Page 19 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

ITS HISTORY ARTS AND

LITERATURE

Chapter I

CHINESE PORCELAIN AND POTTERT

AS TO THE FIRST MANUFACTURE OF
TRUE PORCELAIN IN CHINA

former years France stood alone in her appre-

ciation of Chinese keramic productions. By

INFrench amateurs only was properly understood
the double triumph of aestheticism and tech-
nique achieved in the monochromatic vases of the
Ching-te-chen factories. In England, the popular
idea of Chinese porcelain was a highly decorated,

formally painted ware. So little valued were mono-

chromatic or even blue-and-white pieces, that if any

such found their way to London, they were deemed

unsaleable until their surface had received pictorial

additions at the hands of Anglo-Saxon potters. Such
sacrileges are no longer perpetrated. All Western

collectors have now learned to appreciate the incom-

parable beauty of the Kang-hsi and Chien-lung blues.
These fine pieces, as well as their contemporaries of
the monochromatic and polychromatic orders, derive

additional value from the fact that, so far as human

foresight can reach, the potters of the Middle King-

VOL. IX. I