Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Ting ware was the product of one of the famous northern kiln sites of the Sung dynasty located in present day Chien-ts’u ts’un and eastern and western Yeo-shah ts’un in Ch’?-yang hsien Hopei. Beginning in the T’ang dynasty Ch’?-yang had been under the jurisdiction of the prefecture of Ting chou from which Ting ware in turn got its name. By the Sung dynasty Ting ware had already gained a reputation as extremely high-quality white porcelain with production proceeding on the largest scale at Chien-ts’u ts’un where as indicated by recent excavations the kiln site occupied a total area of 1170000 square meters evidencing a truly astonishing production capacity. Moreover the same type of white porcelain was being produced throughout the broad region of the Chang river valley in Hopei. Since 1941 when the Japanese scholar Koyama Fujio published the report of his personal journey following the leads provided in Yeh Lin-chih’s Ku-chin Chung-wai T’ao-ts’u Hui-pien to the Ch’ien-ts’u and Yeo-shan kiln sites to collect specimens there have been many outstanding achieven its in the field of Ting ware scholarship. Of special interest among them are the excavations of the Chien-ts’u kiln-site in 1960-1961 and of several dated tombs and pagoda foundations and the unearthing in recent years of several Ting ware impression-moulds bearing date inscriptions all of which provide important clues for the dating of Ting ware. Historical documents over the ages have recorded quite a few references to Ting ware involving the types of Ting kilns the special characteristics of its decorative designs and ornamentations the technical skills it demanded and the other types of ceramic ware imitating its style both contemporaneously and in later periods. Due to the excellence of Ting ware it not only found favor at court but was also much loved by the general consumer in the rest of the society Because of this many kilns began to imitate its craft and produce works of the same type making the Ting style quite prominent. As mentioned in Chou Hui’s Sung dynasty work Ch’ing po Tsa-chih various sites to the north of the Huai river such as Suchou and Ssu-chou produced ceramic ware imitating Ting ware styles. According to the material provided by recent archeological excavations kilus in the provinces of Hopei (in Lin-ch’eng Men-tou-kou Long-ch’uan-wu Mi-yun Hsiao-shui-y? Fangshan Tsuchia wu Shansu (in Hun-yuan Ping-ting Chich-hsiu Ho-chin Chiao-cheng Yang-ch’eng. (MP)