220
230
D. J. FINN, S.J.
to one and a half inches high: diameter of the mouth about 61⁄2 inches; greatest breadth of body about 10 to 12 inches. There is one type which is noticeably found in various sizes but never so big as the typical jar: it is the shape and general decoration shown in Plate 33, figure 2; this
type has usually lugs at the shoulder and these are pierced as if for suspen- sion on a string (see fragment 38 which belongs to fragment 20 style): one strikingly neat vase in which both fabric and pattern show a greater sense of beauty has been found in two fragments each of which has a diminu- tive handle consisting of a strip of clay fastened the body by little plaques which obviously imitate a bronze model (rivets) (fragment 7). Professor Shellshear seems to have found a similar piece and it is possible that a com- parison would show that it is a third handle from the same vase.
The
Certain features of technique are noteworthy. The lower part of these pots seems to have been made in a basket-like receptacle apparently woven of rush or perhaps of bamboo fibre: one can even detect at times the wider spaced frame-work that supported as stays exteriorly the closer meshed fabric: on the actual specimen this is best seen by oblique illumination with artificial light and reveals itself in a succession of wider hollows between knots of eminenre. The bigger black dots on fragment 9 show the effect. Something similar was used to smooth off the interior and this treatment often gives a surface like the imprint of a corrugated hide to the inner skin: a few instances of a peculiar stud-like mark standing out in lines in the inners also occur, it is like the cast that would result from a matrix consisting of the depression in wood where a nail had been driven in, pointing perhaps to the use of a frame of wood for the support of the pot during the stamping of the pattern on the outside: it may have been actually the imprint of a stamping tool but, as yet, no certain interpretation can be offered. upper part of the body was turned on the wheel: on one fragment which has defied the camera a line of ornament ran away very much in accordance with the geographical law for the deviation of winds and currents on the revolving globe, indicating a wheel running from the potter's right to his left. The class of vase represented by Plate 33, figure 2, shows a marked join interiorly between body and bottom. Judging by the frequency with which fractures have occurred at the neck, it would seem as if the neck were made separate- ly and then luted on. In support of this are three observations; firstly, the thickening in layers of the clay (see figure 6, c and d) and, secondly, much more important for our whole study, the ornamentation of the shoulder groove with the motive of the "comb dots in groups of three, four or more pricks (fragments 3, 4, 7, 10, 13, 37, but they do not come out well); these dots (Plate 33, figure 2) are reminiscent of stitches and in fact we shall find them in the course of these articles used as a decorative-motive on various parts that overlie joins, e.g. on the body of cup where the pedestal-foot had been added, or on one of these jar-pots where a foot was put beneath the usually rounded bottom. Thirdly, the actual technique of the join has been detected on frag- ments from Lamma and from Site 26" (of which later) and is of importance as a connecting link,
"
Sometimes it would seem that some article with a woven grid surface was used to make the upper part, even the neck of the pot, for there are
The Hong Kong Naturalist.
The Hong Kong Naturalist.
Vol. III, Nos. 3 and 4.
I.
5 tms
ૐ.
4.
Plate 33.
22!