Northern and Southern ceramics

[peterp]

In China the kilns or ceramics are often separated into Northern and Southern ones. The separation line is the Chang Jiang (Yangtze river).
Most of the great kiln systems of the Song dynasty and earlier were located in the north. Jingdezhen, Dehua kiln, and some others, which came to be dominant from the Ming dynasty onward, are located in the south.
When coastal kilns are mentioned this often means the eastern or south-eastern coasts of China, in the south.

Piece if information:
Southern kiln items often were made with a darker clay, while those in the north used a white or whitish clay.
This is not absolutely true always, however. The clay color depended not only due to geological differences between locations, sometimes in greater depth of the same clay quarries clay color could be different too.