|Chinese Longquan Celadon from Zhejiang, Song Dynasty, 13th
century, Musée Guimet in Paris| Celadon is a term for ceramics
denoting both a type of glaze and a ware of a specific color,
also called celadon. This type of ware was invented in ancient
China, primarily in Zhejiang Province.. It can now be widely
found in Northern Thailand and now is a major handicrafts sector
in Chiang Mai. The term "celadon" for the pottery's pale jade-
green glaze was coined by European connoisseurs of the wares.
One theory is that the term first appeared in France in the 17th
century and that it is named after the shepherd Celadon in
Honoré d'Urfé's French pastoral romance, L'Astrée (1627), who
wore pale green ribbons. (D'Urfe, in turn, borrowed his
character from Ovid's Metamorphoses.) Another theory is that the
term is a corruption of the name of Saladin (Salah ad-Din), the
Ayyubid Sultan, who in 1171 sent forty pieces of the ceramic to
Nur ad-Din Zengi, Sultan of Syria. Yet a third theory is that
the word derives from the San