Page 20 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

dom will never be able to reproduce them with abso-
lute success. Those who have read the accounts,
recorded in Chinese and Japanese literature, of men
almost deified as the discoverers of some new boccaro

clay ; or who have heard the fond tradition how

the pate of every choice piece fired at the potteries

of the Po-yang Lake had invariably received a cen-

tury's manipulation ; or how the materials of cele-

brated glazes were ground and re-ground during the
life-time of half a generation until they were reduced

to impalpable powder ; or how, to distinguish the

true colouring pigment the Mohammedan blue,

worth more than its weight in gold from the
many imperfect compounds which nature's labora-
tory offered, was an accomplishment possessed by the

most gifted experts only ; those who are familiar

with all these things have no difficulty in understand-

ing that the decadence of such extraordinary pro-
cesses, such labours of almost crazy love, was an
inevitable outcome of the world's changed condi-

tions. Regarded, therefore, as works of art which
have ceased to be produced, and which must become
every day more unprocurable, the Hawthorns and
other hard-paste blue-and-white specimens which in

recent years created a furore among English collec-
tors, were not unworthy of the homage they received.

But from a Chinese point of view, such pieces are

not to be placed in the very first rank of keramic

masterpieces. The instinct of the French amateurs
of former years directed them more truly when it

inspired their love of monochromatic wares and of

soft-paste pieces decorated with blue sous couverte,
and the instinct of American collectors has happily
followed in the same direction.