Page 424 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

256 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

refined subjects which gain an additional drollery from the obviously

Chinese rendering of the figures. Many large punch bowls still

survive decorated to suit their owner's tastes, with a full-rigged
ship for the sea captain, a hunting scene for the master of hounds,
and agricultural designs for the farmer, often proudly inscribed

with the name of the destined possessor and the date of the order.
The Chinese touch is usually betrayed in these inscriptions, which
are obviously reproduced mechanically, and with no compunction
felt for a letter here and there inverted or misplaced.

These porcelains with European pictorial designs are, as a rule,
more curious than beautiful, but it cannot be denied that the next
group with European coats of arms emblazoned in the centre is
often highly decorative. This is particularly true of the earlier
examples in which the shields of arms are not disproportionately
large, and are surrounded with tasteful Chinese designs. The
heraldry is carefully copied and, as a rule, the tinctures are correct.
In the older specimens the blue is usually under the glaze, and
from this, and from the nature of the surrounding decoration in

famille verte or transition colours, one may assume that the pieces
in question were decorated at Ching-te Chen. From the middle of
the Yung Cheng period onwards a large and constantly increasing

proportion of the ware was decorated at Canton, in the enamelling
establishments which were in close touch with the European mer-
chants, and from this time European designs begin to encroach
on the field of the decoration. Finally, in the last decades of the
century the Cliinese armorial porcelain is decorated in purely Euro-

pean style. An important though belated witness to the Canton

origin of this decoration is a plate in the Franks Collection with the
arms of Chadwick in the centre, a band of Derby blue, and a trefoil
border on the rim, and on the reverse in black the legend, Canton
in China, 24th JanU, 1791.

Side by side with this armorial porcelain, and apparently also
decorated at Canton, there was painted a large quantity of table
ware for Western use with half-European designs in which small
pink rose-sprays are conspicuous. These are the cheaper kinds of
useful ware which are found everywhere in Europe, and must have
formed a large percentage of the export trade in the last half of
the eighteenth century. The decoration, though usually slight
and perfunctory, is quite inoffensive and suitable to the purpose

of the ware.