Page 438 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

266 Chinese Pottery and Porcelain

and probably come from one factory. Bushell ^ also alludes to white
unglazed porcelain made at this time, and recalling the English
Parian ware. It is chiefly seen on small objects for the writing

table.

The collector will always be glad to secure specimens of the
palace porcelains of the Tao Kuang period, and of the smaller
objects on which the weakness of the colouring is not noticeable.
There are, for instance, many exquisite snuff bottles with the mark
of this reign, with carved, monochrome and enamelled ornament.
On the other hand quantities of these little objects coarsely manu-
factured and sketchily decorated were made at this time, and among
them the crude specimens with a floral spray on one side, a line of
verse in grass characters on the other, and a granulated border coated
with opaque yellowish or bluish green enamel, whose supposed
discovery in ancient Egyptian tombs made a sensation some sixty
years ago. It is not difficult to guess how these objects traded
among the Arabs found their way into the tombs which were in
course of excavation, but for a time they were believed to prove
the existence of Chinese porcelain in the second millennium before

Christ.2

Three other types of indifferent ware may be mentioned

here in passing. They belong to the middle of the nineteenth
century, and in part at least to the Tao Kuang period. One is painted
with a large pink peony and foliage in a bright green enamel ground ;
the second has cut flowers, butterflies and insects in strong rose colours
on a celadon green glaze ; and the third has rectangular panels
with crowded figure subjects in red and pink enclosed by a brocade
pattern of flowers, fruit and insects as in the second type. This
third class is often represented by large and rather clumsily shaped
vases with two handles of conventionalised dragon form, and the
border patterns are sometimes backed with gilding ; but it also
occurs in quite recent manufacture in tea and toilet services made
for the export trade. The porcelain in all these cases is of a rough,
coarse-grained make, and the reader might have been spared a
description of them were it not that in spite of their inferior quality
they are the subject of frequent inquiries.

1 0. C. A., p. 469.
* This extravagant idea has been long ago exploded, and need not be rediscussed.

See, however, Julien Porcelaine Chinoise, p. xix., and Medhurst, Transactions of the
China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong, 1853.