Page 404 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

242 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

of the Persian or European kind.^ This group of porcelain
always bears the K'ang Hsi mark, but a comparison with the
bowls of later date, both in material and in the general finish
of the ware and the style of the colouring, irresistibly argues
a later period of manufacture, unless, indeed, we admit that the
Imperial bowls of the late K'ang Hsi and the Ch'ien Lung periods
are not to be differentiated. The finish of these wares, in fact,
compares more closely with that of the finer Tao Kuang bowls
than with the recognised types of K'ang Hsi porcelain.

—Another kind of on-biscuit decoration of the Ch'ien Lung and
—perhaps the Yung Cheng period is best described from a concrete

example, viz., Fig. 2 of Plate 124, a pear-shaped bottle in the

British Museum with sides moulded in shallow lobes, an overlap-

ping frill or collar with scalloped outline on the neck, and above
this two handles in shape of elephants' heads. The ground colour
is a deep brownish yellow relieved by borders of stiff leaves with
incised outline filled in with smooth emerald green; and the collar
and handles are white with cloud scroll borders of pale aubergine
edged with blue. The general colouring, as well as the form of
this vase, is closely paralleled in fine pottery of the same period.

It may be added that famille rose enamels are sometimes used

in on-biscuit polychrome decoration, but the effect is not specially
pleasing. Some of the opaque colours serving as monochromes
are also applied in this way, but here the absence of a white glaze
beneath is scarcely noticeable, owing to the thickness and opacity
of the enamels.

But all the other forms of polychrome decoration at this period
must yield (numerically, at any rate) to the on-glaze painting in
famille rose enamels, or, as the Chinese have named them, " foreign
colours." The nature of these has been fully discussed, but there
is no doubt that their application was widely extended in the Ch'ien
Lung period, and one point of difference, at least, is observable in
their technique, viz. the mixing of the tints in the actual design

so as to produce the European effect of shading. By this means

the graded tints in the petals of a flower, and the stratified surface
of rocks and mountains, are suggestively rendered.

It would be impossible to enumerate the endless varieties of

A^ plaque in the Bushell Collection with famille verie painting has also a remark-

ably lustrous appearance, which I can only ascribe to excessive iridescence.