SHIWAN POTTERY EXPLORED
103
My own research on Shiwan has continued in the Department of Fine Arts and the Centre of Asian Studies over the past two and a half years. This included in March of 1978, the opportunity for a three-week individual study trip in Guangzhou and Shiwan. Encountering the concrete reality of what I had researched for so long, discovering a wealth of material I had no idea existed, while adjusting to completely different perceptions of life and study methods within a socialist system, heightened my sense of exploration. Hence the intent of the present lecture is to introduce, in a little more depth, a few of the problems explored on that trip.
Exploration across the border revealed that significant archaeological research relating to Shiwan had been carried on for a number of years. There was great excitement over these discoveries and I was warmed by the measure of trust placed in me by the researchers who, despite their own uncertainty, showed me the new discoveries before publication.2
The research itself calls for the re-thinking of traditional beliefs concerning the history of Shiwan pottery. These traditional beliefs can be traced back to two major written sources. In 1941, Li Jing-kang (*), principal of the Clementi Middle School in Hong Kong, wrote what was up until that time the most careful and logical account of Shiwan history, taking into account scanty written references, oral traditions, and actual objects available. His main source was a handwritten manuscript in the possession of “a certain gentleman in Fushan". This manuscript recounted that Shiwan pottery began in Yangjiang Xian (縣), where due to the turmoil of war, potters migrating from the Jun (鈞) kilns in Northern Honan Province (河南), established kilns sometime in the late Southern Song dynasty (early 13th century). In the Ming period (A.D. 1368-1643), according to Li, these Yangjiang potters moved to the present location of the potteries in Nanhai Xian (Figure 1). Xu Zhiheng (#2), a Cantonese, and professor of Chinese literature at Beijing University in the early Republican period, recounts the same story and describes this so-called "Yang-jiang ware" as having sky blue-indigo blue-ash blue flambe (i.e. streaky multicoloured) glaze, which imitated Honan Jun ware.4 A group of wares which corresponded to this description were identified and placed on exhibition at the Fung Ping Shan Library in 1940.5