Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/309

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-lu, and living, moreover, three centuries nearer the times of which he wrote, makes no mention of red Ting-yao, though he carefully enumerates 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 Ting-yao is concerned. Turning, however, to the Chün-yao of the Sung dynasty, it appears that whether pure red monochromes 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 Chün-yao, familiar to modern collectors from genuine Sung specimens or later, though not inferior, imitations made at Ching-tê-chên, had a glaze of exceedingly delicate red, finely flecked with clair-de-lune, and cannot, therefore, be strictly classed among monochromes. In a variety of the same ware, made at Ching-tê-chên during the present dynasty, and supposed to have had its prototype in the Sung Chün-yao, there is a glaze called Hai-tung-hung, in consequence of its resemblance to the colour of the Pyrus Japonica 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