Basil Gray, curator of the Oriental collections at the British Museum, writing in Early Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, thus makes the point that fine porcelains have come to be virtually synonymous with China during a period that exceeds 5000 years. The earliest extant pottery of China belongs to the Yang-shao period, which means it was made before 3000 B.C. True porcelain came later, sometime between the Han and Tang dynasties, and the height of the art was reached in the Sung dynasty (A.D.960-1279), whose best porcelains are the inspiration for the growing ceramics of free China.
Pottery making on Taiwan dates to 1796, when the first kiln was established in Nantou county. Operation of the Chiaochih kiln gradually led to establishment of earthenware works in the districts of Yingko, Miaoli and Peitou. With the restoration of Taiwan to China in 1945, government authorities extended important assistance to the ceramics industry.
Several artists who were classmates at the Hang-chow Fine Arts College on the mainland have given time and energy to the renaissance. Ceramic arts have aroused interest among the people.
Many porcelain factories have been established. The best known are the China Pottery and Porcelain Arts Company, Lungman Porcelain Company and Yung Sun Arts Company.
The China Pottery and Porcelain Arts Company was established in 1957. During the New Year holidays of 1958, this company gave an exhibition at the Civic Auditorium and thousands attended. The 500 articles shown represented traditional designs and were expertly produced. CPPA specializes in reproducing ancient Chinese pottery and porcelain arts utensils, wares and decorations. Most styles and designs come from the Tang, Sung, Ming and Ching dynasties.
A new factory was set up last year in the Taipei suburb of Peitou. Monthly production has reached 5000 pieces. The company has more than 150 items, including vases, flower pots, various dishes and drinking utensils, ash trays, incense burners, Buddha heads, lamps and garden seats.
Fretwork television lamps are popular with Americans, as are cut-out design scenery lamps. Color and design may be especially stipulated. Most expensive products are large vases selling for US$40. Almost three feet high, these vases are decorated with scenery, flowers and human figures in color. The China Pottery and Porcelain Arts Company is especially noted for its colored glazes.
Young Artists
The Lungman Porcelain Company (Dragon Ceramics Company) was established by a group of young artists. It has used new designs as well as those of antiquity.
It makes human and animal figures as well as the usual pottery items. Many designs come from ancient China, Greece and Egypt. New designs are created by the Company's artists, using bright colors and modern ideas. Among the many porcelain factories in Taiwan, Lungman has one of the highest artistic standards.
As an example of ceramics development, the number of potteries in Yingko has increased from 19 to 79 since 1945. Tableware and even fine porcelains are being produced.
Nevertheless, there are several difficulties confronting various kilns. Lack of raw materials had handicapped the ceramics industry before World War II. Taiwan produces clay for the making of pottery. But quality is coarse and inferior and not fit for fine pottery. Imported clay must be used and this means higher production costs and prices.
Another required material is plaster. The eastern section of Taiwan produces some, but quality is inferior and output is only 600 to 1000 tons a month. Eighty per cent goes into the processing of cement. Plaster must be imported to make up the shortage in making pottery. Such a glazing material as quartz is available in the Su-ao district but production is small and quality poor. Feldspar is imported from Japan and borax from the United States.
The best way to promote the ceramics industry is to find a steady market for its product. Nearly all the potteries produce for the domestic market. But local demand is limited and it has to compete with imported porcelains, mostly from Japan.
Except for the large potteries, physical plant and equipment are generally unsatisfactory. Buildings are flimsy and in poor repair. Tools are old or inadequate. Lack of storage and drying facilities affect quality. Clay should be stored for long periods. The use of new clay results in an inferior product. In high humidity periods, drying space is essential. Smaller potteries lack machinery. Costs are high and quality sometimes suffers.
Despite these handicaps, considerable progress has been made. The production of plaster and quartz has increased. The government is giving attention to ceramics and extending both moral and material assistance.
Before pottery making begins, a model is made. The prepared clay liquid "slip" paste is poured into a plaster mold. After some of the water content of the paste has been absorbed, the remainder of the "slip" is poured out and the "skin" next to the mold allowed to dry. Then the mold is taken off. What remains is the desired pottery in crude form. The utensil is dried in the sun or special drying rooms, trimmed, given finishing touches and inspected.
Ways of Decoration
Decoration may be undertaken by painting, spraying or printing. The glaze is applied, adding color and luster to the pottery. It also provides a smooth surface that is easy to keep clean, and closes the pores so as to make the vessel watertight. Glaze is usually applied by spraying.
Fine pottery cannot be made by direct exposure to fire. It is put in saggars and fired in square, hill-slope or snake-type kilns. The square kiln can accommodate at one firing a quantity of pottery equivalent to a year's output of an ancient potter. Gas-fired kilns and ovens are now being used.
For firing ordinary earthenware, the required temperature is lower (about 800 degrees C.) than in firing Kaolin porcelain, which requires temperatures of 1200 to 1500 degrees. It takes from 24 hours to 48 hours for a firing.
In ancient times, models were made by hand or shaped on the potter's wheel, a machine with a horizontal revolving disk for throwing and turning pottery. The clay was prepared by beating and kneading with the hands or feet. Care was taken to pick out rocks and other foreign matter. Vessels were shaped by cutting a solid lump or ball of clay and building up the article piece by piece, by squeezing cakes of clay onto a natural object, or by shaping on the potter's wheel. The crude pottery then was dried in the sun.
The glazing method also was different. The prepared glaze was placed in a vessel and the raw pottery then immersed. Duration of immersion was determined by desired thickness of the glaze. Pottery was immersed slowly so as to exhaust the air on the surface. Uneven areas and convexities were coated more thinly, even areas and concavities more thickly.
Dynastic Changes
Another method is to pour the glaze over the pottery. Glazing also may be done by painting with a brush, but is hard to control.
The art of pottery was known to China in very ancient times. From Shang times forward, improvement in quality was rapid and there was a large increase in quantity. Each dynasty and each kiln had special products of its own. These reflected the characteristic features of the civilization of the period as well as the custom of the region.
Many factors contributed to China's ceramics leadership. One is the simple fact that China is the motherland of tea, and no Chinese likes tea made in a metal pot. Porcelain and tea have glorified each other for centuries. The presence of Kaolinic earth in large quantities in Kiangsi and other provinces supplied the raw material. Porcelain also was in demand for household utensils, burial urns and ceremonial vessels. Competition among private kilns and encouragement by monarchs led to expanded production, as did demands from abroad.
From Tang times until the 18th century, Chinese porcelain dominated the world market. No upper-class family of Europe was satisfied until it possessed several pieces. "Old Nanking" and "Famille Rose" were household words.
Han Period Glaze
Han pottery (206 B.C. - A.D. 220) already showed advanced technique. Many of the Han vessels, such as those for wine, are of superior form. They are ornamented by painting with unfired pigments, by stamping, by the application of reliefs molded separately and by incising.
Removing the model from the mold (File photo)
Glaze came to be used in Han times. It was a transparent lead glaze of yellowish tone, colored green with copper oxide and variegated through the use of liquid clays or slips of different color.
Between the Han and Tang dynasties (A.D. 220-610), there was another kind of glazed ware identified as a proto-porcelain. It contained the elements of porcelain in an unperfected state. This kaolinic pottery with its glaze of feldspar and wood ashes forms a stage in the evolution to true porcelain.
Porcelain art matured in the Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-906) at a time when the Chinese empire reached its widest expanse. It was an age of splendor in all the arts, and the potter was among the leaders. Lead glazes were in vogue. Marked development was also registered in the harder glazes, whose firing required higher temperatures. Much more color was employed, such as the famous Tang san tsai (the three-colored enamel of the Tang dynasty). The san tsai horses as well as other mortuary figures are symbols of the Tang empire represented in international collections.
But the progress of the Tang potter is not to be measured only in improved techniques. The beauty of the vase forms which grew from his wheel places him in the front rank of potters. His incised and molded ornaments prove him to have been a true ceramic artist.
The two main streams of porcelain also began in Tang: the white or northern ware and the green or southern ware. In the half century of turmoil which intervened between the Tang and Sung dynasties, known in history as the period of the Five Dynasties (A.D. 907-959), Chinese literature records the manufacture of two interesting wares. One was the celebrated Chai ware which was reputed to have been "thin as paper, resonant as a musical stone and blue as the sky seen between the clouds after rain." This was an imperial ware made for a year only in the neighborhood of Kai-Feng Fu in Honan. The other is the pi se (secret color) ware made at Yueh Chou, the modern Shao-hsing Fu in Chekiang, for the princely house of Chien. It is generally agreed that this was a porcelain or semi-porcelain with a gray-green glaze of the celadon type.
The Sung porcelains are among the classic wares of China. Collectors have treasured them with loving care, so that not a few have survived. They are outstanding in their purity of color, simplicity and subtlety of form, and delicacy in texture and design. Many state-directed and private potteries existed during the Sung dynasty. Each important center of manufacture produced a distinct type, although not all the differences are discernible to the layman.
Five Centers
The five big centers of the Sung porcelain industry were the Ju, Ting, Kuan, Ko and Chun kilns. Minor ones of the same period included Lung-chuan, Chi-chou, Chien, Kuang aud Tzu-chou.
The word Ju referred to Ju-chou, near Kaifeng, capital of the Sung dynasty. A number of kilns may have existed in the vicinity, but the best wares doubtlessly were turned out by the imperial pottery, which engaged in production for a brief period at the beginning of the 12th century and whose products alone were identified as Ju wares.
Genuine Ju wares are of the ying ching type, for they are white in color with a tint of blue or green, thin and translucent and of a delicately soft and melting quality. They are skillfully potted and of artistic shape, and the decorations are carved in low relief, incised with a fine point or pressed out in molds. The word ching in Chinese connotes both blue and green, and ying means translucent.
Another of the classic Sung types is the ivory-white porcelain made at Ting Chou in southern Chihli. It is a singularly pure and beautiful ware with a flour-white body, slightly translucent, and a glaze of cream or ivory tint, which, however, tends to run in tears or drops on the outside of the bowls and dishes. A peculiarity of the ware, which it shares with the ying ching, or Ju type, is that the rims of bowls and dishes are often unglazed while the base is glazed, thus reversing the usual practice. The rough rims of such vessels are generally concealed by a band of silver or copper. The Ting ware was exquisitely decorated with carved or incised designs, largely floral. In some cases, especially in the later periods, the more mechanical method of pressing out the designs in molds was used with good effect.
Painted Ware
Besides the fine ivory-white Ting ware, there are several other varieties. One is known as tu (earthy) Ting because it has a more opaque and earthy-looking body. It has a soft, cream-white glaze which is usually covered with faint crackle. Chinese writers also speak of Ting wares with black, red and brown or purple glazes. There is mention of a painted Ting ware, which must have resembled the painted stoneware of Tzu Chou.
Another type not definitely identified is the Kuan. Kuan means imperial, and Kuan ware may be nothing more than imperial ware of whatever kind. But Chinese writers evidently intended to single out the Kuan wares of the Sung dynasty as distinctive. They affirmed its manufacture in the neighborhood of Kaifeng for a short time before A.D. 1127. The original site has not been found despite archeological efforts. Kuan ware had the opalescent, blue-gray glaze that was developed to the full in Chun Chou ware. The southern Kuan, made after 1127 in the precincts of the imperial palace at Hang Chou, whither the Sung court had been transferred, so closely resembled Ko ware that many Chinese writers do not attempt to discriminate between the Ko and Kuan.
Ko ware got its name from the elder of two brothers Chang who lived in Lungchuan of Chekiang province in the Southern Sung period. It was the ware of the "elder brother" (Ko). Later on, the name passed into general use to denote wares made from a dark-colored clay with crackled glaze. While the cracks were probably at first accidental, the Sung potters eventually learned how to produce and control them, chiefly by modifying the components of the glaze and by the methods of applying it.
Rich Colors
The Chun ware was characterized by rich and varied colors brought about by changes that firing wrought in the copper oxide and in the trace of iron which entered into the composition. Its splashing colors—purple, red, blue and gray—departed sharply from the standard Sung Porcelain. Artisans of that dynasty tended to simplicity and refinement in color and decoration. Often only one color of glaze was used. Chun glaze is apt to break into irregular V-shaped lines, known as earthworm marks, which the connoisseurs regard as a sign of authenticity. The shape of the vessels was graceful and sometimes sturdy without being elaborate. Decorations were usually uncomplicated. In this they formed a striking contrast to porcelains of the Ming and Ching dynasties.
An artist paints a dragon on the tripod (File photo)
The forms of Sung wares, except when molded after old bronzes, are simple, coming naturally from the hands of a gifted "thrower" at the potter's wheel. The character of the classic Sung wares may be summed up in two words: simplicity and refinement.
The short-lived Yuan dynasty (A.D. 1280-1367) made little contribution to ceramics. With the advent of the Ming dynasty, the monochrome of Sung gradually went out of fashion. All the various centers of porcelain making gave way to one whose name has shone through subsequent history: Ching-teh Chen.
Imperial Kiln
A small town on Poyang Lake in Kiangsi province, Ching-teh Chen began making pottery as early as the sixth century. Kaolinic earth derived its name from the hills surrounding this town, which were called Kaolin, meaning high ridges. Also in abundant supply were petuntse (china stone) and a cobalt bearing manganese ore which provided the blues in Ming wares. From this inexhaustible supply of raw material came the white porcelain which, together with silk and tea, made China famous. As this type of ware lent itself to painted decoration, the vogue for more ornate decoration replaced the old Sung leaning toward monochromes.
The first Ming emperor made Ching-teh Chen the location of his imperial kiln, and the number of private potteries had multiplied to some 3,000 by the 18th century. Products found their way to market via the Yangtze River and China's vast network of waterways, reaching every part of the country and the outer world.
The Ching dynasty of the Mancqus replaced the Ming in 1644. A succession of three vigorous emperors - Kang-hsi, Yung-cheng and Chien-lung - brought ceramic art to new heights. Officials were appointed to manage the imperial kilns at Ching-teh Chen. Among them was the famous Tang Ying, who wrote several learned treatises on porcelain. In fine finish and perfect command of material and technique, Ching ware was unsurpassed. What it lacked in originality, it made up in complicated design and superb craftsmanship. Many of the painted pieces were done by renowned artists.
Old Nanking is a familiar phrase in Europe for Chinese blue and white. None the less it is a misnomer. While much of that ware was transshipped from Nanking, none of it was made there. Old Nanking is in fact the blue and white porcelain of Ching-teh Chen and chiefly that made in the Kang Hsi period and sent to Europe. It was justly famous, for never was more care expended on the preparation of the ware and the refining of the blue. The best Kang Hsi blue is pure sapphire, without the tinge of violet or gray so often observable in the Ming blue.
After the 18th century, porcelain loses its greatness, being mainly imitative. Exceptions are the Peking medallion bowls, the fine snuff bottles of the Tao Kuang period (1820-50) and some of the imperial porcelain. The devastation of Ching-teh Chen during the Tai-Ping rebellion of 1853 was a crowning disaster to the ceramics industry.
With the establishment of the republic, the ceramic art was neglected and manufacture was confined to ancient designs. Since the government moved to Taiwan, the industry has shown its most rapid advances in this century.
Taiwan's porcelain factories are said to be excellent. Rapid progress has been made possible by a new generation of young artists and workers who use the techniques of the past but are not slaves to them.
Tan Tan-chiung says in his book Chinese Porcelain that ceramic art mirrors the Chinese soul. The new product lends support to such poetic conception.
Taiwan lacks raw materials, but not the skills and determination to revive the ceramics greatness of China's past. That is the objective in the pottery renaissance now sweeping the island. "New Taiwan" may yet rival "Old Nanking" in the hearts of a world that loves useful things that are also beautiful.