-yao.
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