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National Geographic : 1979 Aug
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OOL and more comfortable than it might appear, a pillow supported by the figure of a reclining woman (below) may have been destined for a bedroom or to serve the dead in a tomb. The porcelain piece, termed ch'ing-pai (bluish white), was prob ably fired in Kiangsi (Jiangxi) Province in one of the famous kilns of Chingte chen (Jingdezhen), a city that by the 1700's had become a metropolis of more than a million people primarily engaged in making and selling pottery. Ch'ing-pai porcelains were exported from Chingtechen by the ton and have been excavated throughout Southeast Asia. Well represented in the wreck's cargo, they include a small incense burner and four bottles (above), made during the Yuan Dynasty and likely used in religious ceremonies as altar sets. A Yuan Dynasty ch'ing-pai pitcher was decorated with spots caused by iron oxide daubed on the piece before firing (right). A new museum in Kwangju, east of the wreck site, will BOI ILEG:AOUUI 14 CM (6IN); INCENSEBURNER:10CM (4 IN); PITCHER:12CM (5 IN) house the Sinan finds, which have already added immeasurable depth to the study of Chinese ceramics. Su zanne G. Valenstein, associate curator of Far Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, was part of a team of experts that examined the collection. "There was a type of flow erpot [page 236, top] with a piecrust edge," she recalls. "None of us had seen anything like it. And it wasn't just one piece-they had dozens of them sitting right there. How do you ap praise a collection like that?" [ PILLOW:10CM (4 IN) HIGH NationalGeographic, August 1979 242
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