Page 299 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

K*ang HsI Polychrome Porcelains 175

ware, greyer and coarser in the " Old Imari," and the glaze in both
cases has the peculiar bubbled and " muslin-like " texture which
is a Japanese characteristic. The Japanese underglaze blue is dark

and muddy in tone, the Chinese bright, and purer, and the other
colours differ, though not perhaps so emphatically. The iron red

of the Chinese, for instance, is thinner and usually lighter in tone

than the soft Indian red or thick sealing-wax colour of the Japanese
;

and to those who are deeply versed in Oriental art there is always
the more subtle and less definable distinction, the difference between
the Chinese and Japanese touch and feeling.

Plate 108 is a fine specimen which shows the blend of Chinese

motives and the Japanese colouring.
The general character of the Chinese " Imari " is that of the

K'ang Hsi period, to which most of the existing specimens will be
assigned ; but it is clear that the Chinese continued to use Japanese

models in the succeeding reign, for the last three items in the Imperial

list of porcelain made in the Yung Cheng period comprise wares
" decorated in gold and in silver in the style of the Japanese." ^

^ Fang tung gang, " imitating the Eastern Sea" (i.e. Japan).